- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Officially, the dB’s was formed in New York City, but all of the musicians were from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The dB’s – The Sound of Music (1987): My hometown band, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina! So proud! Officially, the band was formed in New York City, but all of the musicians were from Winston-Salem: Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey, Will Rigby, and Gene Holder. Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey are both dynamite songwriters, I knew Gene Holder from high school, and Will Rigby is the son of one of my mother’s best friends. Mom would sometimes regale us about the band’s exploits. Starting from a Beatlesque perspective, the dB’s – Stands for Decibels (as the name of their first album proclaims, which was released in 1981) – became an early jangle-pop band and cleared some space for other bands and artists from North Carolina.
I remember once reading a column by a music critic for the New York alternative weekly newspaper The Village Voice who actually complained about their being so many North Carolina rock bands out there! Unfortunately, major success eluded them, and Chris Stamey left the dB’s before long to start a solo career. Jeff Beninato stood in for Stamey in the line-up for this album. After the dB’s landed a record deal with I.R.S. Records – home of the like-minded superstars R.E.M. – everyone thought that this might be their ticket to the big time. But sadly, the record-buying public wasn’t having it. The Sound of Music is a terrific record loaded with great songs, with their own special sound. The dB’s have since released two more studio albums. Peter Holsapple – who was in a band with my brother Tom Winfree when he was 12 years old – began playing with R.E.M. so often that he was like a fifth bandmember, including the San Francisco concert where we saw them. I ran into Will Rigby’s mother at Mom’s funeral, and she told me that Will had recently retired from the music scene after playing for a while with Shooter Jennings (I think she said – he is Waylon Jennings’ son).