“What’s that? You’ve named it already?” Peter Holsapple asked, attempting to share Chris Stamey’s between-songs mutterings with the audience at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica last Friday night. After a few more mumbles from his partner, Holsapple officially introduced the crowd to the retro condenser mic at center stage: “We’re calling her ‘Old Betty.’”

Welcome to the ramshackle, utterly charming onstage world of Holsapple & Stamey, circa 2009. Their place in the pantheon long since secure, the two indie-rock progenitors (once and, apparently, future co-leaders of the dB’s) are back on the road with nothing to prove, but a new set of amiable songs to work into the repertoire. They recently released their second album as a duo, Here and Now, on the Bar/None label; it comes a mere 17 years after they flew in the face of grunge with their beloved, stripped-down Mavericks LP. Yes, they were mavericks when mavericks were cool (before a certain Alaskan claimed the mantle) – but now they’re content to pretend, as they do on the new album’s title track, that their greatest ambition is to avoid screwing up: “If there ever was a show/We could not afford to blow to bits/We could always hire some counterfeits/To do that show.”

“Here and Now” serves as the perfect introduction to Holsapple & Stamey’s lighthearted, self-effacing duo aesthetic; indeed, if there were a market for a sitcom featuring a pair of aging rockers good-naturedly barnstorming the land – a gender-redefined, hipster Golden Girls, if you will – then “Here and Now” would be its theme song. It led off the McCabe’s concert, which also featured sterling (if shambolic) renditions of album cuts “Santa Monica,” “Early in the Morning” and “Widescreen World.” Stamey also sang Big Star alum Chris Bell’s “I Am the Cosmos,” and the duo covered Family’s prog-rock fave “My Friend the Sun,” which opens the Here and Now album.

“Our label tells us that if we sell enough copies of the new album on CD, they’ll release it on vinyl!” Holsapple enthused at one point Friday night. Holsapple & Stamey have been around long enough to see traditions like album-release orders turned on their heads; thankfully, as they’ve proved on this mini-tour, other traditions – like the sound of two friends harmonizing around a condenser mic – can always pick up exactly where they left off. (more…)