Peter Holsapple
One never knows what to make of reports that a musician has quit a group because of “musical differences.” The expression has become rock ‘n’ roll boilerplate: it can mean that the musician is spending too much time with the lead singer’s girlfriend, or that he feels compelled to strangle the drummer on sight, or that he’s flying to Switzerland for a blood change.
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All the while, it turns out, Holsapple was cooking up his first solo record. Out of My Way borrows its title from one of the songs, but it’s also a puckish reference to what he candidly calls his megalomania. “My wife has generously referred to me as Hitler from time to time in the studio,” he admits, speaking from his home in New Orleans. “I guess it’s sort of true. I tend to feel as though I know what’s best for my songs.”
Holsapple and Stamey, both raised in Winston-Salem, had played music together in high school, releasing a do-it-yourself album in 1972 under the name Rittenhouse Square. “Chris Stamey & the dB’s” had already released a single in 1978 when Stamey drafted Holsapple to play keyboards and magnanimously truncated the band’s name. By the time the dB’s signed with the British label Albion, Holsapple had switched to guitar, and with him and Stamey splitting the songwriting down the middle, the band recorded a pair of brilliant albums, Stands for Decibels (1981) and Repercussion (1983).
Exhausted and disillusioned, Holsapple submerged himself in session work (he plays 15 instruments, including drums, banjo, pedal steel, harmonica, accordion, and flute). After navigating the dB’s for four years, he relished the chance to turn himself into a blank slate. “I really enjoy a kind of chameleonlike part of it,” he insists. “Because when people buy the record, they’re buying somebody else’s record. They’re not buying it because Holsapple played kazoo on it. So I want to make sure that my contribution, while audible, is not something that’s distracting.” He contributed guitar and organ to R.E.M.’s Out of Time album and tour, and has since recorded with such lesser talents as Juliana Hatfield, Indigo Girls, and Better Than Ezra. His lengthy gig with roots-rock ciphers Hootie & the Blowfish seems the ultimate ignominy for an artist who, in a creative if not a commercial sense, had the world on a string in the early 80s.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Pamela Royal.
