The Autumn Defense w/ Chris Stamey at The Iron Horse on Tuesday, October 28 2025

After a ten-year break from the studio, The Autumn Defense pick up right where they left off on their long-anticipated sixth album, Here and Nowhere. Infusing the band’s breezy, harmony-drenched take on Laurel Canyon with lush orchestration and psychedelic flourishes, the collection is dreamy and impressionistic, full of warm, inviting tunes as beautiful as they are bittersweet. Like much of the group’s catalog, it’s an album full of mystery and wonder, a rich, open-hearted work that nods to everything from Nick Drake and John Martyn to Carole King and David Crosby as it contemplates the passage of time, reckoning with what we lose, what we gain, and who we become along the way.

Founded by core duo John Stirratt and Pat Sansone—and now featuring longtime rhythm section James Haggerty and Greg Wieczorek—The Autumn Defense first took shape in New Orleans, where the band recorded their 2001 debut, The Green Hour. While the group has at times been pigeonholed as a Wilco side project (Stirratt is a founding member, and Sansone joined around the release of 2004’s A Ghost Is Born), The Autumn Defense’s sound has always been decidedly more West Coast than alt-country, drawing comparisons to The Beach Boys, The Byrds, and Love over the course of five critically acclaimed studio albums. NPR hailed the group’s “timeless pop songs,” while Rolling Stone called their music “gorgeous” and “delightful,” and the New York Times praised their delivery as “warm and radiant.” 

Chris Stamey is currently touring in support of his new album, Anything Is Possible(Label 51), which features collaborations with the Lemon Twigs, Mitch Easter, and members of Brian Wilson’s band. Chris began writing and playing music in Winston-Salem, NC, in the mid 1960s. In 1976, he self-released Sneakers, one of the very first American “indie” records, then relocated to Manhattan in 1977 to play and record with Alex Chilton. He formed The dB’s in 1978, then recorded well-received solo records for A&M and Warners, and toured with Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos (with Michael Stipe [R.E.M.], Jack Bruce [Cream], and Bernie Worrell). As a producer, arranger, and mixer, he has worked with over a hundred artists, including Alejandro Escovedo, Kronos Quartet, Flat Duo Jets, Skylar Gudasz, Branford Marsalis, Ryan Adams, Tift Merritt, Le Tigre, Those Pretty Wrongs, The Salt Collective, and Yo La Tengo.From 2010-2018, Stamey was orchestrator and musical director for an international series of concert performances of Big Star’s classic album Third. A “songwriting memoir,” A Spy in the House of Loud (Univ. of Texas Press), was published in 2018. His recent releases include The Great Escape, Lovesick Blues, Euphoria, and New Songs for the 20th Century