Neither Stamey’s New Wave-era work with Sneakers and The dB’s nor his subsequent solo career contain much that might lead his longtime fans to expect this stylistic detour.
Jim Allen
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A Childhood Piano and a Wealth of Local Singing Talent Led Chris Stamey Down the Path Not Taken
“I had started to feel that the whole ‘three chords and the truth’ thing was a confining space, like [if] literature followed only in Hemingway’s footsteps and Joyce had never existed,” Stamey says.
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Record Review: The Lost (and Found) Tapes of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard
Sitting at the kitchen table with Dickens and Gerrard, we get a glimpse of the duo’s working process.
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Will Oldham—Songwriter, Actor, Storyteller, Poet—Unfolds His Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Catalog at Duke
Oldham begins his three-day stretch of lectures and a performance on Wednesday, September 26.
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Peter Holsapple Suits Up for Game Day, His First Solo Record in Twenty Years
PETER HOLSAPPLE Saturday, Aug. 4, 8 p.m., $8–$10 Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro www.catscradle.com “I’m not pop-star material anymore,” allows Peter Holsapple, “But I sure can write a song, and I enjoy it more than ever.” Holsapple has been known not only as a singer-songwriter with Winston-Salem émigrés The dB’s and New Orleans-via-Los Angeles outfit […]
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Record Review: With Things Change, American Aquarium Offers a New Chapter, Not a Reinvention
Things Change New West Records Things Change is the first American Aquarium album since singer-songwriter BJ Barham started the band over with a whole new cast of characters, but it feels more like the continuation of a story than the start of a brand new one. The new crew, including Shane Boeker on lead guitar, […]
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Can Bob Weir and the Boys Bring the Grateful Dead Back to Life?
DEAD & COMPANY Saturday, June 9, 7 p.m., $45–$250 Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek, Raleigh www.livenation.com The continuing exploits of Dead & Company are a reminder that loving The Grateful Dead has become an increasingly complicated proposition ever since Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995. In 1998, the surviving members of the band […]
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Chris Stamey Chronicles His Connections to North Carolina and New York in a New Song-Inspired Memoir
CHRIS STAMEY Sunday, April 28, 5 p.m., free Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill www.flyleafbooks.com I definitely believe in monogamy, but not musical monogamy,” says Chris Stamey about the fertile Winston-Salem rock scene of the late sixties and early seventies that marked his entry into music, alongside budding impresarios like Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. But the […]
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Record Review: On Years, Sarah Shook & The Disarmers Offer Another Unstoppable Round of Whiskey-Soaked Country
SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS Friday, April 6, 9 p.m., $12–$14 Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro www.catscradle.com When Sarah Shook & The Disarmers self-released their debut album, Sidelong, in late 2015, it was the first statement from a powerful presence on the regional scene. Shook and her band struck a balance between fearless, fast-and-loose honky-tonk tunes and […]
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6 String Drag Gives Alt-Country a New Spin on Top of the World
6 STRING DRAG Top of the World Schoolkids Records A little more than two decades ago, 6 String Drag was Raleigh’s most viable entry in the alt-country sweepstakes, but fate had other ideas in mind. The band split up after their second, Steve Earle-produced record, High Hat, and didn’t release another until their 2015 reunion […]