{"id":27754,"date":"2024-07-04T05:30:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T09:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=27754"},"modified":"2024-06-28T14:09:22","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T18:09:22","slug":"the-dbs-tar-heelers-in-the-big-apple-part-1-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/04\/the-dbs-tar-heelers-in-the-big-apple-part-1-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The dB’s: Tar Heelers in the Big Apple (Part 1 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Two critically-acclaimed albums from the dawn of the alternative rock era have long been found in the United States only as imports. But new reissues of The dB\u2019s Stands for deciBels<\/i> and RePercussion<\/i> will make these important and influential albums available on vinyl for to 21st<\/sup> century audiences. Ahead of those releases (and live dates in support of them), founding members Peter Holsapple and Will Rigby spoke with me (this story appeared previously in Spin<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n

North Carolina likes to claim The dB\u2019s as its own. And while it\u2019s true that all four members of the influential indie-rock band (Holsapple, Rigby, Chris Stamey and Gene Holder) are originally from the Tar Heel State, The dB\u2019s have always considered themselves a \u201cNew York band.\u201d<\/p>\n

That perspective has much to do with how the group came together. Songwriter and guitarist Chris Stamey was born in Chapel Hill and grew up in Winston-Salem, but by his early twenties he had moved to New York City. There he connected with former Big Star members Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. He launched an independent record label, Car Records, and released Bell\u2019s single \u201cI Am the Cosmos.\u201d He also played live dates with Chilton.<\/p>\n

Before moving to NYC, Stamey had been a member of Sneakers, a band that also counted Rigby and Mitch Easter (later the leader of Let\u2019s Active and co-producer of R.E.M.\u2019s early releases) among its members. And even before that, in 1972 Stamey had been in Rittenhouse Square with Easter and Peter Holsapple. So when The dB\u2019s came into being, its members were already well-acquainted with each others\u2019 musical skills and artistry.<\/p>\n

But back to New York City. \u201cChris had moved up there at the end of \u201876,\u201d recalls drummer Rigby. \u201cIn 1977, I was not playing; I was just kind of sitting around. Chris asked me and Gene to come up in the Spring of \u201878.\u201d The idea was a modest one: they\u2019d play a few gigs together. The plan didn\u2019t extend beyond that.<\/p>\n

Once the North Carolina rhythm section arrived in New York, they quickly realized that merely playing \u201cjust a few gigs\u201d with their old friend wouldn\u2019t be enough to keep them occupied. And all three agreed that they needed a fourth member \u2013 on keyboards, the thinking went \u2013 to round out their sound.<\/p>\n

Enter Peter Holsapple. \u201cI had been playing with Mitch in a band called the H-Bombs in Chapel Hill,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAlex Chilton was ostensibly the producer of note on some recordings we did at Trod Nossel Studio in Connecticut.\u201d A serious Big Star fan, Holsapple decided that it might be fun to move to Chilton\u2019s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. \u201cAnd it was an excuse to get away from college,\u201d he admits with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Holsapple says that what he found was \u201cnot much happening.\u201d He did work variously with Chris Bell, and with Chilton and Sam Phillips Studio engineer Richard Roseborough. \u201cRichard took me under his wing, and we recorded some stuff,\u201d he says. Those tracks wouldn\u2019t see the light of day until many decades later when released in 2018 as The Death of Rock: Peter Holsapple vs. Alex Chilton<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But Holsapple wasn\u2019t happy in Memphis. \u201cIt was miserably hot,\u201d he says. He made regular trips to the library, leafing through weekly copies of the Village Voice<\/i>. \u201cI kept seeing ads for Chris Stamey and The dB\u2019s,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were playing these shows, and I was like, \u2018Boy, wouldn\u2019t it be interesting to go up to New York?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

At luck would have it, right around that time Holsapple received a telephone call from Will Rigby, who told him, \u201cChris is interested in having a keyboard player. Would you be interested in auditioning?\u201d Yeah, he would.<\/p>\n

\u201cI drank myself stupid the night before I left, \u201csays Holsapple, who today is many years sober. \u201cI got up to New York; Will met me at the airport.\u201d After a quick shower, he replaced his puke-stained shirt for a clean one and went with Rigby to the audition.<\/p>\n

On arrival, Holsapple found that Stamey had set up a vintage Ace Tone combo organ, a cousin to Vox and Farfisa keyboards that produced a distinctly retro sound. \u201cChris showed me some songs,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd it appeared that I had passed the audition.\u201d Pausing for effect, he adds, \u201cBut I never got it in writing; we\u2019re still waiting on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holsapple says that his entry into The dB\u2019s was a natural fit. \u201cThese were people who I knew from growing up in Winston-Salem for most of our lives.\u201d They all shared a sort of common language, musical and otherwise. \u201cIt was a lot easier than trying to join a band that was a bunch of New Yorkers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The new four-piece dB\u2019s played their first gig in late October \u201878 at NYC\u2019s Irving Plaza. Part of a four-act bill with The Fleshtones headlining, Holsapple says, \u201cunfortunately, we kind of sucked.\u201d An audience tape of the show reveals that he\u2019s overstating the case a bit; the band is audibly nervous, rushing through the tunes, but they don\u2019t quite suck. \u201cWe could play circles around a lot of bands in New York,\u201d Holsapple says, \u201cbut our vocals were\u2026 highly tentative.\u201d Nodding in agreement, Rigby adds, \u201cWe had a bit of a reputation for equipment problems, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be continued\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two critically-acclaimed albums from the dawn of the alternative rock era have long been found in the United States only as imports. But new reissues of The dB\u2019s Stands for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62,64,73],"tags":[5451],"class_list":["post-27754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-vinyl","tag-dbs","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27760,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27754\/revisions\/27760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}