BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 Blues Traveler, Gin Blossoms, and the Spin Doctors have been spending their summer winding their way across the country.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the tour will stop at SteelStacks in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
The bands’ history runs deeper than just a few months on the road together. You can trace their lineage all the way back to the mid-1980s in Princeton, New Jersey, where Spin Doctors singer Chris Barron and Blues Traveler front-man John Popper were high school buddies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the lead wasn\u2019t the repertoire we have with Blues Traveler, me going back to high school with those guys, us going back to New York City with them, the very inception of both bands, the story would be how much history we have with the Gin Blossoms,\u201d Barron tells 69 News.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose guys opened for us in the very beginning, and we did some more gigs with those guys opening for us in like the summer of \u201893, kind of at the height of our whole crazy whirlwind thing,\u201d Barron adds.<\/p>\n
Blues Traveler guitarist Chan Kinchla says there was even a brief period where Barron was also in the band before Popper introduced him to Spin Doctors guitarist Eric Schenkman.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Chris) came to New York and was in Blues Traveler for like a month before we realized we can\u2019t have two lead singers. One\u2019s bad enough,\u201d Kinchla jokes.<\/p>\n
Spin Doctors were the first of the three bands to achieve mainstream success. Their 1991 debut album \u2018Pocket Full of Kryptonite\u2019 turned them into MTV and radio mainstays, thanks to the hit singles \u2018Two Princes\u2019 and \u2018Little Miss Can\u2019t Be Wrong.\u2019 The leadoff track, \u2018Jimmy Olsen\u2019s Blues,\u2019 also became a fan-favorite.<\/p>\n
Gin Blossoms followed suit in 1992. Anchored by the hits \u2018Hey Jealousy,\u2019 \u2018Found Out About You\u2019 and \u2018Allison Road,\u2019 the band\u2019s major label debut, \u2018New Miserable Experience,\u2019 has since achieved quadruple-platinum status.<\/p>\n
Two years later, Blues Traveler finally broke through with their fourth studio album \u2013 fittingly titled \u2018Four.\u2019 Kinchla credits A&M Records and college radio for helping the album gain momentum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew it was good. But we thought our other records were good. And we\u2019d gotten a little better in the studio. Every record we were trying to get some stuff on the radio and maybe break through a little bit,” Kinchla says.<\/p>\n
“It slowly built, and we got more and more relationships with radio and with our record company, so it was very much a joint effort to kind of break us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u2018Four\u2019 spawned the hits \u2018Run-Around\u2019 and \u2018Hook.\u2019 Kinchla says the latter wasn\u2019t originally meant to be on the album — even though the band had been playing the song live. He says they decided to record it after the label told the band what they were hearing \u201cwasn\u2019t Blues Traveler enough.\u201d Kinchla says A&M wanted more \u201cdeeper, quirky cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought (‘Hook’) was a little novelty because it\u2019s making fun of writing a single, or something. I don\u2019t really know what was going through our heads,\u201d Kinchla jokes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point that\u2019s become even more well-known than \u2018Run-Around\u2019 in some ways,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Next year, Blues Traveler will be celebrating its 40th anniversary, a milestone Kinchla is still trying to wrap his head around.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are way more chill than we were. I mean, the \u201890s and aughts, it was just a messy, riotous party, the whole way,\u201d Kinchla says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes us more consistently good, playing-wise. We have huge catalogs now, which is pretty fun. But honestly, when I get up on stage and start playing, it\u2019s like it\u2019s its own world, and I really feel like I\u2019m 20 again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Barron says he now takes a \u201clove-forward\u201d approach to life. He does not miss the loneliness that came with stardom and the rigors of touring.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of pressure on the relationship with the people that you were out with, and it was frustrating,\u201d Barron says.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo sometimes you\u2019d be inclined to maybe take a little bit of that out on the people around you, and with good reason, you know what I mean? You\u2019d just be frustrated and lonely,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
But that loneliness has helped Barron appreciate the bond and camaraderie he\u2019s developed with his bandmates.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a gratitude to have known some people for a really long time who do the same weird job; it\u2019s like being an astronaut or something like that, except it doesn\u2019t have nearly as much redeeming social and scientific value,\u201d Barron says.<\/p>\n
The Spin Doctors are also celebrating their own milestone. This month marks the 35th anniversary of the release of \u2018Pocket Full of Kryptonite.\u2019 Barron says he’s learned to appreciate the defining nature of the album’s success.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor better or for worse, maybe I\u2019ll make something better than \u2018Pocket Full of Kryptonite,\u2019 maybe I already have made a bunch of stuff that\u2019s better than \u2018Pocket Full of Kryptonite,\u2019 I don\u2019t know,\u201d Barron says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe someday I\u2019ll do something that\u2019s more famous than that, but for now, it\u2019s very likely that is the thing that I\u2019ll be known for,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
And no, he\u2019s not sick of playing the hits.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask me, do you get tired of playing \u2018Two Princes\u2019 and \u2018Little Miss Can\u2019t Be Wrong\u2019 and \u2018Jimmy Olsen\u2019s Blues\u2019? And I\u2019m like, let me rephrase that question. Do I get tired of playing a song that I wrote and watching a room full of people go nuts? And the answer is no, I don\u2019t. I don\u2019t get tired of that,\u201d Barron says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love those songs, I\u2019m grateful to those songs, and I\u2019m grateful to the guys for being there through this whole thing and putting the grease on those songs that made them hits,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Kinchla says the individuality of the music and the organic way bands hit it big set the \u201890s apart from other decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these bands were very different, and grunge was one side of it, so there\u2019s a lot of really interesting homegrown band music at that time,\u201d Kinchla says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere weren\u2019t a lot of singer-songwriters or individual people or sad girls or power pop. It was just a lot of quirky bands coming up out of the bowels of these different cities, so that\u2019s kind of what the era was, and it was pretty cool,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
After years of intersecting and intertwining careers, Kinchala says the camaraderie between the three bands has not waned. Last year, Blues Traveler and Gin Blossoms performed a medley of \u2018Run-Around\u2019 and \u2018Hey Jealousy\u2019 on \u2018Jimmy Kimmel Live!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAll three bands are alive and kicking and just playing great,\u201d Kinchla says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vibe\u2019s good, and that translates to the show. There\u2019s a lot of sitting-in going on, and we have fun just enjoying the summer and rockin\u2019 out,\u201d he shares.<\/p>\n
Blues Traveler, Gin Blossoms and Spin Doctors perform Tuesday at SteelStacks in Bethlehem. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. Show time is 6:30 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 Blues Traveler, Gin Blossoms, and the Spin Doctors have been spending their summer winding their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[113747,153,155,154,45266,30799,45267,35289,113748,113746,45268,634],"class_list":["post-269742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-1990s-music","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-blues-traveler","tag-concert-tour","tag-gin-blossoms","tag-live-performance","tag-music-anniversary","tag-rock-bands","tag-spin-doctors","tag-steelstacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}