North Carolina songwriter, vocalist, guitarist, and Producer Chris Stamey, has released “I’d Be Lost Without You” is the first single from Anything Is Possible, the latest collection of his original material, including one cover.
Stamey is a staple of Indie Rock, known from co-founding Power Pop band the dBs, playing with Alex Chilton in the 70s and more recently with Jody Stephens’s Big Star Quintet, and recording with The Salt Collective. The new album features special guests such as The Lemon Twigs, Pat Sansone (Wilco), Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson band), and Marshall Crenshaw among others.
The album was produced by Stamey at Modern Recording in Chapel Hill, NC. The Anything Is Possible album is being issued on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download, and streaming platforms on July 11, 2025.
Chris Stamey describes how “I’d Be Lost Without You” developed:
It started with me pounding out the chords on piano, to which Mitch Easter then added a great twangy, reverbed-out Fender Bass VI à la Carol Kaye, aside Rob Ladd’s distinctive ‘orchestral’ snare drum and drumkit flourishes. But when the Lemon Twigs came into the picture with all those harmonies, it morphed into something bigger . . . much bigger. Then Probyn Gregory (flugelhorn, trombone) knew just what icing this cake needed. Although this production evokes the summery sixties LA sound, it began differently: with my fascination for Jerome Kern’s ‘All the Things You Are,’ a song that winds through ever-shifting key centers but seems melodically inevitable all the while. Originally, as written on piano, it sounded like a song Chet Baker might have sung, sparse, nocturnal, and intimate. I learned a lot about the Beach Boys recording style from studio work with Alex Chilton, something else I have to thank him for.
Anything Is Possible’s music was first workshopped in L.A. with members of the Wild Honey Orchestra reading from written scores. The initial basic tracks were then recorded at Overdub Lane (Durham, NC) with Dan Davis (drums), Jason Foureman (acoustic bass), and Charles Cleaver (piano), with Stamey singing, playing additional keyboards, guitars, and bass as well as writing the orchestrations.
The record was then shaped and completed over the course of a year at Modern Recording with contributions from the Lemon Twigs, Matt Douglas (Mountain Goats), long-time collaborator Mitch Easter, Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson Band), Marshall Crenshaw, Don Dixon, Brett Harris, Rachel Kiel, Matt McMichaels (Mayflies USA), Kelly Pratt (War On Drugs arranger), Pat Sansone, Robert Sledge (Ben Folds Five), and the Modrec Orchestra. Wes Lachot, NC musician/engineer and internationally lauded studio designer, came on board in the final stages with fresh ears and invaluable advice.
Stamey says:
This album is a love letter to the kind of harmonically rich yet often lyrically innocent pop music I heard, on the family turntable and especially on AM radio, growing up in the late 50s and mid-60s in the American South. I have since come to understand more about the nuts and bolts of those songs, but the magic of those first encounters remains.
