The dB’s Repercussion Blog Q & A
With Peter Holsapple
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| Peter Holsapple: ready for any old thing that might come along... |
Pop quiz for fans of The dB’s:
To which member of the band would you give
the Most Valuable Player award?
the Most Valuable Player award?
Without hesitation, my vote goes to Peter Holsapple.
There would be no dB’s, of course, without founder
Chris Stamey. In my book, he will forever have the title The Guy Who Launched the Best American Alt-Pop Band, Ever. More recently, Chris gets major props from me for his songwriting, singing, arranging and production work on the new and most excellent Falling Off the Sky.
When the continued existence of The dB’s came into
question, however, it was Peter who stepped up to the plate. Along with
founding member and drummer Will Rigby, Peter carried forward the spirit of the band for
years after Chris left in 1982 for a solo career. The other founding member of
the band, Gene Holder, said good-bye shortly after the recording of the group’s
final studio album, 1987’s The Sound of
Music. That left Will and Peter to soldier on with Jeff Beninato (who had
joined the band for TSOM) and an
assortment of musicians who toured with the group in the mid to late 1980s.
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| The last 'proper' studio album |
In the early phase of The dB’s musical life, Peter
shared songwriting and lead vocal duties with Chris. After the latter’s
departure, however, these two major responsibilities fell entirely on
Peter’s shoulders. So it was an impressive achievement for the Holsapple-led dB’s
to retain the same level of respect from music critics — not to mention credibility among
dB’s fans.
As you can surmise from this preamble, it was a tremendous honor and thrill for me to spend an hour chatting with Peter recently about the band’s reunion and, in particular, Falling Off the Sky — the recorded fruit of The dB’s sporadic 21st century labors.
As you can surmise from this preamble, it was a tremendous honor and thrill for me to spend an hour chatting with Peter recently about the band’s reunion and, in particular, Falling Off the Sky — the recorded fruit of The dB’s sporadic 21st century labors.
I’ve split my conversation with Peter into two parts. Part 1 is the Q & A that appears below. Part 2 (coming in a week) will be a longer, more in-depth, and more free form feature story. It will offer further details regarding Peter’s perspective on the new album as well as the joys and challenges of making music again — with the same three guys with whom he grew up so many years ago.
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| Peter Holsapple: sharing the load once again with Chris Stamey. The dB's, Hoboken, NJ, May 6, 2012 jvdalton photo via Flickr |
First,
congratulations on a great achievement: Falling Off the Sky is a beauty. It stands up to the best of your catalog, as a
group and as solo artists. Lots of us will be trying
to describe Falling Off the Sky, so
let me give you the same opportunity: how do you describe it?
PETER:
It sounds to me like a dB’s record that’s got all the elements
you’ve come to hope for with a dB’s song — good melody and good harmony,
there’s interesting guitar. The incredible rhythm section, who’re able to turn anything into something good. We wanted
it to sound effortless. It’s the old suspension of disbelief, I guess. They may
know it took a million years to make it, they may know it took a thousand vocal
takes, but they think it [sounds as
if it] took only one. That’s what you want, you want it to all sound like it’s
a natural, organic process. I’d like to think that we did succeed in that.
In between recording dates for Falling Off the Sky, the second Stamey-Holsapple duo album was recorded, and the two of you also worked on solo material. With so many songs available, how did you decide which ones were right for The dB's album?
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| "Santa Monica" from this album features Will & Gene |
I'm
intrigued by the running order. I hear a difference between "Side A"
& "Side B". The first six songs seem like a great collection of
singles. But Side B has this amazing flow, which I think is best appreciated as
a whole. Does this reflect your intent?
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| Little Feat's Sailin' Shoes |
I
assume that recording this album was quite a challenge: squeezing in studio
time between all your other commitments and musical projects. How
different do you think the album would be if you'd had the old scenario,
"We've got just 8 weeks to record & mix this"?
It will be different if you do it like that,
without a doubt. Somebody asked me the other day, “How do you know when an
album is finished?” And we were laughingly saying, “Well, ask Axl Rose.” The album
is finished when the checkbook closes, in a lot of cases. But the winnowing
process for us was, I guess, about trying to get as many songs done so we would
have enough to choose from. If we’d had 15 songs to choose from, it would have
been harder to decide what a 12-song album would be. We tried to get the most
intelligent collection of songs that we could put together. We were able to
ferret out the ones that made the most sense together.
"Write Back" is Will's first composition and first solo lead vocal on a dB's album. (I love the song, and hope his other solo work gets a wider audience because of it.) Did Will have to endure jokes from the other guys about Ringo or "Octopus's Garden"?!?
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| One of Peter's favorites |
GET WILL RIGBY SOLO MUSIC (2 albums, 1 EP, 1 single) HERE
Lyrically, a lot of these songs revolve around memories, dreams and coming to terms with the past. Some are tinged with regret, while others have a more hopeful tone. Is the thematic coherence something you aimed for?
Lyrically, a lot of these songs revolve around memories, dreams and coming to terms with the past. Some are tinged with regret, while others have a more hopeful tone. Is the thematic coherence something you aimed for?
I think, not to quote another song, it was just
happenstance that we did happen to find these lyrics [that share some common
themes]. It may be a product of our individual experiences, growing and what
our lives have been like. It certainly is a reflective record. In order to get back
together again, we had to do some reflecting because there was a reason why there
was no dB’s. In 1988, when the band finally called it quits, I think at that
point the feeling was, “It’s obviously not going to happen for The dB’s.” It’s so different now. You put some time in
there, Chris and I do some things [musical projects] together, we hang with
each other — we still love each other very much — we still care very much
about each others' parents. So the bond is there. I think this record is the
product of a certain amount of maturity. I think you have to have lived these lives to have
written these songs.
Will
and Gene sound so solid on this album, yet they can't have much time to
rehearse or play together live. How do you explain the musical telepathy they
seem to have?
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| Will Rigby, drums |
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| Gene Holder, bass |
What will become of the music that didn't make it onto the album?
There were a lot
of songs. We ended up recording about 30, … but I don’t know what’s going to
happen to those. There are a number of others, Chris’ and mine both. Hopefully,
they’ll see the light of day. Our whole thing was trying to make this into the
best possible presentation we could. We realized that 31 years is a very long
time between records with the same band. We tried to pull together the best
stuff that we could. We knew we wanted to make an album. We toyed with the idea of, “What about three EPs or four EPs?
Downloads, single downloads for each month for a year!” — all sorts of
Today’s New Marketing Ideas. But it just didn’t ring true for us. We’re album
guys; we’ve always made albums.
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| All good music collections need it |
Chris has said, “We should just have this in the can as another record.” But to my way of thinking, it is not necessarily a record’s worth of songs. It’s a number of songs, but I don’t know that they would hang together as well as Falling Off the Sky does. There’s a reason they didn’t make the final cut — which is not that they’re bad songs. It’s just because they didn’t necessarily seem to fit the emotional flow that this record has.
Some of us are salivating at the thought of getting to see The dB's live, especially playing the new songs. (I've already got my tickets for the album release show in Durham on June 9 and your Mountain Stage date later in the month.) Right now, though, it appears that you guys are planning sporadic live dates rather than playing a "tour" per se. Can you offer any more info?
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| Don't call him Pete! photo by Sean Davis via Flickr |
Describe the future you'd like to see
for The dB's.
I’d like to see this record bought in duplicate by
everybody. The reason being, going back to when you first heard Repercussion — the radio play we got
back in those days was not from anybody servicing stations. It was all really
nice people who had bought the record and fallen in love with it and had shifts
on their college station or local community station. They’d bring their own
copy in and play it! Or they’d put it on a mix tape. We lived and died by the
mix tape: that’s how we got known, it was by word of mouth. Without actually
asking everyone to seriously go out and buy two copies, if you want to give a
gift to somebody, it’s a good record to give as a gift. It’s beautiful music,
it’s worth hearing. And there’s a limit to how much any record company can do.
Tell the truth: you owe the success of this album to the Reptile Brain ActivatorTM, right?!?
You’re gonna have to talk to Chris about that because that’s totally his invention, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing!
End note: if you're curious as to what the Reptile Brain Activator is, or why it receives a thank you in the liner notes to Falling Off the Sky, have a look HERE.
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