Local music legend Chris Stamey stopped by Live & Local last week, ahead of the July 11 release of his new album “Anything Is Possible.”
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“It (only) became clear to me after the fact what I was doing,” Stamey says of the new album. “For me, writing music is kind of a dream state, and I’m not even that sure, when I come out of it, what happened…John Lennon, when he made that ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ covers record, he said ‘I’ve never gotten out of my childhood.’ And these are mostly songs that had connections to my childhood.”
“Anything Is Possible” does feature one cover -Stamey’s rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” – but otherwise, contra Lennon, Stamey’s ‘childhood’ album is all original, though still inspired by the sounds of the 1950s and 60s.
“I’ve been writing on piano the last few years,” he says of the new material. “I’d been writing a lot – and I finally realized that the pile on the piano was getting pretty high. And I picked some of my favorites, (ones that) I thought kind of talked to each other, and we went in to record them.”
That ‘we’ is a veritable who’s-who of music stars. Chris Stamey is perhaps best known as a founding member of the dB’s, but he’s built up a varied, acclaimed, and highly influential CV in the last four-plus decades – and he called on a long list of friends and past collaborators to join him for this one.
“I have friends on the UNC music faculty who are great players,” Stamey says, “and we would meet in the underbelly of the music building, (the) rehearsal rooms, and we’d run through the songs over the course of several months.”
Once that was done, Stamey workshopped the songs further with the LA-based Wild Honey Orchestra, before returning to Durham to record the bulk of the album in a single seven-hour marathon. Other guest stars include Marshall Crenshaw, Rachel Kiel, fellow North Carolina music stalwarts Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, Matt Douglas of the Mountain Goats, Pat Sansone of Wilco, Robert Sledge of Ben Folds Five – and Probyn Gregory of the Brian Wilson Band, who helped add extra authenticity to Stamey’s Beach Boys cover.
“I got the scores from the original recording from a friend of mine in California – and we included a beautiful background vocal part, that Brian recorded meticulously and then cut from the released version,” Stamey says of “Don’t Talk,” which was released as a single just two days after Brian Wilson’s death. “I love that song, I always have, and I’m proud of (this) version.”
An even bigger contribution came in from the Lemon Twigs, a Long Island-based band who shared the stage with Stamey at a pre-release show last week at Cat’s Cradle.
“I remember the day they sent (their contribution) to me…I opened it up and it was (like) the heavens opened up,” Stamey remembers. “What they did to my record was ethereal and inspiring, and it really led me to put more energy into the record. I think it was a little more downbeat until they got involved.”
That’s hardly the case now: as befits its title, “Anything Is Possible” is driven by an upbeat sound and hopeful, optimistic lyrics – not just a welcome antidote to the heaviness of the daily news, but also a vehicle to overcoming it.
“I felt, as we all feel, that these are difficult and stressful times,” Stamey says, “and I wanted to focus on the optimism. I think if we lose hope, we’re lost.”
In the same counterintuitive vein, while “Anything Is Possible” is partly a throwback to the past and a love letter to older music, the album also represents Stamey branching out and reaching for new heights and innovations, even after a career spanning half a century.
“I’ve continued to value watching how other artists evolve, like a restlessness,” he says. “You saw that with Picasso, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Wilco – there are lots of songwriters out there who continue not to rest on their laurels. So I’ve tried to do that…
“A lot of these songs now, the chords have four notes and five notes rather than three,” he adds with a laugh. “And that to me is an exciting evolution.”
Chris Stamey stopped by Live & Local to discuss the new album and play three tracks: “Anything Is Possible,” “I’d Be Lost Without You,” and “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder).” Listen:
‘Anything Is Possible’: Live and Local with Chris Stamey! Chapelboro.com.
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