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* I'm quite certain Hank didn't do it THIS way....

Back in our May-June issue earlier this year, we ran a news photo-caption item on Chuck Prophet which mentioned in passing that "he acknowledges getting sidetracked in the studio recently by a brainstorm to re-interpret Waylon Jennings’ classic 1975 album Dreaming My Dreams in its entirety." As it turns out, "getting sidetracked in the studio" hardly even makes a dent in the full extent of the story, if what's posted here is to be trusted:

http://dreamingwaylonsdreams.xbuild.com/

I suppose I've no real reason to doubt the account of the session as it's presented on that web page, other than it just all seems a bit too surreal to be real. But then, Chuck's artistry and personality is kinda that way too sometimes, so maybe it fits.

Whether or not this is the first album resulting from an accidental and involuntary lockdown is inconclusive -- but, most importantly, if you go to that website, you can not only read the whole sordid tale, you can also hear the recording itself, which is being streamed there for free (at least for the time being). Apparently they're also selling a thousand discs, but they're adamant about limiting the quantity to no more than that, so it would seem Prophet and his fellow Waylon players are mostly content to have this be primarily an internet-listening experience.

I'm not gonna insult Chuck by saying that this recording of someone else's songs is the best thing he's ever done ... but, well, there is something relentlessly, undeniably cool about it. I also have a first-hand awareness of what Prophet can bring to the table as an interpreter of great works, having enlisted him to do a song for a Mickey Newbury tribute I co-produced many years back. (He ended up contributing to another of the album's tracks as well.)

If I were Chuck, though, I'd be slightly paranoid about just how much this story, and the record that resulted from it, gets around. As good as Dreaming Waylon's Dreams turned out, he just might find himself in this position semi-frequently in the near future: Anywhere there are instruments and recording gear on the premises, he may suddenly notice he's been inadvertently "locked in" for an indefinite period with a bunch of supposedly innocent and clueless musical suspects, one of whom just happens to have a Fisher Price Plug-N-Play and a dog-eared vinyl copy of, say, Jimmy Webb's And So: On in his guitar case. Be prepared to have to jump out of a few plate-glass windows, Chuck.

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on December 4, 2007 6:30 PM | Permalink