Chris Stamey is an indie-rock institution. He helped define rootsy independent rock in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of The dBs. Since then, the Chapel Hill native has labored away under the radar as a solo act, in ensembles with like-minded players, and especially as a producer of alt-country acts for the past decade. Travels in the South, his first solo in more than a decade, finds him in a mood that’s part nostalgic, part forward looking.
The theme that permeates this album is, of course, travel. Which he’s seen a lot of as a wandering musician, in a career that has taken him from the South to New York and Europe and now back home to North Carolina. These 12 tracks were laid down over a period of about three years, in between his travels, or at his home base as he snagged the talents of musicians passing through on their own travels.
The tone is set in the first track, “14 Shades of Green,” which finds a tour bus driver hijacking a high school reunion tour of his former classmates: “here’s where we went to church …robbed that store … fell in love.”
The theme continues with “The Sound You Hear,” a bluesy meditation on mortality: It’s morning now, you wake up … a million miles away from where you started,” he sings. The protagonist in the densely layered upbeat rocker “Ride” focuses on the joys of travelling through time as well as space. Travelers from another country are looking for illusions and finding life instead, as they try to track down scenes from their favorite old Phil Spector rockers “In Spanish Harlem.” And one lover longs for another to return from his (or her) travels through all the seasons and all kinds of weather in “And I Love Her.”
Stamey looks deeper than you expect to find in this kind of lush roots-pop on songs like “Kierkegaard,” a jazzy soul song that ponders philosophy and religion. This track has soaring Beach Boys-style harmonies and some lovely jazzy solos by Tyson Rogers on piano. And the melody is repeated on two instrumental tracks, the short, funky “K Jam” and the jazzy, album-ending “Leap of Faith.”
The protagonist in the languid “Insomnia” finds he can’t turn off his regrets and longing when it’s time to sleep: “Why is it only your memory that holds me tight,” he asks the memory of his lover. And in “Alive,” a loping rocker, the singer seems to be accusing a friend or former lover of not taking care of love: “Where once there was hope, you find only sand/how can you pretend as it pours through your hand?”
Stamey draws on the talents of many guest musicians, including Tift Merritt, Ryan Adams, Jen Gunderman, Thad Cockrell, Caitlin Cary, and former dB Peter Holsapple, but the show’s all Stamey’s. He demonstrates just how fun rock can be, even when it deals with mature themes.
(Yep Roc, 2004)
