The Chris Barron performance for this Saturday, 4/24 has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience. Refunds are available through your point of purchase
Chris Barron is many things to many people: the voice of the Spin Doctors, the face of the jam-band scene, an MTV superstar, an East Village troubadour, the author of some of the 1990s' most enduring radio hits (including "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Two Princes" among others), a father and a teacher. But these days, the Spin Doctors singer is most at home when he's simply playing rock and roll. "You tend to write yourself into the places you want to play," Barron admits. "There was a time when I was writing bedside songs for the walls of my room, but these days I am writing what I like to call 'bar music for big theaters'-stripped down, honest rock and roll like The Last Waltz meets Exile on Main Street." For Barron, the journey from bars to arenas to the bar-like theaters he now finds most comfortable hasn't always been easy, but his songwriting has always been honest.
Bursting out of seminal New York watering holes like Nightingale's and Wetlands in the early 1990s, the Spin Doctors helped popularize the neo-jam scene with their funky, infectious brand of rock and roll. The group's marathon high-energy performances-often on bills with Barron's childhood friends Blues Traveler-found the Spin Doctors packing rooms across the country and, in 1992, the band participated in the inaugural H.O.R.D.E. tour. The Spin Doctors' multi-platinum debut Pocket Full of Kryptonite became a grassroots success story, spawning ubiquitous hits and earning the group a Grammy nomination, a Rolling Stone cover-story, and gigs with luminaries like the Rolling Stones. But tragedy struck when at the height of his career, Barron was diagnosed with an acute form of vocal cord paralysis and experts gave him a fifty-percent chance of ever speaking-or singing-normally again. Soon after, the Spin Doctors parted ways, and Barron soldiered on without a band.
As he struggled to save his voice through everything from acupuncture to prescription steroids and extensive vocal training, Chris made a return to his first love, songwriting. He began to teach classes on the craft, mentoring the next generation of singer/songwriters, and unknowingly blossomed into the godfather of the critically acclaimed East Village Anti-Folk scene, responsible for the wildly popular Juno soundtrack.
Thanks to years of hard work and some good luck, Barron's voice eventually recovered, and he has slowly returned to New York's vibrant club circuit. Touting his freshest batch of songs since the mid-1990s, Barron stumbled upon the members of his current band, The Time Bandits, while playing a solo gig in upstate New York, and found himself finally amidst another tried-and-true rock band, almost twenty years after he formed the Spin Doctors.
Colorado's Scott Von opens for Chris Barron, bringing music at the crossroads where roots meets folk. Stomping boots and stirring grooves from the roots tratidition, stripped down songs from the folk tradition, and a stage show that inspires.
