A Conversation with the Spin Doctors’ Chris Barron – HuffPost 8.8.11

Mike Ragogna: Chris Barron. The Spin Doctors. The 20th anniversary of Pocket Full Of Kryptonite. Whatcha got?

Chris Barron: I can’t believe 20 years went by. I’m lucky to be in a band that was awesome enough to make a record that people still are remotely interested in 20 years later.

MR: Since this is a celebration of your biggest album, let’s cover the whole deal. Can you go into the story including Trucking Company and John Popper?

CB: Well yeah, I went to high school with John Popper, we were in English class. John was a hell of a character to have known when he was 16 years old. I feel privileged to have known somebody that at 16, you just knew the guy was going to be a star. He was just playing the harmonica like that in junior year of high school. He was a mysterious guy that I slowly became friends with. I crashed his car and then he let me drive his car all the time after that, he’s just a funny guy.

So, after high school, I was an aspiring musician myself and I was writing songs. You just knew if you had John Popper in your band, you just knew something good was going to happen because he was such a virtuoso. I was trying to get him to do something with me, meanwhile Eric Schenkman was trying to get him to do something. They were already in a band called Trucking Company together, but John had the Blues Traveler. The Blues Traveler formed in high school, and I actually was in a predecessor of Blues Traveler called Blues Band with some of the same guys–John Popper and Brendan Hill who’s still the drummer now. So, I knew John, Eric knew John, Eric wanted John to be more involved with Trucking Company, and I wanted John to start a band with me, but all John wanted to do was the Blues Traveler. He figured if he introduced me and Eric, something cool would happen. He was right except we did a rehearsal together and it was great we made some great music together. Then the next time we got together, Eric and I almost got into a fistfight.

MR: (laughs) Seriously? What was that about?

CB: (laughs) Oh nothing, probably some silly thing, Eric has a bit of a temper. I was really green and didn’t know how to be in a band and I had offended him somehow. He threatened to kick my ass and I was in his face, then John split us up and we didn’t talk for a year. Then I ran into Eric in New York City about a year later and he asked me to do a gig with him, I was like, what the hell. He had a gig at a frat way up in Harlem at Columbia called Delta Phi. He and I started preparing for this gig, and during that period of time, he found Aaron Comess the drummer, practicing in a practice room at the New School in New York City in the jazz program there. Eric came in one day and said, “I found us a drummer.” I said, “Really?” Then he said, “Yeah, I heard this guy practicing and I just walked in and asked him if he wanted to be in our band and he said yes.” So, that was Aaron. We did this gig up at Delta Phi and we played all night long, people took their clothes off, we had a horn section, John Popper sat in. It was this legendary crazy gig.

So, we started doing gigs up there and this little dump of a bar in New York City called the Nightingale, and pretty soon, we had a weekly gig there. Back then, people came out a lot more, so people were playing every night in New York City. We called it the Manhattan tour, we played almost every night for a year. We were filling these bars; from that, we got a record deal. We toured our brains out and our record company wanted us to come home actually. Pocket Full Of Kryptonite had been out for a while and nothing had really happened and they hadn’t really pushed us. They wanted us to come home and we refused, we wanted to stay on the road and keep pushing this.

So, what happened was that a guy named Jim McGuinn, who was a program director at a station called WEQX in Vermont, wrote them this impassioned letter about what a great band we were and how they were making a big mistake not pushing us. Meanwhile, we won a battle of the bands at a radio station in Hawaii. They would put it up against another song and we beat like Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M, and U2 three weeks in a row. When that happened, our record label Epic realized they had something that they should push. So, they turned on the big Epic push machine and six months later, we were platinum.

MR: Look at how many singles you had on that album, like “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes.” But you also had the videos and they were directed by Rich Murray.

CB: Yeah, that’s right.

MR: And, of course, there was “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues.” So, when your parade of singles were released, you were being compared to jam bands like Phish and Widespread Panic. Chris, do you consider yourself a jam band, is that an accurate description?

CB: We were definitely jamming, and we were definitely a band. I think improvisation has played heavily into what we do. I think we had a lot more focus on songs than on some other jam bands, we were always song-oriented. I came to music as a songwriter and everybody else was very much into having good songs. We didn’t want to noodle over a couple of chords and it wasn’t about long extended solos for us. There’s also an element of extended solos to the whole Spin Doctor thing, but we really wanted to make sure the songs were good.

MR: I would have considered you an improv band, especially with what was defined as a jam band at that time.

CB: I don’t know, I think we’re a jam band because we came out of that whole jam band thing. We definitely jam and improvise, we emphasize songs more than other jam bands.

MR: Who were your inspirations, who inspired you to writing songs?

CB: I had a guitar teacher when I was 12 or 13 who’s name was Barry Peterson from Princeton, New Jersey. He taught me a couple of chords and a Harry Belafonte song and a Fleetwood Mac tune, and I took some chords from each one and just started playing them in a different order. He came in for my next lesson and I was like, “Hey, I put these chords together, what do you think?” He was like, “Yeah, you take a couple of chords you like and you play them and go, ‘dadadadada’ over it and pretty soon that turns into lyrics. You then write that down in a notebook with the chords and that’s how you write songs.” I was like, “What?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “What about notes and squiggly lines and all that stuff?” He said, “You don’t need that stuff. You think Bob Dylan and John Lennon know how to read music?” I said, “Yeah?” He said, “No, they didn’t know how to read music. That’s how they wrote songs too.”

I was never good at playing other peoples songs, and I wanted to sing and play songs, so I started writing my own tunes. So, that’s how I got into writing songs, once somebody said, “No, this how you do it,” it was pretty simple. I was already writing poetry and I was already playing guitar, it was a pretty easy step for me. I listened to a lot of Paul Simon, I always thought he was a great lyricist and I always thought he was a great writer. Musically and chord wise, his songs always took you places and were always surprising musically. So, at that time, I was really into that, and then I got into Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan has this majestic, tremendous, architectonic ability to make a song have this gigantic scope. Then I was into Bob Marley because when I was a kid, I was always kind of political, I always liked the way he could boil down a cause into a song. I always liked movies and painting, sculptures, and art museums. Not to be pretentious or anything like that, but one thing I learned from Eric Schenkman, the guitarist for the Spin Doctors, was to get into other stuff, to find influences outside of rock ‘n’ roll to write from. You can find inspiration in a lot of stuff, personal relationships, things that you see, things that you do, memories. It doesn’t always have to be just rock ‘n’ roll.

MR: I want to read you something Rolling Stone wrote about you in ’93 and I want to get your reaction to it all these years later. “Their popularity is based on universal rock ‘n’ roll virtues…The Doctors aren’t trying to blaze new trails. They know we’ve been down this way with The Stones, Curtis Mayfield, and a few of their other touch stones. But the proof, plenty of it, is in the party.” That’s a beautiful thing to have been said about a band. AndPocket Full Of Kryptonite sold something like 10 million copies?

CB: I think it’s 47 billion copies.

MR: Oh, that’s right. All these years later, what do you think about it all?

CB: Yeah, we were so lucky to have touched on something that a lot of people responded to. We didn’t sit down and say these are going to be our influences, and we are going to prove our point in the party. All of that stuff was an afterthought, it’s so flattering to have been on the cover of Rolling Stone and I’m really been super grateful that people saw fit to write about us and dance to us and pick up a copy of our record. I know a lot of people have gotten a lot of happiness out of it, that’s deeply gratifying. To talk about the influences and what he’s saying there, it’s true, we didn’t set out to blaze a new trail and be particularly original. We weren’t trying to create this new musical motif that had never been heard in the world, like a Miles Davis or something like that. We felt like if we could achieve a certain level of virtuosity in what we were doing that we would be able to let our personalities come through in a really pure way.

I think if you can do anything expressive to the point where your personality purely shines through, then you’re going to be original. I think the only original thing in the world is a personality, there’s no two that are exactly alike. If you can get your personality out in your music, you’re going to be original on some level. I think people who were innovators, what’s really innovative about them is that they are so good that their personality comes out. Even Miles Davis. He created that tone and was doing a lot of stuff that had never been done before, but in a way, it was kind of an extension of his personality, he was such a good player. I don’t think he thought a lot about all of the stuff…maybe he didn’t, I don’t know. I think if he was thinking about it in this way, like, “I’m going to do this really original thing,” I think it wouldn’t have sounded as honest and cool. I think what most innovators are doing are just being really honest and operating musically on a level where they can make the personality just come out.

MR: Can we get the back story of a song that has some personal element attached to it?

CB: Other performers talked about how they wrote songs and it sounds really cool, but I always feel like a dweeb when I do that. One song on that record that has a nice back story is “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues,” which is the song that gave a title to the album–Pocket Full Of Kryptonite. It’s the first song on the record and when I was 19 years old, I was doing an internship in Providence, Rhode Island, at a country/western radio station. I had some friends that went to Brown University and I was staying with them, so I was spending a lot of time at Brown and I was broke. So, I came up with this ruse to eat. I stole an apron from the cafeteria and I would put the apron on and I would walk through the cafeteria like I worked there. Once I got out into the eating area, I would take the apron off and I would just start eating. I’m an essentially honest person, so I didn’t feel good about basically stealing food from the cafeteria. I was sitting there feeling kind of bad, but also being glad to not be hungry anymore. A young woman walked in and looked just like Lois Lane, so my songwriter mind was working. I was looking at her and thinking if she’s Lois Lane, I’m certainly not superman, who am I in this drama. I thought I’m more like that nerdy photographer guy, Jimmy Olsen, and that was the beginning of that song.

MR: Nice story. So, what bonus material is being included in this new double disc of Pocket Full Of Kryptonite?

CB: It is the original record remastered and it sounds fantastic. It’s got our two, I want to say “demos,” but back when we made them, we needed those recordings to get gigs and stuff. We wanted to get a record deal and make a record because that’s what you did back then. You needed a record deal to make a record because it was too expensive to make it on your own. We made these two cassette demos, one was called Can’t Say No and it had 6 songs on it, and then second one was called Piece Of Glass that had 8 songs on it. So, that’s on. It’s a two disc set, the first one is Pocket Full Of Kryptonite and the second one is this two demo set. A couple of other unreleased tracks–a track called “Turn It Upside Down,” which is the title of our second record though the song was never released. Then there is great liner notes by Cree McCree, the famed rock journalist. If you never were really into the record, it’s a great starting point and if you were it’s a great collectors item.

MR: Another thing that catapulted the Spin Doctors was the performance on Saturday Night Live. Is there a story there?

CB: That was absolutely a total thrill. We’re sound checking and it was during the Adam Sandler/Chris Farley years. We’re sound checking and they both walk through the studio and we’re playing “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and Chris Farley just stopped and did the white boy overbite dance, funked-out for a second to it, laughing at himself. I was like, “Wow, that’s Chris Farley rocking out to ‘Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.'” Then talking to Adam Sandler, I didn’t really watch the show back then so I didn’t really know who he was. He said, “So where you coming from?” I was living in downtown New York and he was saying how did you get here, meaning what flight did you get in on. I said, “I came here on the F train.” (laughs) My old apartment, you could take the F up to where they shoot 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live in 30 Rockefeller Center. So, then people started coming up to me and Lorne Michaels was like, “Is it true you took the F Train up here?” Joe Pesci was the host. The guest host has their dressing room across from the band, so we were huge fans of Raging Bull and Goodfellas, the Scorsese, Pesci, and De Niro movies.

So, he was in his dressing room and I was in my dressing room and we sort of looked out of the door at each other. He then came walking in our dressing room, and we were in awe. He said, “So what label are you guys on?” We said, “Epic, Sony.” He said, “Sony, you know Tommy Mottola?” who is the president. We all said, “Tommy Mottola, yeah he’s a great guy.” Then Pesci said, “What are you going to say about him he’s your f**king boss!” (laughs) Leading up to it, we were all wondering if Scorsese and De Niro would show up, and, of course, they did and that was a huge thrill. That was my first time being in a room with somebody as famous as Robert De Niro. Then afterwards, they had this party and Dan Aykroyd is standing there and I thought I had to meet Dan Aykroyd. So I’m thinking of a way to walk up to him and start talking. “Well, he’s a harmonica player from The Blues Brothers, and John Popper is my friend, so I will start talking to him about John Popper.” So, I walk across the room and I get up to him and I’m like, “Mr. Aykroyd,” all awkward. “I’m Chris from the Spin Doctors,” and he was like, “Yeah, I know.” That was a huge moment for me, Dan Aykroyd knows who I am. I must be getting somewhere.

MR: How did the family react to you being on Saturday Night Live?

CB: They were all really excited. I’m pretty lucky I come from a pretty grounded family and everybody was a lot more interested in how I was doing as a person. They were all really thrilled with what was going on. I got lousy grades in school, I was the one where everybody was like, “How’s Chris going to make a living?” They were all glad I found something that I was good at and could make my way in this world.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

CB: First and foremost, play music and be a real musician, practice. Learn to sing on pitch, learn to tune your guitar. Learn to be a real player, there’s no substitute for real musicianship. If you’re a songwriter, read poetry, dig deep, work hard and you will be rewarded. There’s never been a magic bullet, a hand doesn’t come out of the sky and hand you a magic contract. Even the people who have some magic post on Facebook and it’s gone viral. Before they did that, they probably did a lot of other work to get to that point. The whole thing of an overnight success, it’s a myth for the most part. You could wait around for it, but it’s like waiting around to get struck by lightning. Sometimes, it can be as destructive as being struck by lightning. What you really want to do is to create a life where you’re making music to live and you’re living to make music and you’re going to be a lot happier.

MR: What story don’t we know about the Spin Doctors with regards to Pocket Full Of Kryptonite?

CB: Well, we all basically hated each other while we were touring that record. We all have really volatile personalities–well, we don’t all have volatile personalities, but the four of us together is a pretty volatile mix, it used to be. Now we all have kids and are forty years old, we get along now, but there was a lot of fighting. Back when we were playing clubs in New York City, Eric had the presence of mind to say something that was really great, I’m glad that he said it. We were playing all these clubs and we were starting to have these people that really liked our music to show at these places and knew that there were a lot of people playing there. It was a great scene. It was 3 o’clock in the morning and people were standing on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes together. The stages were 6 inches tall and you would step off the stage and there was no dressing room, and we were just hanging out and the fans were our friends. Eric, one night, said, “You know, these are the good ol’ days. No matter where we go, we are going to look back on this time and say that was the best.”

In a way, he was right. He was right in a way that was more profound than he meant it to sound in that these are the good ol’ days now. Twenty years later, it’s great to have people who are interested in the record and fans of the record and I get people coming up to me and say, “I met my wife to that record,” younger people coming and saying that was the first record they ever bought. I think in this life, you want to feel that you being around meant something, even if it’s that you made a funny little record that people could smile to. To me, I don’t need to set the world on fire but it’s nice to know that I had a little part in putting a smile on a few peoples faces.

MR: Chris thank you, this has been a blast. All the best with the 20th anniversary celebration of Pocket Full Of Kryptonite.

CB: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it Mike.

Transcribed by Theo Shier