Chuck Prophet has more Rock cred than any one man should have a right to claim. His eight-year run in Green on Red in the ’80s resulted in some of the most influential sounds to emanate from Southern California’s Paisley Underground scene and his subsequent solo catalog has notched an impressive level of critical acclaim over the past 22 years. In that time, the names he’s worked with — as collaborator, producer, hired gun, pal — reads like a who’s who of contemporary musical accomplishment: Warren Zevon, Aimee Mann, Jim Dickinson, Lucinda Williams, Jonathan Richman, Kelly Willis, Jules Shear, Alejandro Escovedo and a good many more lesser but no less important lights.

Prophet’s recent work has been some of his most viscerally satisfying, beginning with 2007’s wide-ranging Soap and Water, his 2008 collaboration with Escovedo on his Real Animal album, and Prophet’s 2009 political Rock statement, ¡Let Freedom Ring! For his latest solo jaunt, Temple Beautiful, Prophet maintained a healthy power level while injecting a concept into the proceedings, namely making every song on Temple Beautiful about his longtime San Francisco home.

The album springs to life with “Play That Song Again,” a bouncy slice of ’70s Pop/Rock, followed by “Castro Halloween,” an insistent Pop anthem with the ring of the casual greatness of George Harrison’s best solo work and the bluster it would have had if he’d ever installed Tom Petty behind the glass to produce it. The title track, a tribute to the Punk club that occupied the space once held by Jim Jones’ People’s Temple before they decamped to their infamous digs in Guyana, is a blaring blast of Rock and Soul that pounds like The Ramones on a couple of bottles of cough syrup and swings like T. Rex with more garage and less glam, “Willie Mays is Up at Bat” sounds like Warren Zevon channeling Bob Dylan circa “Watching the River Flow,” and “I Felt Like Jesus” swaggers and nods with Surf Rock reverb and Roots Rock twang.

Five years ago, Chuck Prophet was trying to decide if he had anything left to say in a musical context, but Temple Beautiful finds him eleven albums deep in his solo career and sounding as energized and inspired as he was when he dropped his debut back in 1990; long may he do this, or any other damn thing his infinitely talented mind can conceive in a studio.

There are certain musicians that have such unique, stirring voices, sometimes I want to press my fingers to their necks and feel the vibrations. Mike Doughty has one of those voices. He has a natural reverberation that makes every syllable sound like it traveled up through a canyon in his throat. That’s why Soul Coughing was such a success and, undoubtedly, a big reason for the packed-in crowd at Mount Lookout club The Redmoor Sunday night.

Billed as a "concert/reading/Q&A tour," when Doughty wasn’t bringing the room to near silence during his songs, he was happy to keep the crowd laughing. He read portions of his memoir, The Book of Drugs, sharing stories about his bandmates, tour life and run-ins with a clown and some Mexicans in California. He answered “gnarly questions” about Soul Coughing (his former band), shamed a drunk guy and heckled hecklers.

Doughty rose to fame in the late ‘90s with Soul Coughing. By the 2000s, the band had broken up. After battles with his former band members, drugs and alcohol, Doughty set out on his own. The Book of Drugs tells of those battles, while his latest album, Yes and Also Yes, takes Doughty on a path to further distance himself from those former demons. He no longer performs Soul Coughing material, but Doughty's entertaining presentation didn't need those old songs. He performed with only his guitar and one-of-a-kind voice to a room full of perfectly content fans.

Following every one of the dozen or so songs he performed, Doughty expressed his gratitude with a “Thank you very much.” He accepted shouted comments graciously, but shied away from what appeared to be the beginning of a long-winded comment by assuring everyone that the show wasn’t about him. It was about the crowd and entertaining them.

Doughty had no hearts to win over with his humor, sincerity or flawless show -— this adoring crowd already belonged to him. But he put his heart into his answers and his music, anyway. Mike Doughty treated his fans like his friends, which is the kindest way to treat a human.

On behalf of everyone there: Thank you, very much, Mike Doughty.

It’s been eight and a half years, four albums and an almost entirely new set of members since Heartless Bastards began performing as a new band in Cincinnati's small clubs. This time around, the Bastards came back to their breeding ground as an Austin, Tex., band and played to a packed house at Madison Theater in Covington.

For all intents and purposes, Saturday’s Heartless gig was very much a “homecoming” gig. As such, there are certain things one expects (and usually gets when the Bastards come home) — lots of heart, extra banter with the audience and, most importantly, one hell of a show. Going in with those expectations was probably a terrible idea. The concert was, at its worst, disappointing and, at its best, just OK.

Anyone who noticed the night’s schedule started off disappointed when they realized Heartless Bastards wouldn’t be on until two hours after the listed showtime. Openers Hacienda were actually amazing, just as they were when they opened for City and Colour at Bogart's a few months back. But after Hacienda rocked out, the road crew took 20 minutes to set up the stage, followed by more than 10 minutes of absolutely nothing.  

Once the crowd was finally graced with the presence of the band, frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom spent another five minutes testing her vocal mic. Shouldn’t that have been done in sound check? Or, at the very least, during the 10 minutes of nothingness? Even drummer Dave Colvin sat leaning forward on his drum kit, staring at Wennerstrom with what appeared to be very little amusement.

When they finally kicked into gear, the show wasn’t bad. The Bastards sounded close enough to their albums to show they are a decent band. A good portion of the crowd was made up of dancing fans who seemed unfazed by the initial delay.  

The night was heavy on songs off of Arrow, the Bastards' lean, stirring new album just released Valentine's Day. Wennerstrom recently told Billboard, “I feel like this is the strongest record I’ve ever done.”  And she’s right.

The live experience, however, was lacking on Friday night. Seemingly devoid of love and respect for the audience, the show was hopefully just a rare off-night from a band that usually kills it in front of their old hometown's still-very-much-dedicated fans.

What a strange winter it’s been so far. As I formulate this intro, there is less than an inch of snow on the ground, which raises our total for this season to not quite 3 inches. That’s unbelievable. I grew up in Michigan. You know what we called 6 inches of snow? The first day of spring. Last February, we’d had so much snow at this point in the school year that the district had used all of its calamity days and they called off the Presidents’ Day holiday, which forced me and my daughter to cancel our annual long weekend north to visit family and friends. With this year’s mild winter, her four-day Presidents’ Weekend is intact, so we're headed to the Winter Wonderland as you read this. Michigan isn’t very wondery itself this winter; they’ve had more snow than us, but it disappeared within a day or two. Of course, there’s nothing like scheduling a mid-February trip to tempt the gods of precipitation. Back when I was doing the drive to Michigan on a monthly basis to see my then-young son, my grandmother used to say, “Brian, you bring the weather with you,” and it certainly seemed true. Once, when Josh was 7 or 8, I ran into 6 inches of snow in the late afternoon in Ann Arbor that was on its way to being over a foot of the white stuff by morning. They’d had a long snowless stretch back then, too, as I recall. You never know.

In any event, we’ll have a blast. In the meantime, there are these piles of CDs to keep me and you all busy and warm, so put another snow shovel on the fire and curl up with these current and late-but-great reviews.

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The men of Goat Rodeo Sessions played an entire world tour on Tuesday night. And not once did Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Stuart Duncan or Edgar Meyer let on that they were tired. That might have something to do with the fact that they never left Boston.

Any time a band puts out a new album, the follow-up step is to schedule a tour. With an album as well-received as Goat Rodeo Sessions, the supergroup owed it to their fans to let them hear and see it performed live. But what happens if the album is made by four people with four separate careers? Even a week-long tour might be hard to pull off.

Enter Fathom. Fathom earns money and saves arts lovers hard-earned cash by turning select movie theaters into performance venues. They present both one-time events, like the Goat Rodeo Sessions performance, and also series, like the entire Metropolitan Opera concert season.

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Sometimes I feel like that scene in Seinfeld where Newman talks himself into a state of bug-eyed crazy as he describes the endless stream of mail that the Post Office is forced to deal with every day. I feel his fictional pain as I look about the Bunker and realize the stacks keep stacking regardless of my efforts to review them. I’m also reminded of an offhand comment made by my glass-half-empty pal Sean Daley when we worked together at Wizard Records way back in the weighty ’80s. One afternoon, Sean started looking around the store with a vacant gaze that suggested either the onset of a stroke or the Percocet kicking in. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “It just occurred to me that my new favorite album could be in here somewhere and I’d never know it because I won’t hear it, and no one I know will buy it and turn me onto it.” That’s how deeply philosophical it got in the store when we were short on customers. Of course, my dilemma doesn’t quite drip with that level of O. Henry irony. I might hear something quite good long after its release, but I have this forum to cover it, regardless of when it was actually hot off the presses.

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The air seems sweeter here in the front of the website, the sun a little brighter and the deadlines a little more immediate, but as Uncle Ben once reminded Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. So here we are in relatively short order with a batch of new reviews and a few more older titles in my continuing quest to revisit the deserving releases from the not-so-waning months of 2011. We’re getting there, slowly but surely. Read them while they’re hot; there’s more where they came from.

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On any given evening there is a crowd somewhere being forced to sit anxiously through an awful opening act. Then there are nights where concert-goers become wrapped up in the opening act. They become so enthralled that they call out for one more song, not minding that they are delaying the band they paid good money to see and hear.

The Civil Wars' sold-out concert at Madison Theater in Covington on Jan. 14 was one of those rare performances. And The Staves were that kind of opening act.

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 I’m still getting used to my new digs here at The Daily Beat as everyone rushes about, delivering their stories with right-this-minute immediacy and what not. Of course, with my continuing effort to bring you up to date on the reviews from last summer and fall that were missed for a variety of reasons, my breaking news has all the timeliness of “Bin Laden is dead!” and “I’m so happy for Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries — it’s nice to see a celebrity couple in it for the long haul.”

Luckily, the early weeks of this new year, with a couple of well-stocked exceptions, are pretty light on titles, allowing me the time and space to revisit some deserving highlights from bygone months while checking out the latest and greatest from the new calendar. Wait, there’s something coming across the teletype in the Bunker — apparently, the war is over! The Falkland Islands are free at last!

Celebrate with new reviews, then some old reviews. Then a drink and possibly a nap.

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Well, we’ve taken down the free SPCA fluffy kitty/puppy day planner from the kitchen door and put up the free World Wildlife Fund animal kingdom mother/cub book of days and that can only mean one thing: We didn’t wait until late February to switch to the new year’s calendar, which is typically par for our course. And with the new year comes a change for I Shall Be Released; my weekly review column (or semi-weekly, depending on schedule and level of brainlock), normally found as a web-exclusive feature, has been moved to the spiffy Daily Beat music blog, where you will find it from this day forward. I’m not sure why I was upgraded to first class, but I’m sure everyone now expects me to be punctual and timely to line up with the whole “Daily” theme of the thing. Fly me, Mandy, keep the gin and tonics coming, and I’ll see what I can do to live up to my new seat designation in the better section.

As for today’s post, much like the tail end of last year, the newer stuff is up here, the older catch-up reviews are down there and it’s all good under the hood. January looks light enough to accommodate my outstanding 2011 reviewage while I sample what the new year is bringing. And based on the release sheets and the stuff showing up in my mailbox already, 2012 is shaping up to be another great year for music. And in case no one’s pointed it out yet, we’ve got exactly 100 years before we can make Rush jokes similar to the crop of George Orwell zingers that went around in 1984. Well, someone can make Rush jokes; those of us in the here and now will all be dust in the wind (let the Kansas jokes commence). Read on, literate music fans, and happy new year!

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