If the River Was Whiskey
Ruf
Forget the kryptonite — Spin Doctors have scored a pocket full of blues.
During the U.K. run of the “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” 20th-anniversary tour in 2011, the blues-rock-pop band resurrected three original blues songs from early in their career. The group and their fans enjoyed them so much, more were broken out for the U.S. and European tours later that year and in 2012. Ultimately those and other reincarnated tunes from the band’s New York City blues-bar beginnings comprised a self-produced album that was recorded last summer, made available at shows during this year’s U.K./Spain tour, and is just now seeing an official release.
“Whiskey” consists of five previously unrecorded/unreleased songs; three rerecorded and rearranged songs (two of which were previously available on 1994 maxi CD singles and one that had surfaced on 1996’s “You’ve Got to Believe in Something”); plus two brand-new songs.
In an interview from January 2012 on the Facebook profile for fan site Spin Doctors Archive, drummer Aaron Comess offers some backstory: “We have a whole repertoire of blues songs that we used to play. Right around the same time that we were writing all these songs for PFOK playing around in NYC, we used to play some blues clubs in New York. So in order to get the gigs, we had to have blues songs. So we wrote a bunch of original blues songs.”
He adds: “The roots we have are in blues music. But the reason we did it was because we wanted to make some money. There were two clubs in NYC called Mondo Cane and Mondo Perso and those were two of the only places where they actually paid you a guarantee while most of the other clubs paid you a cut of the door money. And if you don’t have a lot of fans yet, you weren’t meant to get a lot of a cut from the door. So everybody wanted to play these places, ’cause you could even go on on a weeknight and you could make 250 bucks, on a weekend you could make 500 bucks. And when you’re 20 years old and a struggling musician, that’s a lot of money! So we basically put together a blues demo and gave it to the guy and just kind of pretended we were a blues band.”
Casual fans might be surprised to learn that these killer tracks are all rough cuts, recorded over a three-day period at Comess’ home studio. “By the third day,” reflects singer Chris Barron in the album’s press release, “we’d recorded all 10 of the demos. We went out to dinner that night, we were all having a cocktail, and someone was like, ‘Gentlemen, I believe our demo is a record.’ And we all just laughed.”
So for now, at least, Spin Doctors have come full circle.
P.S. Those wanting to hear what they sound like in concert these days are advised to check out this free late-night performance they gave on the day the album recording session was finished.
Tracks
1. Some Other Man Instead
2. If The River Was Whiskey
3. Sweetest Portion
4. Traction Blues
5. Scotch And Water Blues
6. About A Train
7. The Drop
8. Ben’s Looking Out The Window blues
9. So Bad
10. What My Love?
Total time: 42:23
External links
artist’s website
amazon.com
iTunes Store
