2022 was a crisis year for Californian roots veteran Chuck Prophet. Diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, the ex-Green On Red guitarist was kept waiting on his chances of survival. “After they discovered I had a mass in my intestines, I was in a kind of no-man’s land for about 14 days,” he explains. “That was real fear, like a wooden stake being driven into me. Eventually I was told there were options in terms of treatment, and things lifted from there. But it was music that got me out of my head.”
Stretching back three decades, Prophet’s highly eclectic solo work tends to involve surf, punk, rock‘n’roll, folk and country. Yet it was the hitherto unexpected delights of cumbia music that guided him during his illness and recovery from chemotherapy. In particular, a band of brothers from Salinas, a farming community a hundred miles south of his San Francisco home.
“I’d seen ¿Qiensave? at a club in the Mission District,” he explains. “They were such characters. I think they were getting a kick from the fact I was digging them. They invited me to Salinas, so I started going down there and jamming with them. Then I asked them to play with me at a festival in Big Sur. The whole place was dancing, it was a real thrill. Cumbia music transcends language. I became a complete evangelist.”
The upshot of this unlikely collaboration – a year since Prophet was finally given the all-clear from cancer – is the aptly-titled Wake The Dead. Recorded with ¿Qiensave? and Prophet’s regular backing band The Mission Express, the album teems with infectious grooves, cumbia rhythms and what Prophet calls “blast-off choruses”. In the studio, “there were eight guys all playing at the same time. It was pretty exciting, but also chaotic.”
Wake The Dead deals with hope, terror, unseen forces and the restorative properties of love. Inspired by the Mexican tradition of honouring the deceased with altars laden with offerings, the title track feels very much like a mission statement. “It’s part Day Of The Dead, part zombie movie, part resurrection, the way I felt after being done with my treatment,” says Prophet. “I just fell into that song. It’s been a journey.”
The album’s arrival roughly coincides with the 40th anniversary of Green On Red’s first ever show in London. “It was in a basement called Gossip’s, I think it was a goth club,” he recalls. “There were probably 25 people there, as well as these other guys lurking around. They turned out to be the Jesus And Mary Chain. They got thrown off stage after three songs, for pushing amps over to get feedback, but they were super-charming.”
Green On Red’s messy career was ultimately doomed to failure, but not before they hit artistic peaks with blasted country-rock gems like Gas Food Lodging and Here Come The Snakes. “There was never really a plan,” Prophet offers. “That led to a lot of hard feelings and things that eventually broke us up, [but] we had our moments, for sure.”
Plans are afoot for a Green On Red boxset next year, though by the time it lands, Prophet will be deep into his Wake The Dead tour. The logistics are proving a challenge he’s only too willing to take on: “We’ll have a six-piece band: half of ¿Qiensave?, a couple of my guys and me. It’s a real leap of faith. And there’s a little mischief involved. It’s like, ‘This is gonna be fun to lay on people!’”
Wake The Dead is released on October 25 by Yep Roc Records; Chuck Prophet’s UK tour kicks off at The Bullingdon, Oxford, on February 19 – see chuckprophet.com for the full list of dates
