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From The Desk Of Chris Stamey: Audley Freed And The Myth And The Reality Of Guitar Heroica

ChrisStameyLogoAlthough Chris Stamey is best known as being part of the original dB’s, the legendary jangle-pop combo from Winston Salem, N.C., that sprouted wings when they moved to NYC in the late ’70s, his solo work has always been equally fascinating. Soon after cutting Stands For deciBels and Repercussion, the seminal band’s longplayers tracked in the early ’80s, Stamey pulled up stakes and returned to churning out his own hackle-raising sound. He has resurfaced recently as part of a fertile duo with Peter Holsapple, but it’s albums like his current solo release, Lovesick Blues (Yep Roc), that keep his one-man trip smoldering like a late-October controlled burn in the N.C. tobacco fields while light rain begins to fall. Stamey will guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Guitar

Stamey: Ah, the guitar hero: once practically worshipped (hard not to trot out the old “Clapton Is God” graffiti mention), now practically extinct. Between the thousand footpedals and the half-speed DVD and YouTube instruction options, it seems appallingly pre-postmodern to be anything except ironic when playing a guitar solo—unless you are on the jamband circuit, where self-consciousness and self-restraint often fall by the wayside so fast that they can only wave at the relative brevity of Clapton’s Cream-age as they ricochet riffs around the gymnasium. There are, however, a lot of really good, accurate players around now—many more than when I started playing—folks who have tone options at their fingertips and great ears for chord progressions and will pop out of the mix for exactly eight or 16 bars of well-bent, bloodless string-tickling in any number of impostored styles of which they are aware and proud; a bit of The Edge here, a bit of Jeff Beck or Peter Buck there, some Albert Lee—anyone for Peter Green? I have to applaud the work ethic on display. But it used to be that hearing an electric-guitar solo could “take you there,” that it was a chance for the player to step up to the plate and pour out their soul’s yearning—yes, and I know how comical that sounds these days! I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to hear electricity in the heroic hands of Richard Thompson or Tom Verlaine or Roy Buchanan. But I remember, I remember, when I hear Audley Freed play, I could tell that he really believes; he plays true, and you can’t fake that. Now, don’t get me wrong: He’s not an aerosol-spray noodler; he has awesome restraint and precision in any number of styles, and a killer ear. As a top session cat in Nashville, this goes without saying. I did a show with him a few months back during the AMA festival there, and he learned every tiny nuance of the music we were playing in advance off the records, then played it all note for note, egoless, just locking in to the band and listening hard, no showboating. That night, few solos were required, but still, each time, he was there, diving in, fully committed to making music, never regurgitating riffs in “quotes” or stomping on some tiny slab of elitist technology to splatter skronk. So he’s got “pro” down, any which way but loose (and loose if called for). But that’s not what I’m here to tell you. Here’s the thing: It’s that I’ve heard him on nights late in little clubs, in sunny studios at 9 a.m. and in arenas with gunslingers lined up to take their shots, and whether slide or fingertips, he tears at my heartstrings every time. He can make me cry when he plays, and that’s not “pro”—that’s the real deal, that’s the Grand Tradition, that’s what makes a guitar hero worthy of the title. It may be an endangered species; in fact, some of you may have never really heard this rare bird in full flight, but it’s not gone—there are still believers. Freed is proof of that, and I’m grateful.

Video after the jump.