When a stage four lymphoma diagnosis forced him off the road and into the hospital, Chuck Prophet didn’t know 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 new album. Recorded with band of brothers ¿Qiensave?, the collection explores the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during his illness and subsequent recovery. The songs are intoxicatingly rhythmic, all but demanding you move your body, with arrangements that blur the lines between tradition and innovation. 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 to the jungles of South America.
Captured live in the studio, Wake The Dead resumes Prophet’s 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 pioneering neo-psych band Green on Red to working under his own name. Since then, Prophet—who’s now in full remission—has earned raves everywhere from Rolling Stone to NPR, landed songs in a slew of films and television shows, and seen his work covered by Bruce Springsteen, Solomon Burke, and Heart, among others.
Wed Oct 23 2024
8:00 PM (Doors 7:00 PM)
$25.00
Ages 21+
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Dante's Presents
CHUCK PROPHET & CUMBIA SHOES with FEDERALE
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Chuck Prophet
Alternative Country
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Federale
Music
Federale has always told stories through music, of course, but fans hadn't much opportunity to parse lyrics within the band's first two albums. La Rayar: A Tale of Revenge (2008) and Devil in a Boot (2009) spun blood-soaked yarns through music alone - concertedly-cinematic soundscapes of rumbling riffs, plaintive whistling, and soaring soprano vocals soundtracked the most captivating spaghetti westerns that never were. Hegna, already entrenched within the Brian Jonestown Massacre and soon to become longest-tenured bassist of Anton Newcombe's famously-troubled psych-rock revue, made clear from the start that Federale existed purely as an instrumental project. Still, certain projects defy even the strictest of boundaries. Three years later, The Blood Flowed Like Wine (2012) brought along guest appearances from frontmen KP (Spindrift) Thomas and Alex (Black Angels) Maas. After a string of notable shows -- The Fillmore, Crystal Ballroom, Henry Fonda Theater -- they earned a reputation for live performance, and Hegna took to the mic himself for much of 2016's All The Colours Of The Dark. By now, learning that No Justice contains only a pair of vocal-less tunes shouldn't seem any more surprising than news that its release has been scheduled for Mexico City - first stop along a summer filled with festival appearances up the west coast from Austin to Seattle. (The Portland, OR hometown faithful must wait til November 23rd for Portland's No Justice show at Mississippi Studios.) Embracing the enormous scope of orchestral cinematic production courtesy of members of the Oregon Symphony, Federale has honed a taut, gleaming precision from their signature sound. When Collin Hegna's honeyed baritone waltzes with the operatic wizardry of bandmate Maria Karlin, the finely-etched lyrical depths fortify Federale's cinematic sway. Spare yet sumptuous, distilling the lean, gritty essence of grindhouse anomie and wielding orchestral flourishes of widescreen delicacy, No Justice feels like the defining statement of a band fully-realized - a sultry, restless stormcloud arising from the darkness at the edge of town to draw forth the fated reckoning. With 'Trouble', the album's single, Hegna imagined a Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra song put together with a Serge Gainsbourg duet. I just started playing around with these two concepts, and this weirdly interesting mix came out - as if Lee Hazelwood was singing with Jane Birkin. The song fully switches from 70s cowboyish into full-on Gainsbourg. The femme fatale, Maria, even sings the lyrics in French - I went that far." "A lot of the songs are about things that could be perceived as unjust or unfair," explains Hegna. "It's not commentary so much as observing inequality as it happens to be and telling stories about that through the lens of frontier justice. There are always parts of life that are out of one's control. Look at the album cover. That's definitely a metaphor, but I wouldn't say it's about me so much as the world. Lord knows, enough folks are getting fucked way worse than me. I'm purely observing things as they have always happened. In nature, sometimes you're a hawk and sometimes you're a cute bunny that gets turned into hawkshit. It ain't fair, but that's life. Just because things feel fucked doesn't mean you can't make something pretty at the same time." A forthcoming video for 'Trouble', shot by veteran Pickathon chronicler Melissa Walther, captures the band performing in concert at Portland's Doug Fir. Soon after, they'll release a 'Fire On The Hill' clip by director Brett Fallentine featuring footage from his film of the same name - a recent Los Angeles Film Festival award-winning documentary about the Black cowboy community that's grown up around a century-old Compton horse stable. For a band that set out to score non-existent movies, it stands to reason that actual directors would come calling, and a steady stream of inquiries followed Hegna's bravura collaborations with tastemaker darling Ana Lily Amirpour on 2014 indie smash A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and 2016 Keanu Reeves/Jason Momoa cannibal romp The Bad Batch. (At least one track's already been completed for her 2020 release Kate Hudson/Zac Efron fantasy-adventure Blood Moon.)
$25.00 Ages 21+
When a stage four lymphoma diagnosis forced him off the road and into the hospital, Chuck Prophet didn’t know 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 new album. Recorded with band of brothers ¿Qiensave?, the collection explores the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during his illness and subsequent recovery. The songs are intoxicatingly rhythmic, all but demanding you move your body, with arrangements that blur the lines between tradition and innovation. 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 to the jungles of South America.
Captured live in the studio, Wake The Dead resumes Prophet’s 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 pioneering neo-psych band Green on Red to working under his own name. Since then, Prophet—who’s now in full remission—has earned raves everywhere from Rolling Stone to NPR, landed songs in a slew of films and television shows, and seen his work covered by Bruce Springsteen, Solomon Burke, and Heart, among others.
“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 new album. Recorded with band of brothers ¿Qiensave?, the collection explores the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during his illness and subsequent recovery. The songs are intoxicatingly rhythmic, all but demanding you move your body, with arrangements that blur the lines between tradition and innovation. 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 to the jungles of South America.
Captured live in the studio, Wake The Dead resumes Prophet’s 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 pioneering neo-psych band Green on Red to working under his own name. Since then, Prophet—who’s now in full remission—has earned raves everywhere from Rolling Stone to NPR, landed songs in a slew of films and television shows, and seen his work covered by Bruce Springsteen, Solomon Burke, and Heart, among others.
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