dBunking History

dBunking History

FEATURES

Harold DeMuir

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“Our past is well-documented,’’ drawls drummer Will Rigby. “We’ve had so many stories written about us from the tough breaks angle, and we’re not interested in having a bunch more. There’s a lot more to us than that.’’

“We don’t want sympathy, we just want to move on,” adds frontman/songwriter Peter Holsapple. “As far as we’re concerned now, our history starts with The Sound Of Music.

But it doesn’t. “We just hit a rough spell, but it’s over now,” Rigby states, in a game effort to close the subject. Referring to the dB’s career travails as a moot

point is akin to saying that Ronald Reagan is a mite forgetful. It’s hard to imagine a more worthy band that’s gotten a rawer deal. “We’ve seen just about the worst that the music biz has to offer,” says Rigby. “About the only thing that hasn’t happened to us is a plane wreck.”

“We don’t have any dead guys in the band, though,” Holsapple points out.

Holder, Holsapple, Rigby and singer/ writer/guitarist Chris Stamey spent their teen years playing in various combos (that’s combos, not bands) in and around Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The small but prescient Winston-Salem pop scene also included future Let’s Active leader Mitch Easter—who played in the bands Rittenhouse Square (with Holsapple and Stamey), the Sneakers (with Stamey), and the H-Bombs (with Holsapple).

In 1977, Stamey moved to New York, where he started his own independent label, Car, and scored a gig playing bass with the “godlike” Alex Chilton. Holder and Rigby relocated to the Big Apple the

following year, where they and Stamey formed the original dB’s lineup; thenorganist Holsapple joined soon after. The quartet rapidly emerged as a hip fave on the New York scene, but aside from singles on Car and Alan Betrock’s Shake! label—and a track on the major-label compilation Sharp Cuts—record companies were still reeling from the disastrous Knack-inspired skinny-tie signing frenzy, and were wary of homegrown guitar-pop bands. The Deebs had to settle for a deal with the financially-shaky British company Albion, for whom they made two hastily-recorded but otherwise brilliant import-only LPs, Stands For deciBels and Repercussion. Though the records were twisted-but-accessible masterpieces, with Holsapple and Stamey both registering as strong songwriters, U.S. majors still failed to bite, and the band declined to place the albums with an American indie.

The dB’s finally scored a deal with an American label, Bearsville, in 1983— shortly before Stamey bailed out for a solo career. The remaining trio recorded an estimable third album, Like This, with Holder doubling on bass (his original axe) and lead guitar, and Holsapple becoming the group’s solo composer; bassist Rick Wagner joined the band briefly for some live work. With uncanny timing, Bearsville folded shortly after Like This was released, leaving the dB’s with a contract to a record company that didn’t exist. To complicate matters further, Bearsvilie’s owner, veteran rock mogul Albert Grossman, inconsiderately died without leaving a will, further delaying the band’s efforts to gain their freedom.

With R.E.M.’s Pete Buck serving as unofficial cheerleader, the dB’s (now including New Orleans-bred bassist Jeff Beninato) inked with I.R.S., a company which seems to possess both the ability and the inclination to give the band its long-delayed commercial break. “This is a turning point for us,” says Rigby, “because we’ve never had a record out on an American label that didn’t go out of business immediately.”

I’m sitting in a restaurant in downtown Manhattan with Peter Holsapple and Will Rigby, who’ve spent the better part of the day with the rest of the group, auditioning keyboard players to join them on the road. Gene Holder has scampered off to continue his production work on a new LP by Hoboken’s Wygals (although Holder will be away a lot longer, since word has it that the guitarist left the dB’s on a permanent basis to join the Wygals, his girlfriend’s band, at press time—see this month’s “Rock ’N’ Roll News” for details), and Jeff Beninato has gone back to his apartment to finish packing for his return to New Orleans. Beninato’s not the only dB who’s fleeing life in NYC; Holsapple recently moved to California. During his return visit, the singer/guitarist has found time to schmooze it up at the New Music Seminar.

“I hate this town, so I had to move,” explains Holsapple. ‘‘What’s wrong with New York? Well, after nine years or so of sittin’ in someone else’s shit, you realize that there’s no way you’re ever gonna pull yourself out of it. There’s no way you’re ever gonna amass enough scratch to get out of town, because you pay so much rent you have no chance of saving any money. And then you start to realize that people are actually polite in other sections of the country. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so now I live in Santa Monica. I wondered if I would ever be able to do it, and I finally did, and now I feel vastly improved. I’m learning to garden now.”

“The only thing that’s gonna be tricky,” Rigby predicts, “is rehearsals and photo sessions. We’ll all be in the same place when we’re on tour, so that won’t be a problem. Our phone bills will go up, and we’ll have to make a few plane trips that we wouldn’t make otherwise. It’s just real weird not having Peter three blocks away.

I wanna move out eventually myself. I think New York’s a great town, I really do, but I’m tired of livin’ here. It’s just too crowded, too noisy, too smelly.”

The Sound Of Music features guest appearances by cult legend and former child actor Van Dyke Parks, Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench and Golden Palominos singer Syd Straw, who duets with Holsapple on “Never Belore And Never Again.” That song, like “I Lie” and “Today Could Be The Day” (the latter written for but not used in the film Making Mr. Right), shows Holsapple trading the cynical romantic view of his earlier numbers for a more balanced approach. The singer, however, expresses more interest in the album’s tight production (by former John pougar Mellencamp engineer Greg Edward) and its harder-rocking orientation.

“For guys that had to sit around and wait three years to make their next record, after sitting around waiting for three years to make their previous record, I think this one sounds pretty cohesive,” says Holsapple. “In terms of our general sound, we’re playing hardball now, where we might have been playing whiffleball earlier. We’re into big amps now, probably just because we’re so deaf that we can’t hear the little amps anymore.”

“All the other records were a struggle

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to make in various ways, and this is the first one that wasn’t,” says Rigby. “What we got out of it was the closest to what we went into it wanting. This is the first time we’ve had production as good as the songs.”

Although they’re planning to devote much of the foreseeable future to dB’s activity, the band members plan to continue working on outside projects. Holder’s career as a producer is gathering steam. Rigby, who released a good low-tech solo album last year—as well as gigging with his extracurricular combo, Wipe Me Mommy—plans to release another solo disc. And Holsapple, though he resists discussing it, seems likely to record an LP of compositions deemed inappropriate for the dB’s (many of which he performs in acoustic solo gigs when he’s not working with the band).

But solo outings and tri-coastalism seem unlikely to deter the dB’s at this point. “We’ve got a lot of time invested in this group,” says Rigby, who first met Holsapple in the third grade. “We’ve been good friends, basically, since junior high school. That’s an unusual situation in this day and age, and I think that makes us different from most groups. In some parts of this country, it’s not unusual to know the same people all of your life, but it’s pretty rare in the music industry.”

“Every time somebody slaps you down, you either get up and fight harder, or you don’t get up at all,” Holsapple asserts. “I think the longevity of the band, in the face of the things we’ve had to deal with, says a lot about what we’re made of.”

And, because the dB’s have never had anyone shoving them down the public’s throats, the fans they do have tend to be a dedicated bunch. “It’s not like people to just like the dB’s,” says Holsapple. “They either don’t know who the hell we are or they absolutely love us. I’m always amazed when people come up to us at a show and say, ‘I drove five hours to see you, you’re my favorite band.’ We’re a lot of people’s favorite band, and that makes you feel like you must be doing something right.

“I think it must take a lot of stamina to be a dB’s fan, to have to endure almost as many indignities as the band itself, and we’re grateful for the dedication and patience that our fans have shown us."

Their audience’s devotion is all the more impressive in light of the dB’s fabled contrariness. “I know what you mean,” says Rigby. “We have been cranky in certain situations, and some of that’s because of the hard knocks we’ve had, and because our business interests were not being looked after properly. We ran into a lot of trouble businesswise, and that created a lot of stressful situations for us. Also, we’re kind of shy in public situations where you’re supposed to be outgoing all the time. I honestly don’t think we’re as cranky now as we used to be. I swear. We’re just a little more professional about it now, let’s put it that way.”

“There’s definitely an ironic side to the dB’s, and we’ve done a lot of ironic things that have kind of helped nail the lid on the coffin shut,” says Holsapple, who once managed to get himself booted out of Tower Records by a security guard who mistook the scruffy vocalist for the sort of guy who’d shoplift a copy of Rolling Stone. “But that’s part of what makes us different from a lot of other bands. I just think it’s important to look for the humor in every situation, because that’s the only way to keep yourself sane. We can see the humor in the Hindenburg disaster. We’re the kind of guys that would go to the Indianapolis 500 and we wouldn’t want anybody to get killed, but we certainly wouldn’t want to miss it if it happened.

“I’ll give you an example of a typical dB’s thang to happen,” he continues. “We knew that a song of ours was gonna be used in a movie, and when we saw

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the poster for the movie, every other band on the soundtrack was displayed prominently and our name was nowhere to be found. We confronted the director/producer about it, and he said something really amazing— he said they didn’t have room for our name. Six letters! Is it any wonder we’re the way we are?” The long-suffering dB’s—whose new LP, The Sound Of Music, stands a good chance of winning them the mass audience they’ve always seemed destined for—wish the press would quit portraying them as rock’s most poignant hard-luck case. Toward that end, they’re making an effort to downplay their musically-rich but disappointment-laden history.

Other omens have been more encouraging, however. Peter’s recent solo tour, for which he drove himself across the country in a pink 1963 Rambler (with Jiffy-Lube as corporate sponsor) went off without a hitch. The band’s tour (with an augmented lineup including keyboardist Harold Kelt and exPlimsouls guitarist Eddie Munoz—who will be Gene Holder’s replacement) seems a cinch to expand their following. And I.R.S., which plans to eventually issue remixed versions of the two Albion LPs, seems willing to go to the wall for the dB’s.

“You never know what’s around the corner, so, the dB’s have a kind of guarded optimism about everything we do,” says Holsapple. “When we finished ‘Love Is For Lovers’ (from Like This), we were all running around the studio going, This is gonna be a monster hit, this is our grandchildren’s retirement fund.’ I can’t do that anymore.

We’re not bitter, we try to be forwardthinking about things. I hold no animosity toward anybody that’s screwed us over. I won’t do it; I won’t waste time having regrets or plotting revenge. You can’t work that way. You have to work for the good of people, and for the good of your audience.

“We have a new lease on life, or at least a sub-lease. This is either our third debut album, or our second second album, or our fourth album. The dB’s is a real serious commitment now, and there’s some real serious cards on the table. We don’t ask a whole lot more than to make a living at this, but I also think we’re ready for something good and something large to happen to us.” *

“There’s no doubt that there’s more music in us than we’ve been able to put out,” concludes Rigby. “We’re not gonna play forever, but we ain’t done yet.” ®