Peter Holsapple

Peter Livingston Holsapple (born February 19, 1956) is an American musician who, along with Chris Stamey, formed the dB's, a jangle-pop band from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He became the band's principal songwriter and singer after Stamey's departure. The band, with Stamey back in the fold, reformed with new material in 2005–2006.

After the dB's disbanded in 1988, Holsapple played as an auxiliary musician with R.E.M. and Hootie & the Blowfish, before joining the Continental Drifters, a rock band originating from Los Angeles.

In 1997, he released his first solo album, Out of the Way. He followed it up twenty-one years later with 2018's Game Day and will follow it in 2025 with Face of 68.

Holsapple was born in 1956 in Greenwich, Connecticut, to Henry and Ann. He moved south with his family to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1962. He had an older brother, Merritt (named for their maternal grandfather), who died in 1997, aged 52. Merritt was a fan of the Beach Boys and the Left Banke, which got his brother listening to them as well.

Holsapple graduated from R. J. Reynolds High School.

Holsapple began writing songs in third grade, and began playing in bands in 1964, when he was 7 or 8, beginning with the three-piece Dana & the Blue Jays. In 1969, he formed Soup with Chris Stamey. They played one show together, at a local church coffeehouse. In 1970, he joined Rittenhouse Square, which included Mitch Easter, Stamey and Bobby Locke. They released an independent album in 1972, recorded at Crescent City Sound Studios in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the spring of 1971. 500 copies were pressed.

When Rittenhouse broke up, Holsapple joined future dB's drummer Will Rigby and several other former high-school friends in Little Diesel, a proto-punk rock band fronted by Bob Northcott which ran against the tastes of Southern rock. Little Diesel's album, the 17-track No Lie (produced by Stamey in 1974) was released on twenty 8-track cartridges, and it was re-released in 2006 on Telstar Records. "Kissy Boys" was an original, as were two early songs of Holsapple's. The band's music was heavily inspired by Lenny Kaye's 1972 compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968.

College broke Little Diesel up, but Holsapple continued to write and sing, eventually moving to New York City from Memphis ("thinking some of the Big Star magic might rub off on me"), where he had recorded at Sam Phillips Studio with Big Star engineer Richard Rosebrough, three months into the dB's existence. While working part-time at a record store called Musical Maze at 294 Third Avenue, in October 1978 Holsapple joined as keyboard player and backing vocalist, but he quickly began submitting his songs, playing guitar, and singing lead vocals alongside Stamey. Holsapple and Chilton's cuts from Memphis were released by Omnivore on The Death of Rock in 2018.