“A swashbuckling set of blasted guitars and rootsy grooves” is how Uncut describes Chuck Prophet’s 2014 album, Night Surfer. A dedicated performer, songwriter and storyteller, Prophet has lent his pen and production talents to Bruce Springsteen and Solomon Burke.

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Summertime Thing

Chuck Prophet

This is an 19+ event

Collective Concerts

Chuck Prophet & His Cumbia Shoes

Gigs

Toronto

Longboat Hall

California singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer Chuck Prophet announced today a new collaborative album with Cumbia group ¿Qiensave? called Wake The Dead, which will be released on October 25th through Yep Roc Records. An extraordinary and unlikely pairing, Prophet and ¿Qiensave? blend seamlessly together as the collection dives headfirst into the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during a recent bout with stage four lymphoma and subsequent recovery. Chuck has also announced a run of fifteen UK shows, marking his biggest tour in several years, for early 2025, with Chuck joined by both

members of ¿Qiensave? and James DePrato and Vicente Rodriguez from his band the Mission Express. In support of today’s announcement, they shared the album’s lead single and title track “Wake The Dead,” an anthem that reckons with forces beyond our control while learning to let go, a recurring theme at the core of the album.

“I never want to be a downer,” stated Prophet. “This record doesn’t shy away from darkness, but it always feels hopeful. When I was growing up listening to The Clash and their flirtations with reggae, the thing I remember most is how the music hit me, how it made me feel. The more you listened, the more was revealed, but on the most fundamental level, those records just felt good, and that was really important to me with this album.”

Prophet’s fascination with Cumbia music began after experiencing a weekly Cumbia night at a local haunt of his in San Francisco’s Mission district. He quickly became obsessed: collecting old vinyl from Latin America, studying its origins, DJ’ing, and loading his friends up with new mixes every time they came to visit. After he was diagnosed, he had a lot of time to just sit and listen as he went through treatments. “I was going through a tunnel,” he recalls. “It was dark. But I had music: music to play, music to listen to, music to get me out of my head. Music was my savior.” More than any other genre, Cumbia served as a faithful musical companion and reprieve during his immunotherapy and chemotherapy.

Once he was finally feeling better, Prophet started driving out to Salinas on a regular basis to jam with a group he’d fallen in love with called ¿Qiensave?, a band of brothers from the Central Coast farming community. The sessions came together on a whim, for the sheer fun of it at first, but Prophet soon invited the band to back him up at a couple of live shows, and the immediate reaction from audiences made it clear they were on to something special. Prophet and ¿Qiensave? hit the studio soon afterwards, where they blended with his longtime backing band, The Mission Express, to track the heart of Wake The Dead live on the floor. It was chaotic at times, cramming as many as eight musicians into the same studio space, but they prioritized gut feeling over sonic perfection and allowed the undeniable energy of the performances to guide them.

The result is a profoundly adventurous celebration of life that balances hope and fear in equal measure, a rich and exultant meditation on what really matters from an artist who always manages to find the light, even in the face of the most oppressing darkness. Prophet approaches the style not as an academic or historian, but as a fan with a voracious appetite and an insatiable curiosity. The songs are intoxicatingly rhythmic, all but demanding you move your body while you listen, with arrangements that blur the lines between tradition and innovation, between past and present, between cultures and countries. There are flashes of rock and roll, punk, surf, and soul, all filtered through the streets of San Francisco and wrapped up in the rich legacy of a genre that traces its roots back hundreds of years and thousands of miles.

This is a 14+ event

Brudenell Social Club

Leeds

California singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer Chuck Prophet has released a new collaborative album with Cumbia group ¿Qiensave? called Wake The Dead through Yep Roc Records. An extraordinary and unlikely pairing, Prophet and ¿Qiensave? blend seamlessly together as the collection dives headfirst into the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during a recent bout with stage four lymphoma and subsequent recovery.

Chuck has also announced a run of fifteen UK shows, marking his biggest tour in several years, for early 2025, with Chuck joined by both members of ¿Qiensave? and James DePrato and Vicente Rodriguez from his band the Mission Express. In support, they shared the album’s lead single and title track Wake The Dead, an anthem that reckons with forces beyond our control while learning to let go, a recurring theme at the core of the album.

‘I never want to be a downer,’ stated Prophet. ‘This record doesn’t shy away from darkness, but it always feels hopeful. When I was growing up listening to The Clash and their flirtations with reggae, the thing I remember most is how the music hit me, how it made me feel. The more you listened, the more was revealed, but on the most fundamental level, those records just felt good, and that was really important to me with this album.’

Tour support comes from Our Man In The Field.

This is an 18+ event

Hey! Manchester

Chuck Prophet + Our Man In The Field

OUR MAN IN THE FIELD

Manchester

YES The Pink Room

Wake The Dead - https://youtu.be/lmEpztGvPsY

For twelve long days, Chuck Prophet waited. A stage four lymphoma diagnosis had knocked the wind out of him, dragged him off the road and into surgery, and now here he was, a perpetual motion machine forced to sit still, confronting his mortality for the first time as he wondered if he’d live long enough to see the end of the year, let alone get back on tour.

“I was going through a tunnel,” he recalls. “It was dark. But I had music: music to play, music to listen to, music to get me out of my head. Music was my savior.”

That much is plain to hear on Wake The Dead, Prophet’s extraordinary—and unlikely—new album. Recorded with ¿Qiensave?, a band of brothers from the Central Coast farming community of Salinas, California, the collection dives headfirst into the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during his illness and subsequent recovery. The songs are intoxicatingly rhythmic, with arrangements that blur the lines between tradition and innovation, between past and present, between cultures and countries. There are flashes of rock and roll, punk, surf, and soul, all filtered through the streets of San Francisco and wrapped up in the rich legacy of a genre that traces its roots back hundreds of years and thousands of miles.

“Some say this music started in the jungles of Peru and Colombia,” Prophet explains. “Then it really caught fire in the 1960s. In fact, there was such a demand for Cumbia in Mexico that DJs would travel to Colombia just to bring records back. Now that’s trafficking I can get behind!”

While Cumbia’s exact origins are debated, such details are in many ways irrelevant to Wake The Dead. Prophet approaches the music not as an academic or an historian, but as a fan with a voracious appetite and an insatiable curiosity. “When I was growing up listening to The Clash and their flirtations with reggae, the thing I remember most is how the music hit me, how it made me feel. The more you listened, the more was revealed, but on the most fundamental level, those records just felt good, and that was really important to me with this album.”

Prophet’s illness arrived amidst a streak of more than a dozen critically acclaimed solo albums stretching all the way back to 1990, when the California native first shifted focus from his tenure with pioneering neo-psych band Green on Red to working under his own name. Since then, Prophet’s songs have appeared in a slew of films and television shows, and his work has been covered by Bruce Springsteen, Solomon Burke, Heart, and a host of others. Uncut proclaimed him a “renaissance-rocker,” and NPR declared that “no one can turn tales from the outer limits into catchy songs quite like Prophet does.” Decades of relentless touring and bold artistic reinvention came to a screeching halt in 2022, though, when doctors found a mass in Prophet’s intestine.

 “I had a lot of time to just sit and listen while I was sick,” he explains. “When I finally got to feeling better, I started jamming with this Cumbia band called ¿Qiensave? that I’d fallen in love with.” The immediate reaction from audiences made it clear they were on to something special.

Like so many of life’s little joys, it’s something Prophet—who’s in full remission—appreciates now more than ever. “It’s a good day to walk on water / Good day to swallow your pride,” he sings in the album’s final moments. “Good day to call your mother / Oh, it’s a good day to be alive.”  Chuck will be touring the UK with members of his own band and ¿Qiensave?, playing his classics along with tracks from the new album.

Punk Rock Blues

Chuck Prophet - No Other Love

Norwich

Norwich Arts Centre

Chuck started touring the EU and UK way back in September 1984 when Green on Red plucked him out of Berkeley, CA and flew him over to Europe for his first ever run. The band’s first London date featured another new act, Jesus & the Mary Chain supporting them. Green on Red then put him in the van for an eight-year ride with festivals and over ten UK, EU tours, recording over six albums with them. Green on Red were seminal purveyors of American Roots Rock aka Alt-country and broke up in 1992 just before an entire movement followed in their wake. Since then Chuck has recorded fifteen stellar solo albums and toured and recorded with Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann, Cake, Alejandro Escovedo and Jonathan Richman. In addition to that, Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams, Solomon Burke and Heart have covered his songs. His songs have been put into movies and also now sells out shows across the US. But what Chuck is known most for are his amazing live shows which are second to none and have sold out gigs across the UK and EU featuring slots on festivals like Summertyne, Kilkenny, Glastonbury, Roskilde, etc.

Chuck Prophet

About Chuck Prophet

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