Columbia City Paper

Chris Barron, lead singer of the Spin Doctors, brings songs from his new project The Time Bandits, as well as solo gems, to the White Mule next week. Fans of the Grammy-nominated Spin Doctors –best known for their hits “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes”—can expect less funk than what they’re used to from Barron, but will be thoroughly engrossed by the deeper well of traditional rock from which he is currently drawing.

“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.”

Barron lost his voice for a few years, quite literally, due to vocal chord paralysis, a diagnosis that broke up his band and left him wondering if he would ever talk again, let alone sing. Trying everything from steroids, to acupuncture, to voice training, he eventually regained his voice. Throughout it all, he continued to write songs.

As his voice returned, he tweaked his new batch of songs in the East Village during the birth of the Anti Folk scene. “I used to go down to the Sidewalk Café to try out new songs, and I met Adam Green and Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches. I sang on some of their early albums and played guitar with them,” he says, before he eventually met the members of what would become The Time Bandits.

These days, Barron and his band are touring when time allows, just returned from a trip to Iraq to perform for the troops, and are psyched on their latest EP “Songs From the Summer of Sangria.”

It’s safe to assume that anything goes with Barron’s acoustic show. So the White Mule can probably expect to hear songs from across the spectrum of his long, storied career.

-Norbet Sykes

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