Eric Schenkman is ready to feel the wind in his hair. “That’s the best,” said the guitarist for the Spin Doctors, one of Sunday’s three headlining acts at the 13th annual Thunder Bay Blues Fest.
For the blues-based band, an outdoor concert is somewhere they’re comfortable. “Everybody seems to have a really good time outside. We like to party and have a good time so it’s a good situation for us,” said Schenkman during a phone interview from Mystic, Conn. Friday afternoon.
The Spin Doctors hit commercial success in the early 1990s with their album Pocket Full of Kryptonite; it spawned major hits with tracks Two Princes and Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.
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But the band’s next two albums failed to reach the same level of success and Schenkman walked away from Spin Doctors in 1994.
The group saw members come and go until 2001 when the original lineup of Schenkman, Chris Baron (vocals), Aaron Comess (drums) and Mark White (bass) reunited for a show in New York City to play a club slated for closure they frequented regularly in their early days.
Five days later, the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers came down. “That was a quarter of a mile from where we were playing. We just never broke up again. We’ve been together ever since having a good time, releasing records and recording and doing what we do,” said Schenkman.
Their latest album If the River was Whiskey was released in 2013.
Although the Spin Doctors have kept recording new original music, they don’t shy away from embracing their ’90s history. They even played a ’90s festival in Iowa last weekend. “It we get to concentrate on hits from the ’90s, we play them. But we also play a lot of blues-based stuff that we do and we rock the house,” said Schenkman. “It doesn’t really matter to us what kind of thing we’re in. It all seems to fit.”
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And the group is ready for their first show in Thunder Bay at the Blues Fest. “I’m psyched to be up north playing. It’s probably the most beautiful part of the world and most people don’t know it,” said Schenkman. “I can’t wait to go up.”
The Spin Doctors take the stage Sunday at 6:15 p.m. and will be followed first by Serena Ryder and then The Wallflowers.
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