Musician, songwriter, composer, record producer and author Chris Stamey has been involved in every facet of the music industry for over forty-five years. A founder with Peter Holsapple of the indie rock/power pop band The dB’s, in his early career, Chris also played with the renowned Alex Chilton, lead singer of Big Star. He founded the independent New York record label Car Records and has recorded over twenty albums, including solo recordings, The dB’s recordings and numerous collaborations. His most recent record, THE GREAT ESCAPE, is a splendid blend of power pop and West Coast country rock. As part of his upcoming European tour, Chris is scheduled to play shows in Dublin and Waterford, his first trip to Ireland.
You moved from North Carolina to New York at a relatively young age. Was that primarily to further your education?
The answer to that is a little complicated. I had done everything required for a music degree at North Carolina University but did it out of order and needed to take certain things. I was also eager to go to New York and get a degree in philosophy in a semester. Although I studied music composition in North Carolina, my degree is in philosophy, and it is from New York University.
What was the music scene like in North Carolina before you headed to New York?
Much like Big Star and Ardent in Memphis, we were Anglophiles; many people were. Not so much The Beatles; The Move was the popular band. There was such a lot happening back then; I was a huge fan of Cream; also a band called the Hampton Grease Band that later became Colonel Bruce Hampton’s thing. In our town, we were encouraged to play original music; the churches had coffee houses, so we didn’t have to play cover songs, the biggest influence on all of us was our friends and the songs we were trying to write and how we were trying to gather and decode how that is done.
You embraced the CBGB scene in New York.
I had been going up to New York in the summers before that and had seen Television up there and had an idea of what was going on, which made me interested in going there. It was a pretty crazy time; New York had devolved to a certain point where it was a bit like the Wild West without the horses. There was a small arts scene centred around Soho and Tribeca, and there were a lot of musicians who were really only artists who took up a guitar, but they were doing interesting things. The same thing happened later in Athens, Georgia, around REM and the big Art School there, so people there also had that sensibility.
The sound of your recent album, THE GREAT ESCAPE, has a late 60s West Coast groove.
I remembered seeing The Byrds during their time with guitarist Clarence White and how great they were live; we all loved what they were doing. I hear some of that on THE GREAT ESCAPE.
Where did the title come from?
There is of course a Steve Mc Queen movie with the same name. The song and album title talks about a guy in desperate straits but trying to put a brave face on it. I don’t know if it’s the perfect title; there wasn’t a deep meaning to using it, it was the “placeholder” title that morphed into the real title, I guess.
Unlike the vast majority of current albums, it sounds out of its time. It's hook-filled and melodic, so easy on the ear yet with deep and often sad lyrics.
Generally, at any given time, there’s a lot of music that is just ok and then five per cent of stuff rises above that. I’m sure that’s true of my music too; I try to jump up to that higher standard, though. This album started with a group of maybe five or six songs, and I thought I should work with them and make a complete record. I write a lot of different types of songs, and I selected some choices from them. I did a tour as music director with Alejandro Escovedo; we had strings on the tour and Eric Haywood on pedal steel. I would be up all-night writing parts for the string quartet, and Eric would sit down and wiggle his fingers, and it would sound as good if not better, so I thought I’d like to get in to a studio with Eric. We did that and cut some of the tracks on the album, and that was really the spark for the record.
Had you worked with pedal steel before?
Yes. BJ Cole played on a Peter Blegvad record that I produced. Do you know BJ Coles Debussy record? He plays the orchestral writing of the impressionist French composer Debussy; it’s wonderful. There’s a guy here in NC named Allyn Love, who I’ve played with before; he is also great.
Eric Heywood’s playing on the track The Catherine’s Wheel borders on prog rock. Was that the direction you asked him to go?
I guess it is prog. That song is a bit of Crosby, Stills and Nash turning into Led Zepplin. I didn’t think of it as prog then, but I’ve heard that said since. I just asked Eric to play something epic. Eric, like many good musicians, may be known for one thing but can do all kinds of things.
Sweetheart of the Video is a particular favourite track from the album for me and one that regularly has me pushing the repeat button. It’s cinematic in its lyrical content. What is the backstory to it?
It’s written about a friend of mine who killed herself. I changed the facts slightly, but I’m just telling her story. I tried to make it feel right, and I had a very hard time singing it; I sang it once and broke down; it was so close to me. I’ve gotten to where it is just a song for me now, and I can sing it, but it was very hard for a while.
Is there connectivity between the two deeply melancholic songs, Dear Friend and (A Prisoner Of This) Hopeless Love
Dear Friend was written much earlier than Hopeless Love and is very simple; the lyrics are very sparse. I just wanted to have a song of reassurance for a friend who was going through a hard time. A version of that song was actually recorded by the dB’s in 2007, but we never finished it. Peter Holsapple and I were singing it together, and I thought it would fit nicely on the record. With Hopeless Love, I just love The Carter Family, Louvin Brothers, Everly Brothers, that kind of church harmony. I went to the piano and pretty much wrote that song in about fifteen minutes; I was thinking of pictures of the Carter Family’s homestead and what they might sing on the porch. I did not feel imprisoned by a hopeless love; I’m a songwriter, but that one song is really simple, Sometimes, when I played it before the record came out, people would come up to me and say, ‘I want to buy or stream that right now.’ That’s the reason it ended up on the record.
You also include your take on She Might Look My Way, a throwback to your time with Alex Chilton. It fits seamlessly on the album.
I had already done that with Terry Manning some years before; I had started that track and gave it to him to finish. When I was making this record, I kept going back to that song, and I liked what Terry had done to it and would use it as a sonic touchpoint for the record. In the end, I went back to it so often to refer to it that it ended up seeming to fit on the record for me. It was a reference point, and I had played that song a lot with Alex Chilton; we recorded it for Elektra Records as a demo, but they never put it out.
Given the number of musicians credited on the album, how much of the recording took place in the studio instead of remotely?
Like everything these days and particularly a record that was worked on during the pandemic, some of it was remote. Mostly people came to my studio, which is at the back of our house here.
We cut many of the tracks with three or four people playing together, however, and did all the strings at my place. Some of it was also done at Mitch Easter’s and at Compass Point, Nassau, for the song She Might Look My Way that Alex (Chilton) wrote.
Alongside the West Coast sound to the album, there is also a considerable amount of New York references. Back In New York, in particular, has a Lou Reed feel to it.
It’s weird, I had two-thirds of the record done, and I wanted to figure out what songs to include. I had a big list of songs to narrow down, which is normal. I don’t mind records that are all over the place, whether musical or geographical. I included the Back In New York song on the album, but I was thinking more of California than New York generally when making the record.
(The One and Only) Van Dyke Parks is laced with humour but also a genuine ‘star-struck’ ode to the legendary producer.
The funny thing is that I’ve gotten to know him a bit, he’s done some conducting for me. I go over to his house now when I’m in Los Angeles. I’m still star-struck; he’s still pretty chipper, sharp, and very funny. I wrote that song a long time ago, I just had never recorded it. I told him I was going to put it out and had another line in the song, and when he heard it, he corrected me to make it more accurate. I’m pretty sure he liked it. I played it in Los Angeles two weeks ago – he was originally going to come and play the gig with me but unfortunately had to cancel – but the audience in Los Angeles was very aware of him and sang along. It was fun; I like a lot of the lines in that song like ‘it was 8 am, I was still in my sleep attire.’ I was also thinking of a New York writer, back on the Lou Reed thing, I guess, named Jeffrey Lewis, a very good narrative songwriter, and his style affected me when I was writing the song.
In your book A Spy In The House Of Loud, you address the New Wave/ Punk explosion in the 70s that followed the overblown arena rock that dominated the industry then. Do you foresee a possible similar challenge reoccurring in today’s market?
The world keeps making left turns, I imagine there is still more change to come. The thing about being a musician is that you paint these imaginary worlds and people think that wisdom comes with that, and it really does not. I encourage people to do what I try to do, which is to keep learning more about music theory and how all types of songs are put together. There’s such a demand to promote yourself and be on social media today that takes away from the lonely hours in the bedroom. I want to point out The Lemon Twigs as an example of something that is exciting to me. I’m just finishing another record called ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, and they are very kindly singing these amazing harmonies on it. Thay are so old fashioned but the thing about them is that they are serious musicians who can really write and play; many people I know are seriously taken by them. Every record by them is an evolution. There is a lot of incentive in show business to, if you find you are doing something an audience likes, just repeat it and stay there, but the Lemon Twigs keep changing and expanding.
Change can be challenging, particularly if an artist or band are being pressurised by their record label.
When I was growing up, the model was more that you never stay in the same place, and you wanted to buy the band’s next record to see where their evolution was and, where they had gone, and if they take that further. That may not be the way to make a living, but it is a good way to go deeper into what drew you to the art in the first place. I always value anyone trying to take it further. With Carla Bley dying recently, I thought of her album, ESCALATOR OVER THE HILL. It made me also think about Jack Bruce. He did well in Cream and had a lot of incentive to just sit around the house and play revival shows. Instead, he made the record HARMONY ROW, which is in its musical and lyrical language, trying to take it far beyond anything he had previously done. A lot of my heroes were restless and constantly changing, I think a lot of people should get off their laptops and go deeper into their art.
Are you playing in The States with an entourage these days?
It’s all different, I often write the music, and it takes less rehearsal if people read music well. That concert in Los Angeles two weeks ago was French horn and trumpet, banjo and mandolin, a string section and flutes, acoustic bass and drums, and a backing singer with me; it was a big group.
Will you be playing solo on your upcoming dates in Europe?
I’m thinking of just doing it myself, I do like how personal that can be and being able to connect more directly with the audience. I don’t know if audiences in Ireland are going to know anything about me; I’ve never played there. I haven’t been to Europe in a long time, and I’d like to see a little bit of light of recognition from the audience if they hear something they know. Maybe a few unusual choices, but three-quarters of the set will be from the dB’s and my solo records from a long time ago, and then about a quarter will be things from the new record. I’ve run out of quarters but I’m also going to do some brand-new songs from the record that will come out next year. I also have three dates in London, then Glasgow, Stockholm, Malmo, Leiden and Antwerp, of course Dublin and Waterford. Before London, I’m in Paris for a week for a concert with Matthew Caws [Nada Surf] and this recording supergroup called The Salt Collective, I recommend that your readers check them out. After Ireland, I’m going to Spain for a week to play with Mike Mills, Jody Stephens, Pat Sansone and John Auer. We have an unnamed group that is playing the Big Star catalogue. Jody was in Big Star all along and John was in the later version of the band. Mike and Pat are wonderful musicians and everyone sings, including Jody, who is sounding wonderful these days; we really like being able to bring those great arrangements to life.
Interview by Declan Culliton