Spin Doctors Return To Their Blues Rock Roots With New Album 'If The River Was Whiskey'

Spin Doctors will release their new album "If The River Was Whiskey" in the UK on May 6 through Ruf Records (US release is April 30).

Spin Doctors are the multi-million selling icons best known for the hit singles Two Princes and Little Miss Can't Be Wrong, not to mention the classic Pocket Full Of Kryptonite. This year, Chris Barron (vocals), Aaron Comess (drums), Eric Schenkman (guitar) and Mark White (bass) are reconnecting with the flat-broke twenty-somethings who scraped for dollars at the sharp end of the Big Apple blues circuit. The Spin Doctors have come full circle.            

If The River Was Whiskey is the deep-blues album the Spin Doctors almost made before mega stardom came knocking. It finally bottles those near-mythical songs from their time on the sweatbox circuit. "Every note feels dangerous," says Chris Barron.

"We were four guys in our twenties," remembers Aaron Comess of early days in the late '80s.  "Our goal was to write our own songs and make a living doing it. The blues is such a big part of our roots, but one of the reasons we came up with such a big catalogue of blues songs back then is that we'd play these downtown blues bars in New York. You were supposed to play blues covers - but we were actually playing our own songs!"

The concept to revisit these songs struck as the Spin Doctors toured Europe to toast the 20th anniversary of Pocket Full Of Kryptonite, and polled über-fans David Landsburger and Daniel Heinze on what they'd like to hear as the encore that night. Their answer - So Bad - was a song so old that Chris had almost forgotten the verses, but when the venue exploded, a light bulb lit over the band's heads. "We had such a good time playing these tunes," the singer explains, "that we thought, 'We should go make a record of this stuff'. It's really brought us back as a band, musically and interpersonally."