Chris Stamey’s new album Anything is Possible releases Friday, July 11. Musicians who contributed to this record include The Lemon Twigs, Matt Douglas of The Mountain Goats, Marshall Crenshaw, Don Dixon, Probyn Gregory and more. It features long-time friend and collaborator Mitch Easter – Chris sings, plays keyboards, guitar and bass and…he wrote the orchestrations.
 
It was great to talk with Chris about his early days in Chapel Hill and Winston-Salem, his early bands he formed with friends in school, his move to New York, working with Alex Chilton and Richard Lloyd, the formation of the dB’s and his career as a singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and engineer. Stay tuned for a talk with the great Chris Stamey.

Dave: Chris Stamey, thanks for taking some time to talk today.

Chris: Hey Dave. Thanks for the chance.

Dave: Well, for the listeners, Chris has a new album that’s going to release on July 11, and we’ll talk about that and here’s some of it. But before that.  I know a fair amount, or at least I think I do, about your early bands and friends you met when you were in school. I’d like to go even farther back. You were born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, right?

Or at least in that area.

Chris: Uh, correct. Yeah. And if you’re gonna go back further than that, I can’t

Dave: Okay. Okay. No, I thought it was Chapel Hill where you’re born. Well, what kind of music do you remember hearing in your early, early years? Like was it stuff you heard around the house or radio stations, and what did you like in those when you were really, really young?

Chris: I mean, those houses were, I, I was in Boston by the time I was two. And then in Winston-Salem, North Carolina again, when I was around four. So most of my listening was in Winston. And most of it was, uh, originally just music. My parents would play on the piano and the radio.

Uh. um, that gave really bad electric shock. So I associated, violent electrical brainwaves with music for a while. Um, most of it was stuff I’d hear, not really on media. I had a reel to reel tape recorder, a couple of different ones. So I started buying albums on reel to reel tape. ’cause a and um was making them that way. And a few other people, you could buy the Beatle records on reel to reel tape. Wow. And it was a cool, cool format.

Um, but I guess it was in the great American songbook. And, you know, the radio hits would be like like “Hernando’s Hideaway”, you know, “Iko Iko”. Uh, a lot of novelty records would go to the top or things that sounded really different.

Dave: Huh?

Chris: You know, but I mean, there, there were hits like “Downtown”, by Petula Clark was a big tune, you know? I, I tuned out the British invasion pretty much. And the thing that really influenced me, it got a little bit older, was the music being played by original bands in town because, In my town of Winston-Salem, the churches were worried about teenage decadence and wanted to control it. So they established coffee houses where, you know, there was no alcohol served, of course, and bands would play, but the church didn’t care if you were playing songs you wrote.

Dave: Oh,

Chris: there was not an expectation of playing the, uh, popular hits. So, you know, my peer group was really what I was listening to at that time.

Dave: Interesting. Yeah, when you mentioned the reel to reel, though, my, my dad had a reel to reel. Well, he had a, we had a great turntable too. He was always really into like, you know, Hi-Fi equipment, but, had, in fact, it’s sitting four feet away from me here. I still, I inherited that after he passed away. But, uh, yeah, I always, I never, I didn’t buy albums on it, but I would record, you know, I figured out how to record, like albums off the radio stations. I listened to stuff like that. So that’s kind of cool. 

Chris: I think, well, you know, we couldn’t record, there weren’t video recorders at that time, but, uh, I think that Mitch Easter and I wanted to, we were fans of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. television show. Oh yeah. And we wanted to be able to relive those shows so we would record them. I think we got into reel-to-reel recording in order to, uh, memorialize television.

Dave: Yeah, well, uh, Lalo Schifrin just passed away the other day and I was, you know, I have, I’ve got a pretty good chunk of his stuff in my, I’ve got some, uh, I playlists that are either his film scores or television scores or whatever. But yeah, I loved all that stuff. My brother and I really, really liked Man from U.N.C.L.E. when we were kids. Yeah, it was sad to see that he passed away just the other day. Oh, you mentioned Mitch Easter. Um, so in school you met like Mitch Easter and Peter Holsapple. I lose track of the chronology. Like were you guys in, you know, grade school junior high or when, when you first met each other?

Chris: Uh, I think I met, met Mitch. The, was it the summer before second grade or the summer of second grade, one or the other.

Dave: That was very young.

Chris: So in a long time. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, Peter, I didn’t get to know until, uh, I joined a, he had a blues band that I think was named Soup, and I, I played upright bass in that band. , And he was a fan of like Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac. And,

uh, you know, everybody loved Mike Bloomfield. 

Dave: That’s great. And then, um, again, the chronology though, at what point, I mean, was it later than that, that like Rittenhouse Square came to be or was that high school or?

Chris: Uh, that was high school.

Dave: And one thing I meant to ask when I was talking about your early years, uh, was guitar the first instrument you learned to play?

Chris: No, I’m not even sure I play it worth the damn, but I, I, I played bass, um, acoustic bass and electric bass and, the only reason I, I mean I played piano after my own in my ham-fisted way. ’Cause we had a piano, but I was really forced into playing guitar when I started writing and singing songs and, uh, ’cause it was just the practical thing to do. But I, I never really mastered it I don’t think I, I have a, a spotty knowledge of it. you know, there’s some things I know pretty well about it. But, I had good, you know, Mitch Easter and Peter Holsapple were quite a droid at guitar playing. I know you’re program is called Frets, so I’m hoping you can include bass in that,

Dave: absolutely.

Chris: I mean, I can, you know, I can express myself on guitar. Um, I have. I played cello as well, and my guitar technique is really more, a compressed cello technique.

You know, I use my, I lead with my little finger a lot.

Dave: Hmm. Nice. Well, you guys did a lot of covers, but yeah. You mentioned you were writing original songs back in those days. Uh, do you remember like some of those first songs or.

Chris: Uh, well, I mean, uh, you know, there’s a really good example of it is a song that Mitch wrote, but when we were, when we started recording in his basement, uh, it’s called “A Train Stops Here”.

we never released that recording, or maybe we did release this then, but we actually played it again for, uh, a concert that we did in, oh, was it 2018, 2017? If you go on YouTube and look for “The Train Stops Here”.

Dave: Hmm.

Chris: it’s the only song called that and there’s a really good live performance of it.

I edited the video and you’ll get a good idea of how crazy it

was. 

Dave: I’ll have to look that up.

Chris: There are also some live performances by that Rittenhouse Square band from this later time, um, on YouTube, a reunion show. , There’s a good cover of a song, a group called The Bubble Puppy had a hit single in Winston of a song called “Hot Smoke and Sassafras”, which was something that, Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies used to say. But, um, we do a good version of that.

Dave: Yeah. It’s funny, I was just talking recently, or I mentioned even on a recent episode that. I’m realizing as time goes on, I’ve talked to quite a few people who just happen to be from the kind of North Carolina, that whole area up there. And I know it just seems like a lot of you guys all kind of know each other.

A lot of the musicians seem to know each other. cause after, high school you attended, uh, UNC, University of North Carolina, but you also attended NYU right?

Chris: Well, uh, I think most all these people you mentioned migrated to, chapel Hill, uh, in, in the shadow of UNC and, uh, and including Don Dixon. And, uh, but after that, I, I moved up to New York and then they, they all followed me. I think.

Dave: Oh, well, what 

Chris: Not Don. 

Dave: Yeah,

Chris: Peter.

Dave: I just talked to Don and Marti a month or so ago. What prompted the move to New York? Was it to go to NYU for philosophy or, or was there any other particular reason you went to New York? I knew you 

Chris: I, I think I was sold a bale of goods as they say, I, I. Uh, saw Television play in ’75, I guess. And, thought this is great. And I started to hear about a New York scene and I thought, wow, well, if this is what it’s like, that’s where I wanna be.

When I got up there, there was really, Television was the only thing, like Television. Um, there were interesting things, you know, Talking Heads were doing something interesting. I don’t know. ESG, DNA, um, Lydia Lunch. I mean, a lot of people were interesting, but nobody was. speaking to me like television did, but then once I was up there, it all came out great. Anyway.

Dave: Right, right. Yeah.

Chris: Alex, you know, played with Alex Chilton. I, I met a lot of great people. Anton Fier, so I’m not complaining. But the reason I moved is that I thought that, uh, the scene was a little different than it was.

Dave: Right. Because you mentioned, you know, playing bass, well, you played bass with Alex Chilton and then, uh, and speaking of television, you guys recorded with Richard Lloyd? yeah. I mean, I, it seems like just such a great scene in those days was going on up there.

Chris: Well, I mean, uh, sometimes, you know, great poverty makes for good music. I don’t know. It was, it was a very tiny scene. It might seem like a big thing, you know, with through the wrong end of the telescope. But, um, it. Seemed to me it, there were about 150 people involved in it, which is small if you consider how many people are in Manhattan.

Dave: Oh yeah.

Chris: Yeah. And it was all just centered around a few blocks really. I mean, it expanded down into soho and Tribeca with uh, a club called a Mudd Club. But in those first years it was very compact and it was a pedestrian scene. You know, nobody had cars, everybody walked. So you’d actually run into each other.

Dave: Well I had Richard on the show too a couple years ago. 

Chris: Oh, great.  

Dave: He was, very interesting. yeah, I was a huge, huge fan. And oh, and, and while in New York you started a record label.

Chris: Kind of, I mean, now it’s what you’d call an independent record label. At the time it was, that was not as much of a concept. Um, but yeah, I had a label called Car. It was originally called Carnivorous, and then after working in a restaurant. Making meat patties. I went vegetarian and changed it to car records,

Dave: Oh, so that’s short for, okay. I, I knew about the car, but I didn’t put the, put it two and two together, that it had anything to do with Carnivore. That’s pretty funny.

Chris: Yeah. At Carnivorous, I think it was, it was a Lester Bangs influence. He was a character who wrote for Creem Magazine Detroit and, and oddly enough, I ended up, you know, trying to write songs with him and audition for his band in New York later when he moved there. But he was a bit of a, I don’t know. It made me think of John Belushi at times. He was a, a large, he filled up a room and, uh, was kind of comical.

Dave: Yeah, 

Chris: Great guy. 

Dave: I gotta ask, what was your, uh, opinion of, uh, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of him, which I, I thought it was pretty good actually, in, uh, Almost Famous. 

Chris: Um. I don’t really even remember it. I think I watched that movie, but I’m not sure I was paying attention.

Dave: Well, I liked just about anything he did, but I thought he did a pretty good job with that.

Chris: Lester was a funny guy. I mean, he was humorous. He was, he was a delight. He was great.

Dave: I’ll bet.

Chris: But not, not a first tier, uh, musician.

Dave: Well this part, you know, now going into, you know, you’re up in New York, Richard talked a little bit about this or I asked him about it and I’m still not a hundred percent clear ’cause an early incarnation or whatever of the dB’s wasn’t there was a recording, wasn’t there a recording released under the name dB’s that involved, you know, you and uh, Richard Lloyd and.

Chris: Oh, uh, well, I, I, Richard had, um, had written a song in his hospital bed. Um, he had a guitar and a little cassette recorder, and I thought it was really cool and he wanted me to put out a single of, and I was honored. And we went in and he and I played all the instruments. Uh, he played drums on it and he cut a vocal and then Elektra. My friend Karen Berg at Elektra said to me, you know, you can’t do this. Chris, uh, Richard is signed to Elektra Records. Oh, and I, you know, so I, I’d spent, you know, an ungodly amount of money on this, meaning $350 or something. But that was a lot of money. And so I said, okay, well Richard, I’m gonna sing it. I took his vocal off, cut his vocal off, and I, I sang it and I actually replaced his drums with a guy named, uh, David Bowler, who was a good drummer who played in a band called The Marvels. So then it was, I had to, you know, like I said, I’d already sunk a lot of my, uh, I. heritage, you know, maybe $400 into it. And so I pressed it up and that became my first solo record. No, it wasn’t my first, it was my, it was under the name Chris Stamey and the dB’s.

Dave: Chris Stamey and the dB’s. That’s it.

Chris: It was just a name I made up for that record that nobody from the band was in it, but we needed a B side. So we did do a, Gene Holder and Will Rigby and I recorded. “If and When”, that I actually think is pretty good, as a B side. So I hope it makes sense. Um, so the, A side was not actually the dB’s, but it was credited to the dB’s. Right.

Dave: Now I’m remembering that it was kind of the, story of that. Well then, you know,

Chris: But Richard was great. I mean, all those guys are great. Yeah.

Dave: he is very fascinating. His book is fascinating, and he’s a fascinating guy. 

Chris: Hi, this is Chris Stamey. You’re listening to Dave Fey on Frets.

Dave: Well, you, the, the first two dB’s albums Stands for Decibels and Repercussion. The, you know, the band at that point was you, Peter Holsapple, Will, Rigby, and Gene Holder. but then after that you did move on to a solo career. 

Chris: Actually you could say I resumed one. 

Dave: Well, I guess that makes more sense and now that you’ve told…

Chris: Yeah. I think dB’s kind of an interruption in that whole

Dave: That’s right, that’s right. That, that makes more sense. And then at some point along the way, I know, you know, eventually you came back for the, the one dB’s album, but, Mavericks with you and Peter is such a great album and I love that album.

Chris: We love it too.

Dave: And I’m a huge fan of The Byrds and especially Gene Clark. I was always Gene Clark songs I just always thought were great and I really love your cover of “Here Without You”. So yeah, that’s a, that’s a favorite album. Another band I’ve been a fan of for years is Yo La Tengo. And you did some work with them also, right?

Chris: Yeah, I, I produced two or three sides with them, um, very early on. And, but, and then after that, uh, other people took up the mantle, including my friend Gene Holder. Um, and I, I still, play with them off and on and enjoy them very much and, and, uh, in fact, I’m playing in New York with uh, Dave Schram, who is another fellow traveler.

Dave: Nice. Well, I think we should talk about the new album. Anything is Possible.

Chris: I’m not arguing. Okay.

Dave: Uh, well, who, I think I know some of the personnel, but who, okay. Who’s on it? How did it come to be? Who produced?

Chris: Um, I, you know, I, I’ve been mostly producing my own records for a while. Uh. That’s just the way it ends up, the way the cookie crumbles really. Um, but on this one I did have help. Uh, at the end my friend Wesley Show came in, got involved and really helped, uh, put it all together and he, I was very grateful for that. And most of it, well, a, a lot of it, uh, we, we recorded more songs than were made it on the record. Um, but the bulk of it was done after a couple of months of wood shedding in one day, with, a rhythm section that was Charles Cleaver on piano. Uh, Jason Foreman on acoustic bass and Dan Davis on drums. there were other tracks which I added along the way. Um, you know, the title Track “Anything Is Possible” has Mitch Easter on drums, and he plays electric bass on the, the first song on the record, which is, uh, uh, “I’d Be Lost Without You”. And, um, but I had this more downbeat. A little bit more of a crooner record going and then wrote a few more tracks, uh, after playing some shows with The Lemon Twigs and, uh, that were in inspired by their kind of electric energy. And, I, they very kindly added harmonies to this record. and I also corralled in, some help from some of the Brian Wilson band, uh, especially. Probyn Gregory, who was a multi-instrumentalist, and, you know, multi-instrumentalist can mean you play both acoustic and electric guitar. It’s kind of collapsed, but, you know, he plays banjo, mandolin, percussion, but also, french horn and trombone and trumpet and I don’t even know what all he plays, but, He, he’s, he was like the magic ingredient in the Pet Sounds tours.

Dave: Well…

Chris: He did great stuff for my record. But I mean, there are a lot of, a lot of players on it. I, you know, that’s one thing about taking your time to make a record. People are passing through or you’re talking to ’em and they do something maybe remotely.

Dave: Right. I know there was a lot of that back, uh, however many years ago that’s been now the pandemic or the COVID years when people were sort of forced to work remotely. But, uh, some, a lot of good

Chris: It been going on for a while. You know, 

Dave: Yeah. A lot of good stuff came out of that though. A lot of good music. Well the underground garage cruise is happening early next year, or well, April maybe. And, um, you and Peter are gonna be part of that.

Chris: Don’t rub it in. No. I mean, yes, somehow we are doing this. I agree. You know, uh, yeah. Um, it, it’s one of those things that you say yes to when it seems so far in the future, and then all of a sudden it’s, I think it’ll be a blast. I’m kidding. Um, you know, I’m also doing shows with the Big Star Quintet for that, that trip. And, uh, Mike Mills, uh, was on it this year with The Baseball Project and he came back and said, hey guys, I know you’re not gonna believe me, but this is really fun. It was just totally a blast. And so we were swept away on the, the surf of Mike’s enthusiasm.

Dave: Great. well I’m, you mentioned earlier about, uh, the Frets being the name of the show. I absolutely welcome, I’ve had a couple bass players and now I’ve had you as a bass player, uh, need to work on Mike Mills. You know, I’ve seen The Baseball Project a few times and, um, at house concerts and stuff, and such a great band.

Chris: I mean, he’s a good conversationalist. You should try, you know, maybe contact the R.E.M. headquarters and ask him, you know, he’ll probably do it.

Dave: See if we can make that happen. well I did mention the Underground Garage cruise for a couple reasons. I’m a big fan of a lot of the shows on that, on Underground Garage, but, um, I might be, again, nothing certain with this either, but I, uh, I was just, I was down in New Orleans as part of a two week thing that just wrapped up this week. Uh, but while I was down there for a few days  I visited my friend Joe Schwab, who owns, you know, the Euclid Records here in St. Louis and the one in New Orleans. And I think he and I and uh, Rick Wood are maybe thinking about going to this, uh, you know, the April Garage Cruise. So we’ll see. We’ll see if we can see if we can make that happen. I’d be very excited about it. There’s a, there are a list of people that are playing. Sounds pretty impressive. 

Chris: Cool.

Dave: I also have another thing that’s somewhere here, like in a stack of 45s. I have the uh, 45 that was put out on Euclid Records label of you and Peter when you did the in-store at Euclid Records in St. Louis. My gosh, I’m trying to remember if it was many years ago and I can’t remember how long ago that was. Anyway, somewhere in my stack of vinyl here, I’ve got that. Well, what’s next for Chris Stamey? Any other projects coming up?

Chris: Well, I’ve been involved in this, uh, kind of crazy super group. If you can hear that word without laughing, but it really kind of is. Um, well see you laughed. I I would’ve too. Um, I mean, I was, I played with a band called The Golden Palominos

years ago that was a curated band, Anton Fier. And this is a similar project in that is a guitarist named Stéphane Schück in Paris, who, uh, is a guitarist who’d work on Frets. And he, uh, writes music that he then, suggests to singers and, uh, lyricists that they complete ’cause his, songs don’t have lyrics or necessarily melodies to them, but his music is very interesting, so, uh, there’s been this Salt Collective record that came out last year called Life that I produced. And, I’ve done the new one and it, it’s really a good record and it, and when I tell you who’s on it, it almost seems like a distraction from how genuinely good the record is. But, um, it’s Andy Partridge co-wrote some things with me uh, Matthew Caws from Nada Surf is on it again. Uh, Aimee Mann, uh, Jason Falkner, who plays with Beck and with Jellyfish and great talent. Um, uh, Mitch Easter. Lynn Blakey, well, Mike Mills is on this one. A guy named Django Haskins, who’s a super talent. I mean, I don’t know, it seems like there are about 40 different people who have chimed in on it and uh, I know I’m forgetting some of them, but it’s quite a coherent record. Um, at the end of the day because it has Stefan Shooks hand in all the songwriting. There’s actually an EP already out that’s kind of like the, uh, not outtakes, but.

other tracks that we had too many tracks to put on the record. So we put out a pre-release EP called The Salt Collective, and it includes a song, from the archives that Stefan recorded with, uh, Steven, uh, with Scott Miller from Game Theory. Um, and that’s a really cool track too. It’s got, one of the first songs in a long time from Mitch Easter on it. And, and he also has another track on the full album. It’s coming out in October. So that, that’s been a big project. Um, and I continue to just do studio stuff. Uh, I’m really excited about this record that’s not out yet by a group called Bass Battery, battery being I think the French word for drums. But anyway, they’re, it’s only a, it’s a basis who sings and a drummer who sings harmonies and they’re really great and it’s kind of. You know, it’s like, you know, like you, you see a three-legged dog and the first thing is you marvel a hat, how well it walks. And then when the dog starts doing ballet, it’s like incredible. I mean, that’s kind of what I feel about Bass Battery, that they seem complete, uh, as just the two of them. And you don’t even think about it. But, and some, some of it was recorded live in the studio with, it’s the two of them. And. so I’m really big on that one. Uh, I don’t know. Uh, a woman named Ellie Kenny, uh, has a great song that I’m fixing to finish up and, um, it goes on.

Dave: You stay busy. That’s good. Well, Chris Stamey, I really appreciate you taking the time today to talk and, uh, really looking forward to, uh, the release of the new album and, and all the other projects you’ve got coming up.

Chris: Thanks so much for this, Dave. Uh, it’s been a blast. Talk to you later. Bye. 

Dave: Syd Straw’s, at some point I’ll have to, hers was priceless. 

Chris: Yeah, I, I think at one point Syd was up for being the host of one of the late night Conan O’Brien kind of shows. And, and I, the world would be a better, better place if she had gotten that.

Dave: I’d watch that, um, she’s wonderful.