Photos by Ella Jewell
’90s hitmakers the Spin Doctors hit Brooklyn Bowl on Nov. 8 for the NYC band’s 30th anniversary celebration. While seminal jam-band club the Wetlands — where the original lineup reunited in 2001 — is unfortunately no longer, BK Bowl, a direct descendant of the old Manhattan haunt, was an appropriate site for the festivities.
Chris Barron (vocals), Aaron Comess (drums), Eric Schenkman (guitar) and Mark White (bass) are working on a seventh studio album.
The roots of the Spin Doctors go back to a band called the Trucking Company, featuring Barron, Schenkman and John Popper, who left to focus on Blues Traveler. Comess and White joined the remaining three.
“When I first met them,” recalls White in a press release, “I thought, ‘These are some funky-assed white boys.’ I’m the black guy in the band, and they had to teach me to play the blues.”
Related story: An interview with Chris Barron
After the release of the debut album “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” and some heavy touring, the Spin Doctors became one of the biggest bands of the era behind the hits “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes.” “When we were selling 50,000 records a week, I’d walk into a mall to buy underwear and 300 kids would surround me,” says Barron, whose band made the cover of Rolling Stone.
Following some lineup shifts and record label issues, the original players got back together in 2001. Their most recent album is 2013’s “If The River Was Whiskey.”
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