dB’s Holsapple & Stamey Prep New LP

Long awaited - and long overdue - followup to the two dB's mainmen's 1991 Mavericks album.

By Fred Mills

Way back in 1991, longtime pals Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey got together and recorded the critically acclaimed Mavericks album. Released on a Rhino Records imprint that soon shuttered, the record went out of print, but was luckily resurrected a year or so ago and reissued in expanded format by the Collector's Choice label. For fans of the pair's erstwhile combo The dB's, Mavericks was musical manna, brimming with elegiac pop and folkrock (not to mention a striking Gene Clark cover song) and signaling that this creative partnership was one worth savoring.

And holding out for, too: while the two men subsequently worked apart for the remainder of the decade, not long after the new millennium was ushered in they put The dB's back together for a series of low-key reunion gigs, eventually going into the studio and recording new material. The dB's remain an occasional performing enterprise, and the studio album will eventually see the light of day, but concurrently Holsapple and Stamey have been working on a followup to Mavericks, unveiling several new songs a couple of years ago in Austin at SXSW.

That followup is finally en route: due from Bar/None on June 9 is hERE and nOW (yes, that's how the case lettering is officially done), a 14-song platter full of dB's and Mavericks-worthy material. Included is another eye-opening cover, this time a Holsapple-sung version of British cult band Family's "My Friend the Sun," alongside a slew of original compositions. Self produced by the pair, the album was recorded and mixed primarily at Modern Recording in Chapel Hill, with additional tracking done up in Hoboken at Water Music. Sax great Branford Marsalis plays on two tracks, while among the other guests are Superchunk's Jon Wurster, the dB's Will Rigby and Gene Holder, members of Roman Candle, Chatham County Line and the Weird Girls, and others. (Big shout-out to BLURT buddies Robert Keely and Bob "The Pump" Northcott, by the way.)

BLURT's heard the record, and while we don't want to spoil any surprisesby spilling the beans prematurely, suffice to say that it's some of the purest pop you'll hear all year, complex yet buoyant, and aglow with Everly Brothers-like vocal harmonies guaranteed to have you humming along late into the night. And in keeping with what's apparently THE hipster instrument of choice these days, there's a tune titled "Ukulele" - but trust us, you haven't exactly heard the uke strummed quite like this before.

Mark - as the saying goes - those calendars, kids.