Chris Stamey

Anything Is Possible is the latest collection of original material (and one affectionate cover) from North Carolina songwriter / vocalist / guitarist / producer Chris Stamey, an indie rock icon with a long and illustrious history that’s encompassed co-founding seminal avant-pop band the dBs, playing with Alex Chilton in the 70s and more recently with Jody Stephens’s Big Star Quintet, and recording with the all-star smart-pop outfit the Salt Collective. The new album features special guests such as the Lemon Twigs, Pat Sansone (Wilco), Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson band), and Marshall Crenshaw among others. The album was produced by Stamey at Modern Recording in Chapel Hill, NC.  Anything Is Possible is being released by Label 51 Recordings on digital download and streaming platforms on July 11 and 12” LP vinyl, CD, August 22.

“This album is a love letter to the kind of harmonically rich yet often lyrically innocent pop music I heard, on the family turntable and especially on AM radio, growing up in the late 50s and mid-60s in the American South. I have since come to understand more about the nuts and bolts of those songs, but the magic of those first encounters remains,” explains Stamey.

Anything Is Possible’s music was first workshopped in L.A. with members of the Wild Honey Orchestra reading from written scores. The initial basic tracks were then recorded at Overdub Lane (Durham, NC) with Dan Davis (drums), Jason Foureman (acoustic bass), and Charles Cleaver (piano), with Chris singing, playing additional keyboards, guitars, and bass as well as  writing the orchestrations. The record was then shaped and completed over the course of a year at Modern Recording with contributions from the Lemon Twigs, Matt Douglas (Mountain Goats), long-time collaborator Mitch Easter, Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson Band), Marshall Crenshaw, Don Dixon, Brett Harris, Rachel Kiel, Matt McMichaels (Mayflies USA), Kelly Pratt (War On Drugs arranger), Pat Sansone, Robert Sledge (Ben Folds Five), and the Modrec Orchestra. Wes Lachot, NC musician/engineer and internationally lauded studio designer, came on board in the final stages with fresh ears and invaluable advice.

Among the album’s highlights is “I’d Be Lost Without You.” Chris describes the song’s development: “It started with me pounding out the chords on piano, to which Mitch Easter then added a great twangy, reverbed-out Fender Bass VI à la Carol Kaye, aside Rob Ladd’s distinctive ‘orchestral’ snare drum and drumkit flourishes. But when the Lemon Twigs came into the picture with all those harmonies, it morphed into something bigger . . . much bigger. Then Probyn Gregory (flugelhorn, trombone) knew just what icing this cake needed. Although this production evokes the summery sixties L.A. sound, it began differently: with my fascination for Jerome Kern’s ‘All the Things You Are,’ a song that winds through ever-shifting key centers but seems melodically inevitable all the while. Originally, as written on piano, it sounded like a song Chet Baker might have sung, sparse, nocturnal, and intimate. I learned a lot about the Beach Boys recording style from studio work with Alex Chilton, something else I have to thank him for.”

Another standout is the title track. “I began writing this record while listening regularly to the gentle, whimsical music of Harry Nilsson and Brian Wilson.” recalls Stamey, “It all changed when in 2023 I played some shows with the Twigs. Their electric energy reminded me how much fun it was to plug in a guitar and crank it up. I asked Mitch Easter to play drums like he’d play back in high school, when we listened to 60s Brit hitmakers the Move constantly. It was so much fun for me to play Roy Wood bass riffs once again against his Bev Bevan fills and flams. Once Pat Sansone, Michael and Brian D’Addario, and Wes sang the soaring harmonies, I knew we were into something good.”

Chris envisions “When My Ship Comes In” as “a lullaby in the tradition of songs popular in WWII, such as ‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’ a time when couples were separated by war, by distance, not knowing if their ‘ships’ would ever really return home.” 

There’s one non-original tune on Anything Is Possible, “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Chris reminisces, “This was a very minimal track in Brian Wilson’s original Pet Sounds version, but that ride cymbal mesmerized me in high school. Here, it’s arranged more as if it were a full-on Wrecking Crew adventure, with Jennifer Curtis playing a million string parts. Again it’s Wes and the Lemon Twigs in the choir, singing parts that were arranged and recorded for the original version, but then left on the cutting-room floor during its mixing. Darian Sahanaja, Wilson’s musical director, kindly let me see the concert scores for these original harmonies and for the original string parts as well, and Probyn advised on some crucial details.”

Chris Stamey began writing and playing music in grade school in Winston-Salem, NC, in the mid 1960s, in what is known now as the Combo Corner scene. In 1976, while studying music composition at UNC-Chapel Hill, he self-released Sneakers, one of the very first American “indie” records. The following year, he relocated to Manhattan to play and record with Alex Chilton in the burgeoning CBGB rock scene, then formed The dB’s with fellow Carolinians Will Rigby, Gene Holder, and Peter Holsapple, with whom he made several acclaimed records of original material, including Stands for deciBels (self-produced with Alan Betrock) and Repercussion (produced by Scott Litt). 

During the next decade and a half in New York, Stamey worked with a wide variety of musicians. He recorded well-received solo records for A&M and Warners and was a part of Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos project, alongside an international touring cast that included Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Jack Bruce (Cream), Carla Bley, and Bernie Worrell (Talking Heads, George Clinton). He continued recording and producing upon returning to NC in 1993. 

His recent releases include The Great Escape, Lovesick Blues and Euphoria, as well as Falling Off the Sky with The dB’s and A Brand-New Shade of Blue with the Fellow Travelers. As a producer and a featured singer/songwriter with the Paris-based Salt Collective project, he collaborated with Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Juliana Hatfield, Richard Lloyd (Television), Matthew Sweet, Peter Holsapple, and Susan Cowsill, among others. As a producer, arranger, and mixer, he has worked with over a hundred artists, including Ryan Adams, Alejandro Escovedo, Kronos Quartet, Flat Duo Jets, Skylar Gudasz, Branford Marsalis, Tift Merritt, Le Tigre, Those Pretty Wrongs, and Yo La Tengo. 

From 2010-2018, Stamey was orchestrator and musical director for an international series of concert performances of Big Star’s classic album Third, alongside Big Star’s Jody Stephens, Ray Davies, members of the Posies, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Wilco, and Yo La Tengo; Thank You, Friends, a concert film of these arrangements, was released by Concord in March 2017. He currently tours as a member of Jody Stephens’s Big Star Quintet, whose line-up includes Mike Mills (R.E.M), Pat Sansone (Wilco), and Jon Auer (Posies). His original radio musical about the early ’60s in Manhattan, Occasional Shivers, premiered nationwide on Christmas Day 2016. A “songwriting memoir,” A Spy in the House of Loud (Univ. of Texas Press), was published in 2018, followed in 2019 by his first printed collection, New Songs for the 20th Century, with a companion two-disc CD (Omnivore Recordings).