So It Goes

Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey: In Review

There was a sparse crowd scattered about Cat’s Cradle when we got our hands stamped on Saturday night, rolling in just in time to catch the second opening act.  “We’re American Aquarium and we’re from Raleigh,” singer/guitarist BJ Barham said before kicking into what proved to be an enjoyable set stacked with beer and broken hearts and girls who left for guys who didn’t play guitar.  On the downtempo numbers, his ragged voice brought to mind Ryan Adams—another Carolina Heartbreaker—but on the rockers he rasped and swaggered like a thrift-store Springsteen. 

The rest of the band, complete with stand-up bass and pedal steel guitar, followed Barham’s lead whether he had his boots in Whiskeytown or on E Street.  Between songs, Barham mentioned that they’d just finished a tour in the Southwest and he was glad to be back home and out of the heat.  “Yeah, cause it’s not hot in North Carolina,” some observational wit shouted.

“Look, our van doesn’t have air conditioning,” Barham said with an accent thicker than a bowl of white gravy, “So when you’re driving across Texas and New Mexico, you get real thankful for places where there’s moisture in the air.  It may be hot in the south, and you’re like ‘It’s hot, this sucks,’ but in the desert it’s a hundred and fifteen degrees and, you know, you might die in fifteen minutes”.

I was down with everything American Aquarium did until the final song, a half shouted/half sung Hold Steady-ish number that name-dropped both Jesus and Judas and totally lost me when he barked out the word “rebuke”. I spent the remainder of the verses debating his word choice, but I do the same thing every time Rick Springfield sings that line ‘I wanna tell her that I love her/But the point is probably moot”. 
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If there ever was a time
When we had better get it right
It had better be tonight
Right here and now

Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey opened with the verse above, from title track of their brand new album, Here and Now.  There wasn’t anyone in the crowd who doubted that they would ‘get it right’ since the duo has been rocking the suburbs—or, lately, asking the suburbs to sway along gently—since they shared the same high school cafeteria. 

They sang into the same microphone for this and several other tunes, stealing the Two-Part Harmony crown from the Everly Brothers in the process.  The evening was predictably heavy on cuts from the new album but they dropped a pair of my Mavericks favorites into the set, along with two tracks from Don and Phil Everly, “Let It Be Me” and “Lord of the Manor”, the latter from the duo’s late-sixties proggy-phase after Little Susie woke up and went to a Moody Blues Concert.

One of the highlights of both the album and the show was the note-perfect cover of Family’s “My Friend the Sun”, featuring Holsapple on a Cig-Fiddle, a cigarbox guitar.  As far as the other new tracks go, the slower songs are pleasant enough but, much like when they shuffle out of my iPod, I found myself searching for the Skip button.  Regardless, it was a more than enjoyable night and their voices have been part of my life for so long, seeing them onstage was like watching two of my favorite shirts tangle around each other in the dryer. 
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Before launching into “Broken Record” Holsapple said “I told Chris we might have to explain what a record was.”  Since most of the audience was old enough for osteoporosis medication that’s not likely, although I personally would like an explanation why a woman in Mom Jeans played a flute solo.

FluteWoman aside, their band sounded great with some gorgeous pedal steel guitar and appearances from Stamey’s and the drummer’s daughter on percussion, both of them already displaying a better sense of rhythm than the late Linda McCartney.  
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“I know some of you are here because of what we did with our previous band Rittenhouse Square,” Holsapple quipped, dropping a reference to his high school outfit with Stamey and Mitch Easter.  Someone shouted “SNEAKERS!”—another pre-dB’s Stamey and Easter project—and I immediately excused myself to make out with that person.

Speaking of the dB’s, they only mined their jangle pop past twice, playing “Nothing is Wrong” and a downtempo version of “Black and White” that smoothed out all of the song’s pop spikes and took the sting out of the repeated refrain “I just don’t enjoy you anymore”. 
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At one point, Chris Stamey talked about the joy of marriage and how it’s provided inspiration for his recent songwriting. “This one is dedicated to my wife,” he said before playing “To Be Loved”. Far be it from me to begrudge anyone’s happiness, but I liked it way better when he was broken-hearted and bitter.

Overly sentimental songs make me uncomfortable, especially when I know who it was written for.  I’m cool if I just have to imagine some faceless thing that inspired the words or—in the case of everything that falls out of Nick Lowe’s mouth—I just assume he’s singing to me. 

I have friends who can’t watch The Office because the awkwardness is too unsettling.  That’s how I feel about sincere love songs.  Overt displays of emotion always leave me embarrassed, like I’ve just overheard a conversation that wasn’t meant for me.    

I continued to consider that idea during “Early in the Morning”—the song Holsapple dedicated to the woman wearing his last name—and decided that maybe the problem is less about the words and more about me.  Since my own personal life is littered with more wreckage than the infield at a NASCAR race, maybe I just can’t appreciate an album about domestic bliss, about English muffins and marmalade and the same person’s head denting the pillow beside you until forever. 

Or maybe I’m just a bitch.
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“I think it’s gross that Holsapple is singing this to Stamey’s wife,” my friend L whispered during “To Be Loved” and I immediately spewed at least fifty cents worth of the $1 can of Diet Coke I’d been chugging.
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Over the course of the evening, I developed crushes on both of them, my affections continually oscillating based on who was singing lead vocals.  I have a Problem with musicians, even though you won’t see any if you snorkel past the wrecks of my past relationships.  Seriously.  You could probably prop a toothless hobo onstage, hand him a gee-tar and I’d be shouting my phone number before he sang the second chorus. 
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The encore was excellent in both song selection and execution, a shimmering version of Chris Bell’s “I Am the Cosmos”.  That song was the A-side of Bell’s only solo seven-incher after he left Big Star and was produced by Chris Stamey.  I actually wrote about this the other day, proving that I CAN SEE INTO THE FUTURE.  And my future involves infinite nights of sleeping alone. 

“I kind of want to wait for Chris Stamey to tell him how awesome that song was,” I told L immediately after the show.

“I kind of think that’s a bad idea,” she said, guiding me towards the door.  She was right.  And so were Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey.  They did get it right, here and now.