Modernism (Flatiron) functions as both a companion piece to Chris Stamey’s 2025 LP Anything Is Possible and a love letter to the wide spectrum of crafted pop hooks and freeform rock that saturated AM/FM radio frequencies in the ’60s and early ’70s. Working out of his Modern Recording studio in Chapel Hill, N.C., the dB’s cofounder and onetime Alex Chilton collaborator revisits classics by the Beatles, the Kinks, Sly And The Family Stone, the Left Banke and others, also throwing in a few of his own songs.
Modernism’s formidable guest list includes Big Star’s Jody Stephens, Wilco’s Pat Sansone, members of the dB’s, Brian Wilson alumni Probyn Gregory and Nelson Bragg, the Uptown Horns, drummer Jon Wurster (Mountain Goats, Bob Mould) and more. The album even gets the late Chilton involved, closing with a noteworthy artifact. Stamey offers more on that and the rest of the LP below.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Hey Bulldog” (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
“I’d been playing off and on with Jody Stephens. On one of his visits to Chapel Hill to see friends, he popped by the studio, and we cut this Beatles track in about an hour. Jody has a feel like no other. I always say his high-hat should be in the Museum Of Modern Art. I play everything else on it, but I kept this arrangement pretty stripped-down and revealed.”
2) “Waterloo Sunset” (Ray Davies)
“Why cover ‘Waterloo Sunset’? It’s a bit like what they say about climbing Mount Everest—perhaps because it’s there. It’s a high peak of Ray Davies songwriting, which is to say, as high as anyone ever gets. I learned the ins and outs of songwriting by playing Kinks records nonstop in college. The dB’s cut a rhythm track for this song casually some years ago. One day, I heard the unfinished track on a mix tape and realized I loved it. I finished it up … with the help of Peter Holsapple and the rest. It’s a bit audacious for a mere Yank to cover such a coveted British song, but the history of rock music has often been a ping-pong game between the two cultures. So I’m hoping some forgiveness can be granted this one time.”
3) “Shadows Breaking Over My Head” (Michael Brown/Steve Martin)
“‘Pretty Ballerina’ and ‘Walk Away, Renee’ both have lovely melodies and sensitive arrangements, but this Left Banke song has a level of abstraction beyond either. I opened some California shows for the Lemon Twigs a few years back, and they were always pulling out such cool covers. In that spirit, I added this song to our sets then. It was swell of Brian Wilson band alums Probyn and Nelson to join us on this, as they also hold this song in high regard. I’ve been the beneficiary of Rob Ladd’s drumming expertise during many live gigs over the last decade. We met up in the studio one October day in 2025 to revisit some of those live arrangements. I think we cut 12 songs in a very productive session, only some of which ended up here.”
3) “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” (Sly Stone)
“We were just having ‘hot fun in the summertime’ when we took a pass at this classic radio hit. Sylvester Stone was always fearless, and I think his time as a San Francisco DJ gave him a great populist feel for what would click on radio. The Uptown Horns guys dug in here and made some great additions. Jon (Wurster) isn’t widely known for his funky side … and to be honest, neither am I. But he nailed this. I was thinking of my old Golden Palominos bandmate Bernie Worrell when I added the synth. Miss him.”
4) “Neon Rainbow” (Wayne Carson Thompson)
“This Box Tops tune is less known now. But it was a huge hit when I was a kid and an inspiration for several of my songs. I love the feeling of being lost in a cityscape at night, and I’m glad Watchhouse’s Emily Frantz dropped by to harmonize. I have a tape of a 1977 NYC rehearsal with Chilton where we run this down at my request. Afterward, he sighs and says, ‘That was my mother’s favorite song.’ It was written by the guy who wrote ‘The Letter,’ which essentially created the Box Tops’ success. I can imagine the band or their producer thinking, ‘That went well—let’s get another song by that guy.’ Then he delivered this quite different tune.”
5) “Of Time And All She Brings To Mind”
“Originally recorded, in a very different version, on my 1987 It’s Alright album. This is the live arrangement. I think the original idea here was: ‘What if “Do Ya” by the Move was even more monolithic/prehistoric? What if it had only two chords as a theme?’ Scott Miller (Game Theory) wrote in his book Music: What Happened? that he loved this song but hated the original ’80s-embellished recording of it, which made me a little sad. I wonder if this approach would’ve been more to his liking? Like a lot of my writing at the time, the lyric has double meanings. But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
6) “Hernando’s Hideaway” (Jerry Ross/Richard Adler)
“Although I remember this song fondly from the radio in my childhood, it’s hard to parse now, since I wasn’t even a year old in 1954, when it was a hit. I guess local radio didn’t let go of it for a few years. Written for the musical The Pajama Game, it was one of those marvels, the novelty song, that—alongside ‘Iko Iko’ and ‘King Of The Road’—seemed to be speaking over the airways from some other planet. The guy behind the hit version of this song, Archie Bleyer, also started Cadence Records, produced the label’s crucial act, the Everly Brothers, and released (apparently with some misgivings) Link Wray’s ‘Rumble.’ There’s some argument to be made that if this hadn’t been a crazy hit, there might not have been the funds to back the Everly Brothers. Without them, the Beatles would’ve been much different … ripples all down the line—a totally different path for pop music.”
7) “Where The Fun Is”
“This was added to the collection on a whim, to be honest. But I like the fact that, harmonically and melodically, it’s a precursor of some of the songs I’m writing five decades later. There’s a debt to the Zombies here, but also to Syd Barrett and the Soft Machine. The original recording was the b-side for my first solo single, ‘The Summer Sun.’ It was one of my fondest memories of being in the studio with Alex. He was so outside-the-box on that session and did such beautiful stuff. Mitch Easter always played drums on our basement recordings in high school, even though he was ‘lead’ guitarist in the coffeehouses. Every so often, he still plays on tracks like this for me. I love his feel. He lets a song breathe.”
8) “Let’s Get Lost” (Jimmy McHugh/Frank Loesser)
“I had the producerly idea of shaping the basic track into the style of either Stray Cats or the Flying Lizards. I’ll let you imagine what that madness might’ve been like—but in the end, we left it unadorned. The slightly wonky one-take guitar solo I played was always meant to be replaced by something more crafted, but I grew fond of its careless meandering, and it stayed.”
9) “At Last” (Harry Warren/Mack Gordon)
“I’ve long been an advocate for Warren, who today mostly lives in Irving Berlin’s shadow. Rob’s drums on this have so much savoir fair—they remind me of Chic’s Tony Thompson at times. This basic track was a one-take wonder. I like that you can hear the room at (Easter’s) Fidelitorium on the track. The history of ’60s rock recording is often the story of distinctive, resonant room tone. I think of Chess, Sunset Sound, Sun, Ocean Way, Gold Star—less so Abbey Road, as that room was so big it wasn’t very colored to my ear. I tried to make the string-and-wind arrangement period correct but significantly different from the Etta James version.”
10) “There’s A Dream Around The Corner”
“Originally sung by Brett Harris on 2020’s A Brand-New Shade Of Blue collection by Chris Stamey & The Fellow Travelers, this was to be the closing track on the album. I thought it’d be nice to end the record like the White Album ends, but it ended up wanting to rock out instead.”
11) “Ruby Tuesday” (Keith Richards)
“The original track for this cover was produced in 1977 by Alex Chilton. The vocal master was lost, and the only surviving analog recording was restored and completed for this album. The song was cut probably a month or two after ‘The Summer Sun,’ which was slated to be part of a never-completed Ork Records Rolling Stones tribute album. Historians take note: Other unreleased tracks include ‘Dandelion’ with Peter Holsapple and Mitch Easter, and Chilton’s contribution, ‘Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?’—not actually a Stones composition, but those were crazy times. The striking DSP cover for this song online (coming soon) is a recent work: a portrait of Daisy Brustad by acclaimed photographer Julia Gorton, who also took the official Ork Records press photos of both Alex (with the TELEVISION stencil on the wall of Terry Ork’s Chinatown loft) and me the same year as this recording.”
