Chuck Prophet will release a new album entitled 'The Land That Time Forgot'

'The Land That Time Forgot' is set to release on May 15th via Yep Roc Records

Since his neo-psychedelic 'Green On Red' days, Chuck Prophet has been turning out country, folk, blues, and Brill Building classicism. 'The Land That Time Forgot' is something different, a weather vane picking up signals from outer space, or maybe it’s the Heartland. 

Priced out of his beloved hometown, San Francisco, Prophet found himself re-energized in Upstate NY just a few miles from the Vermont border and made a record that is much a 21st century exorcism as it is Americana.

The songs inhabit a world where a FAST KID might be on the run from the truant officer or a handsy boss…or the Immigration Service. These are love songs that turn political on a dime (LOVE DOESN’T COME FROM THE BARREL OF A GUN), and melodic hallucinations about kicking back in the Oval Office after hours “talking to my baby, saying baby, let’s not fight.”

Where else besides a Chuck Prophet LP are songs going to come at you from both the Tenderloin and an English roundabout, with stopovers in NIXONLAND and a love-struck mirror on a Saturday night while a workingman tries his BEST SHIRT ON? With special appearances by the ghost of Johnny Thunders and Willie Wonka and John the Baptist and the train that brought Abraham Lincoln home one last time.

'The Land That Time Forgot' got off the ground in the Money Belt, only to find its legs in the Borscht Belt. Musically it has deep roots, from the Southern Delta to the discos of Munich. There’s a kind of folkish inevitability to it, lots of acoustic instruments, on top of each other and side by side. But as much as folk music is the soil all music grows from, it never hurts to have a boiler room. So, there’s always a rhythm section shuffling under your feet here.

Written mostly with longtime co-conspirator klipschutz, this LP steps out of Chuck Prophet’s comfort zone. After nailing three tracks in S.F. with Grammy-winning alchemist Matt Winegar, Prophet confesses, “We hit a wall. Schedules. Money. Towed vehicles: a thousand large to get one van out of lockup.”

So he went out on tour, a solo tour. Driving through the Catskills he dropped into Kenny Siegal’s Old Soul Studios, in a “5-bedroom Greek Revival listed on the National Registry,” Chuck and Kenny immediately began to argue. Over anything. Whether it was too hot or too cold. (According to WHOM?) “At the end of the day – “a very long day, three weeks of them – let’s just say Kenny’s the man. At Old Soul, musicians drop in, sometimes complete blind dates. We did everything live. The drummer gigs with Kevin Morby. The bass player, out of some jazz scene. Piano player, an honorary Bad Seed. A mish mash of personalities and styles. Turns out you can make a lot of noise with acoustic instruments, if there are enough of them.”

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