Chuck Prophet appeared a little wary when he looked out at the seated, earlybird audience at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, essentially a hallway of the cavernous performing arts hall. There is some prestige to start a short tour at the hallowed national space—and though a few hundred were on hand to witness it live, it’s also amplified through an in-house video available worldwide for free streaming.
Prophet by now certainly knows how to shape a show; beginning some of his wistful rockers with amusing stories and always ready with an unexpected reference or lyric turn of phrase. He told of an odd fourth grade field trip near San Clemente in “Nixonland,” of a meeting at the power lines in “Womankind,” and a yearning for an alternate world where the New York Dolls were still around and he’d be “High as Johnny Thunders.”
Those three were from the latest album, the 2019 The Land That Time Forgot, whose songs fit nicely with his live standards, from an unseasonable “Summertime Thing” to “Doubter Out of Jesus (All Over You),” a tune he said he got to sing once on Late Night with David Letterman, when the reaction of his mother later was “It’s not my favorite song.”
The emphasis of his show were songs from his 21st century releases, the 2014 Night Surfer and Temple Beautiful, his 2012 stand out album dedicated to his hometown of San Francisco and its colorful people. There was nothing, though, from his first rate 2017 Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins, perhaps because it’s more built for a band.
