One of the key figures on the North Carolina jangle pop and new wave scenes, Peter Holsapple is perhaps best known as the singer, guitarist, and songwriter with the dB's. He's also worked with a wide range of other acts, been a sideman with R.E.M. and Hootie & the Blowfish, and was a member of the roots rock supergroup the Continental Drifters. Less quirky than many of his jangle pop peers, Holsapple's songs are reliably hooky and his voice and guitar work blend well with their tunefulness while adding just enough edge to undercut their sweetness. More often a collaborator than a solo artist, Holsapple has issued just two albums under his own name, 1997's low-key Out of My Way and 2018's charming Game Day. His semi-acoustic reunion with Chris Stamey on 1991's Mavericks is a high point in both of their catalogs.

Holsapple was born Greenwich, Connecticut on February 19, 1956, and moved with his family to Winston-Salem, North Carolina when he was six. He began playing guitar when he was eight, and in 1970 he enrolled at the Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he became friends with future Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for Mott the Hoople. In 1972, Holsapple was back in North Carolina, and he formed a band called Rittenhouse Square, which also featured longtime friend Chris Stamey and a local guitar hero named Mitch Easter; the group released a six-song EP which Holsapple has described as sounding like "a bunch of kids that listened to good records and were trying to make a good record, too." After Rittenhouse Square broke up, Holsapple and drummer Will Rigby, another friend from school, formed a proto-punk band called Little Diesel, who cut an album (recorded by Stamey) which was released locally on 8-track tape. (The album was reissued in 2006 by Telstar Records on more modern, accessible formats).

Holsapple had hoped that Little Diesel would continue when he began attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, but when he was the only member admitted to the school, he pursued other musical projects in his spare time, and cut an EP, Big Black Truck, with his group Peter Holsapple & the H-Bombs. The EP was released by Car Records, the same indie label that had released a record by the Sneakers, featuring Chris Stamey, Mitch Easter, and Will Rigby, and when Stamey and Rigby decided to move to New York to start a new group, Holsapple (who was in Memphis working with Big Star associate Richard Rosebrough) was invited to join them. The new group became the dB's and their smart, hooky, but quirky pop tunes made them a favorite with critics and a small but passionate fan base. However, bad luck seemed to follow the dB's' attempts to reach a larger audience; their first two albums, 1981's The dB's and 1982's Repercussion, were originally released only in the U.K., and their third album, 1984's Like This (recorded shortly after Stamey left the group), vanished shortly after its release when their label, Bearsville Records, lost its distribution agreement with Warner Bros, and Bearsville owner Albert Grossman unexpectedly died. Legal problems kept the band from recording for two years, and while 1987's The Sound of Music was well-received, the band split up in 1988.

Holsapple busied himself with a variety of projects after the dB's split. He became on occasional member of Eric "Roscoe" Ambel's group Roscoe's Gang and appeared on their debut album. He did session work with Syd Straw, Ben Vaughn, and the Indigo Girls. He helped produce Chris Stamey's 1991 solo album Fireworks as well as playing on it, and teamed up with Stamey later the same year for an excellent duo album, Mavericks. Holsapple was invited to join R.E.M. as a sideman during the tour in support of the album Green, and he played guitar, bass, and accordion on their album Out of Time, as well as appearing with the group on MTV Unplugged. In the early '90s, Holsapple joined the group the Continental Drifters, an alternative country act that also featured Vicki Peterson of the Bangles, Mark Walton of the Dream Syndicate, and Susan Cowsill (the latter of whom would become Holsapple's wife in 1992; they divorced in 2001). The Continental Drifters recorded four well-received albums between 1994 and 2003, and Holsapple relocated to the band's home base of New Orleans, Louisiana with Cowsill. During time off from the Continental Drifters, Holsapple was recruited to play additional guitar and keyboards on the road with Hootie & the Blowfish, and joined them in the studio for the albums Fairweather Johnson and Musical Chairs. Holsapple also released a low-key solo effort, Out of My Way, in 1997.

Through the late '90s and into the new millennium, Holsapple stayed busy as a sideman, recording with everyone from the Kennedys and NRBQ to the reunited Bangles. In 2005, not long after Holsapple moved back to North Carolina following Hurricane Katrina, the dB's reunited for some live shows, and the band began work on a reunion album. (They also cut a cover of "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" as a special internet-only benefit single.) Holsapple and Chris Stamey paired up for a second duo album, 2009's Here and Now, which featured a new dB's tune, and that same year the Continental Drifters re-formed to play some dates at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

The dB's delivered their reunion album, Falling Off the Sky, in 2012; it was the first in 30 years to feature the original lineup. Holsapple returned to his solo career in 2017, releasing a single -- "Don't Mention the War"/"Cinderella Style" -- on his Hawthorne Curve imprint. The next year he released the full-length Game Day, which featured him playing nearly every instrument. A few months after its June release, Omnivore released The Death of Rock, a compilation of unreleased 1978 sessions of Holsapple and Alex Chilton. Holsapple once again reunited with Chris Stamey for the 2021 release Our Back Pages, which comprised new interpretations of tunes from their back catalogs. ~ Mark Deming

From his tenures with the Sneakers and the dB's to his subsequent solo projects, singer/songwriter Chris Stamey is a towering figure in the Southern jangle pop renaissance, which was hardly the limit of his talents. Early in his career, Stamey fused the sensibilities of Big Star to new wave pop with the dB's on 1982's Repercussion, later blending angular melodies with playful melodicism on his 1987 solo effort It's Alright. Stamey detoured into introspective semi-acoustic pop with his former dB's bandmate Peter Holsapple on 1991's Mavericks, and he embraced the sounds of mid-century popular songwriting with the retro sounds of 2019's New Songs for the 20th Century. With 2023's The Great Escape, he explored new ground, adding country overtones to songs recalling his jangle pop salad days. Regardless of context, Stamey understands the importance of melody while also demonstrating the many ways in which it can be shaped, depending on its context.

Born December 6, 1954 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Stamey was raised in the Winston-Salem area, and alongside longtime friend and collaborator Peter Holsapple, he first surfaced in 1972 in the short-lived Rittenhouse Square, which issued their sole LP the following year. While attending the University of North Carolina in 1975, Stamey teamed up with drummer Will Rigby to form the cult favorite power pop combo Sneakers; the group were later joined by guitarist Mitch Easter, the future Let's Active frontman who would emerge as one of the era's premier producers. The band traveled to New York City in 1976 to appear at the famed Max's Kansas City but dissolved soon after, at which time Stamey returned to the Big Apple to set up his own label, Car Records.

In addition to issuing the posthumous Sneakers collection In the Red in 1978, Car also issued the magnificent "I Am the Cosmos," the lone solo single of ex-Big Star mastermind Chris Bell; concurrently, Stamey played live with Bell's one-time Big Star partner Alex Chilton, and in 1977 issued a solo single, "The Summer Sun." When Rigby and bassist Gene Holder relocated to New York, Stamey joined them as the dB's, releasing the 1978 single "If and When" before expanding into a four-piece with the addition of Holsapple. The dB's' quirky yet melodic approach anticipated the emergence of the Southern jangle pop explosion, influencing acts like R.E.M., though initially they couldn't even land an American record deal, and their first two albums (the much-acclaimed 1981 efforts Stands for Decibels and Repercussion) appeared only in Britain.

Stamey left the dB's in 1983, issuing the solo LP It's a Wonderful Life later that same year; after releasing 1984's Instant Excitement EP, he recorded and toured with the Golden Palominos, squeezing in the Christmas Time mini-album in 1986. A year later, Stamey signed with A&M to make his long-awaited major-label debut with the superb It's Alright; despite uniformly solid reviews, the album made little commercial impact, and he spent the next several years as a producer and guest musician, completing an album that A&M reportedly rejected. The LP finally appeared on Rhino in 1991 under the title Fireworks; that same year, he reunited with Holsapple for a semi-acoustic album, Mavericks.

For 1995's The Robust Beauty of Improper Models in Decision Making, Stamey made a radical shift away from his pop past, teaming with cornetist/guitarist Kirk Ross for an exercise in free improvisation. Stamey spent the remainder of the decade focusing on producing records for other artists at his Modern Recording studio in Chapel Hill, but he returned to his own recording career with 2004's Travels in the South. Less than a year later, Stamey had another new album ready for release, a collaboration with Yo La Tengo and Tyson Rogers credited to the Chris Stamey Experience and titled A Question of Temperature (2005).

A few years afterward, Stamey reunited with Peter Holsapple, releasing Here and Now in 2009 and supporting it with a tour. He then turned his attention to an ambitious live staging of Big Star's third album, 3rd (aka Sister Lovers), acting as the musical director for the star-studded concerts. The first of these debuted at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina in December of 2010 and over the next few years, Stamey brought Big Star's Third to London and to 2012's South by Southwest. (A 2016 Big Star's Third show in Glendale, California was recorded for the live release Thank You, Friends: Big Star's Third Live... And More.) That year also saw the reunion of the dB's, who played live and released the new album Falling Off the Sky that summer.

Stamey continued with his busy workload in early 2013 with the release of the dreamy solo album Lovesick Blues. Two years later, he issued Euphoria, a record that touched upon many of his pop obsessions. 2019 saw the release of an especially ambitious effort, New Songs for the 20th Century, with Stamey writing and arranging 26 tunes modeled on mid-century pre-rock sounds with a bevy of guest vocalists and musicians. 2020's A Brand New Shade of Blue was a similarly minded follow-up, with a greater emphasis on cool '50s vocal jazz and vocals from Brett Harris. Stamey and Holsapple reunited once again for the 2021 release Our Back Pages, in which they recorded new interpretations of tunes from their back catalogs.

That same year, Stamey helped co-ordinate the release of I Thought You Wanted to Know: 1978-1981, a collection of early demos and live recordings from the dB's. Those Pretty Wrongs, a modern jangle pop band featuring Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, approached Stamey to engineer and write string and horn arrangements for their third studio album, 2023's Holiday Camp. Stamey stepped away from his other commitments to return to his solo career with 2023's The Great Escape, a set that blended his pop sensibilities with a light country accent, courtesy of pedal steel guitarist Eric Heywood and John Teer and Dave Wilson from the celebrated bluegrass outfit Chatham County Line. The album also included guest appearances from his fellow dB's alumni Peter Holsapple and Will Rigby, and included a cover of a rare Alex Chilton song, "She Might Look My Way." ~ Jason Ankeny & Mark Deming