Spin Doctors

About Spin Doctors

Spin Doctors became one of those bands that everyone knew for two songs in the early 90s, then spent the rest of their career trying to figure out what came next. They formed in New York City in 1988 when guitarist Eric Schenkman and bassist Mark White connected with singer Chris Barron and drummer Aaron Comess. The lineup clicked around a jam-band sensibility filtered through rock, funk, and blues, playing the kind of loose, groove-heavy sets that packed clubs downtown but didn't exactly scream "radio ready."

Their 1991 debut, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, came out on Epic Records without much fanfare. It sold modestly at first while the band toured relentlessly, building word-of-mouth the old-fashioned way. Then MTV started playing "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" in heavy rotation, and suddenly the album caught fire. That song, with its tongue-in-cheek lyrics about a difficult woman and its elastic bassline, became inescapable. Right behind it came "Two Princes," an even bigger hit with that instantly recognizable opening riff and Barron's hiccupping vocal delivery. By 1993, Pocket Full of Kryptonite had gone quintuple platinum.

The problem with breaking through on those two songs is that they defined Spin Doctors in the public imagination as a novelty act, even though the band saw themselves as serious musicians with jazz and blues chops. Their second album, Turn It Upside Down, dropped in 1994 and went platinum, but it didn't spawn hits anywhere near the size of the first two. "You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast" got some airplay, but the moment had essentially passed. Grunge had reshaped rock radio, and jam-band funk felt suddenly dated.

Things got complicated in 1999 when Barron developed vocal cord paralysis and lost his voice entirely. The band went on hiatus while he recovered, which took several years of treatment and therapy. Schenkman had already left by then, and when they regrouped in the 2000s, it was with different lineups and much lower stakes.

Spin Doctors never broke up officially. They've continued releasing albums periodically, including Nice Talking to Me in 2005 and If the River Was Whiskey in 2013, the latter being a blues covers album that actually suited their strengths better than chasing radio hits. They tour regularly, mostly playing festivals and clubs where audiences want to hear "Two Princes" and remember 1992 fondly.

The band exists now in that particular zone reserved for one-hit wonders who actually had two hits and never quite went away. Barron still fronts the group, his voice recovered but never quite the same. They're a nostalgia act, basically, but they seem fine with that, still playing, still jamming, still doing what they started doing in New York clubs before anyone cared.

Their shows are pretty straightforward. Crowd knows Two Princes and sings along hard. Energy is fun but not intense—people are there for a solid set of 90s pop-rock, not transcendence. Decent musicians, decent time. Nothing revelatory.

Known for Two Princes, All the Way Home, Little Miss Can't Be Wrong, Jimmy Olsen's Blues, Clowns

See Spin Doctors Live