The dB’s

The original lineup of the legendary dB’s are making their triumphant return to Hudson County this Sunday, September 15th for a special performance at White Eagle Hall. Though the band reunited in the mid-2000s and released a record of new material called Falling Off The Sky in 2012, things went quiet for a spell. But this year, the band returns to stages across the United States for the first time in a decade. Their performances follow the release of a singles and rarities collection called I Thought You Wanted To Know, which came out in 2021, and a fresh reissue of their magnum opus, 1981’s Stands For Decibels. Both come courtesy of Propeller Sound Recordings, a label based in the dB’s hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

Ahead of Sunday’s show at White Eagle Hall, we caught up with drummer Will Rigby and guitarist Peter Holsapple to talk about the band, memories of making Stands For Decibels, and more:

Great to speak with you, Will and Peter. Very excited for the White Eagle Hall show. It’s probably your first show in this area since Maxwell’s closed, right? 

Will: In New Jersey, yeah.

Super excited for it. The reissue of Stands For Decibels sounds great. I’ve talked to other bands and artists about the process behind reissuing an old record. Some have faced challenges, particularly, in obtaining the master recordings. What was the process like getting this reissue off the ground? Was it challenging or relatively painless?

Will: Well, the dirty little secret is we don't have the master recordings for Stands For Decibels. We'd love to get our hands on them if you know anybody that's got 'em. We don't really know where they are. We think we know, but we're not sure.

So, what was the process like without the master recordings?

Peter: It was remastered from the 1989 IRS Records reissue.  So, it's a bit of a remastering, but, you know, it sounds good. There was more care taken when the IRS CDs were mastered. It wasn't from the master tapes, but it might've been from the master mixes. I can't remember… but it was from analog for sure.

The original lineup reunited in mid-200s and then put out a record in 2012 called Falling Off the Sky. This reissue for Stands for Decibels is essentially the second in a series of reissues following the singles/rarities collection I Thought You Wanted To Know in 2021. Why did you think now was the time to begin this series of reissues as compared to maybe a decade ago when you put out new material?

Will: It was mainly because Propeller Sound Recording reached out to us and expressed interest in doing these reissues. They’re the ones that pushed it forward.

Going back a little bit to the origins of the band. Peter, you and Chris Stamey played together in some projects together in the early seventies, including Rittenhouse Square. You and Will also had a band called Little Diesel. So, before the dB’s formed, you all had a bit of a history playing together. How did the band initially since you had this history playing music together in different projects?

Peter: Chris had moved to New York in 1977 to play with Alex Chilton from the Box Tops and Big Star. However, he found himself sort of out of a job after Alex moved back to Memphis. He then got in touch with Will and Gene, and they did some shows. I was living in Memphis at the time and got a call from Will saying, would you come up and audition as a keyboard player? And so I did. That’s sort of how tthe genesis of the band began.

Yeah, Peter, that’s interesting that you auditioned for the band. Was that mostly a formality since you had all played together previously or was it a serious audition? 

Will: It was pretty much a done deal that Peter would be in the band. There wasn't any question that he would pass an audition.

Peter: Well, the question would've been on my part as a songwriter… I didn't feel like I wanted to intrude on Chris's project, since he was writing all the songs. But I did come packing a bunch of tunes and the band was nice enough to agree to do a bunch of them. Chris was lovely to share the spotlight with him in the front.

How did that transition happen from Chris being the primary songwriter to it becoming more of an even split between the two of you?

Peter: It just kind of happened. Chris has always been my biggest supporter and he's always been very very positive about my songs ever since the old days before anything happened with the DBs. It was genuinely nice of him to offer to let me share that spotlight and bring my songs into the band. I don't think there was anything conscious about it. It was very natural.

I think most of you lived in Hoboken at one point or another. You played at Maxwell’s many times during the 80s and I tend to associate the band with that club. What do you remember about that time?

Will: Well, when we first played there, it was just the front room. The back room hadn't been built yet. Back in those days, there was a grand piano in the front room and there was an old man who used to play cocktail bar piano like on the weekend nights. Then they started having bands. I remember we had to set up around the piano. That was definitely before 1980, it might have been 1978. I think we were maybe the third band to play there.

You started working on the music for Stands for Decibels towards the end of the 1970s. You recorded piecemeal. What was the recording experience like and how would you compare it to other experiences that you had had recording up until that point?

Peter: Well, it was recorded at a really neat studio in SOHO called Blue Rock. As you point out, it was really recorded kind of in fits and starts as we were waiting for money to appear on the horizon. We came from a music culture in Winston-Salem, North Carolina of bands that really worked hard to learn songs, learned how to arrange vocals, and to make sure that the drums and bass were doing interesting things. So, we had that kind of going for us that. We realized that if we were gonna go into a $200 an hour recording studio, we should do our homework in advance. And, and so we did.

I know the sessions were obviously a long time ago now, but what do you remember about them? 

Will: I remember the mixing session for “Black and White.” That's the thing that I remember the best. That was pretty exciting. There was no automation back then, so every move that you made had to be done while the mix was running. So, there were a lot of hands on the board. I was in charge of turning up the toms when they were played and stuff like that.

How did Don Dixon and Scott Lit become involved in the mixing process? I think it's really cool to look back at this record and their involvement because they're two very notable guys in the greater alternative rock universe of the eighties and nineties. This was before all of that.

Peter: We knew Don Dixon from Winston-Salem. He had a band called Arrogance that was doing some very heavy stuff like Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp” and the first Black Sabbath record. So, Dixon was a few years older than us, but we knew him. He'd already started doing production work out of a studio in Charlotte called Reflection Studios. He engineered the Sneakers' debut EP in 1976, which is a band that Will was in with Mitch Easter, Chris, Rob Slater, and Robert Keely. So, we had a history with him already.

And as far as Scott goes, we somehow got the money to do a couple of mixes at Power Station. We just showed up there and were assigned like the house engineer, which was Scott Lit. And that's how we met him. It was just sheer chance that we were assigned him.

That’s interesting because then he produced your next record, Repercussion. So, you guys must have clicked well during those sessions.

Yeah, he was really into it and he started coming to our shows and hanging out a little bit. And I think Chris started talking to him on the phone one thing led to another, and next thing you know, he was producing Repercussion.

How about Alan Bedrock’s involvement? He championed bands like Television and Blondie and it seems like he championed the dB’s, too. 

Peter: Well, he went to see Sneakers play, I believe Will has said at Max’s Kansas City some years before. I think he and Chris started a correspondence over the years. So, when Chris moved to New York, they started hanging out. Alan had done some recording. I guess he did those early Blondie tracks. He wasn't really a hands-on producer like Scott Litt or Don Dixon or somebody like that. He was really a vibe guy. You know, he was in there and was like another set of ears for us. Chris did the lion share of the production on Stands For Decibels. 

He was also instrumental in connecting us with the people at Albion Records in London. They had been record collector friends of his. So, that's how that all sort of transpired. First, as a publishing deal for me and Chris. And then when it became rather evident that there were no takers for the album in the United States, they offered to release the record on Albion. S,  that's another part of the Alan Bedrock connection.

Will: Yeah, Alan was kind of more like an executive producer. He was in charge of finding the money to record the album. He was there when we were recording a lot of the time. If you asked him what he thought. he’d tell us.

What role did the band play in the remixing and remastering process? Were there things about the original mixes that you wanted to change? Or was this more like a general kind of general polishing?

Peter: Yeah, as pointed out earlier, we did not remix it because we don't have access to the master tapes. It was all Bob Weston doing the remastering. I think he was given a copy of the CD and was asked, “can you make this sound better?” Presumably, he did.

He definitely did!

You can order a copy of the newly re-mastered Stands For Decibels via Propeller Sound Recordings. Tickets for the band’s show this Sunday at White Eagle Hall can be purchased via See Tickets. Keep up with the band by following them on Instagram.