Barron thrives away from spotlight

Chris Serico • The Journal News • Aug. 24, 2010 • Photo courtesy of Chris Barron

While none of Chris Barron’s subsequent albums would match the sales success of the Spin Doctors’ sextuple-platinum “Pocket Full Of Kryptonite,” the frontman might be even happier touring with the Time Bandits, who will return Friday to the Towne Crier Café in Pawling.

“I thought that the better we did, the more fun it would be,” says Barron of his Spin Doctors days. “It was very fun — we rode around the world first-class, and we traveled, and there was a lot of really fun stuff — but the band really wasn’t getting along very well. I guess that was really the strangest, saddest part of the whole thing for me.”

Responsible for some of the biggest hits of the early ’90s — including “Two Princes,” “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” — Spin Doctors’ band members have since reconciled, reuniting on stage for gigs when Barron isn’t performing solo or with the Time Bandits.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m not grateful; I really am,” Barron emphasizes. “We had something that not a lot of people get to experience.” Few, for example, can say they’ve opened for the Rolling Stones.

“They are my absolute heroes,” Barron says. “After doing that gig, they’re even more my heroes. They’re so charismatic and so cool, and I just had a great time getting to meet them and hang out with them a little bit.”

But don’t discount how cool it is to make a cameo on a popular children’s television show, either.

“In a mainstream kind of sense, I think more people saw us on ‘Sesame Street’ than anything else,” he says. “That’s the kind of thing you can just tell anybody, ‘Hey, I was on ‘Sesame Street,’ and people are like, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty cool.’ “

The Spin Doctors’ mainstream radio ubiquity was bolstered by the use of their hits in TV shows and movies. Tack on a Grammy nomination for “Two Princes,” and Barron was an international star at age 22.

“Being famous is really weird,” he says. “Walking into a mall, and having somebody be like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s the guy from Spin Doctors,’ and then to have like 300 people mob you for a photograph, and have to stand there for three hours, because you wanted to buy some underwear. That’s pretty strange.”

He expresses a similar love-hate relationship with fame in his Manhattan apartment, where he moved “with a guitar and 100 bucks” in 1988. There, he showcases gold and platinum records, and a framed copy of the Spin Doctors’ Rolling Stone cover, in his bathroom.

“The Rolling Stone cover is hanging above the toilet,” he says. “Everybody who comes to my house eventually uses the bathroom. It’s a way to make sure everybody sees it, but they see it in a certain kind of perspective.”

Perspective is nothing new to Barron, who nearly lost his singing voice forever in 1998, when he was diagnosed with an acute form of vocal cord paralysis. At the time, the chances of speaking normally again were halved. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” he says. “But I’ve got to say it was a learning experience. It was an opportunity to look at myself outside the light of my profession.”

Because he tried so many treatment options — including yoga, acupuncture, Chinese herbs and chatting with a therapist — in the year it took for his voice to fully recover, he still has no idea which did the trick. He suspects it might be Prednisone, a prescription steroid that yielded its share of side effects.

“It’s not a picnic,” he says.

A year after his speaking voice recovered, he began touring again regularly. Lately, he’s been hitting the road solo and with the Time Bandits, logging more than 40 flights since May. His association with the Time Bandits began after meeting musicians one at a time at mutual gigs and striking up friendships with them.

“We were just talking like a band, and without even really saying anything, we kind of became a band,” Barron says. Included with the ticket price for the Towne Crier show is Barron’s new solo CD, “Songs From the Summer of Sangria.”

The title was inspired by a relaxing night he spent outdoors with his girlfriend at a deluxe hotel in Seville, Spain. In producing the album, Barron is “kind of going for ‘Exile On Main Street’ meets ‘The Last Waltz.’ “

But that doesn’t mean Barron abandons his Spin Doctors hits at any of his concerts.

“To be sure, I’m going to play those tunes,” he says. “But I’m trying to do this really rootsy, rock ‘n’ roll thing, and people are usually surprised. What I’m doing now is similar enough (so) if you like the Spin Doctors, you’re going to like what I’m doing now; but it’s different enough that if you didn’t like the Spin Doctors, you might like what I’m doing now. A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘No offense, but I like (the new material) better.’ “

Selling millions of records and collecting “some great checks because of royalties” has helped Barron live comfortably.

“I may not be set for life, if being set for life is having a butler and never having to lift a finger again,” he says. “But I think I’m set for life in that, for the foreseeable future, I can make a living doing what I love to do. In that sense, I’m definitely set for life.”