My Generation has a ton of great singer/songwriters.

I went to high school with three of them.

Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors is the greatest.

Here is why…

It began my sophomore year in high school when Chris Gross (aka Barron), later of The Spin Doctors (SD), flopped into choir "class". He was a senior and I was terrified. I don't usually scare easily but it was my first day in the Tenor Section of the BIG choir conducted by the inimitable William Trego and accompanied by the unlimited talent of pianist Nancianne Parrella. They put me in the big choir early because I have a very high voice with no falsetto. That means I can just sing low, middle and upper notes without change in tone. Mrs P had known about my voice since I was in 7th grade. Her husband, Mr. P, was our choir teacher in Middle School as well as my mentor in the technical theatre arts/audio engineering which is one of my current professions; we were known as the “Stage and Lighting Crew”. So they put me in that choir room that day and I did not feel qualified.

Another funny part of the story…in that choir room that day were two of the other future brilliant singer/songwriters of My Generation! John Popper of Blues Traveler (BT) and Laurie Berkner of The Laurie Berkner Band (LBB)!

Did I mention that I stalk these artists? They are some of my favorite people, though I don’t know them all that well. Freshman year I ran the spotlight while Laurie played the lead in WONDERFUL TOWN. I often forgot to follow her with the light because I was so enamored by her voice. I had such a crush. Why oh why O-H-I-O? As a sophomore at Princeton High School (PHS) I played Mr. Sipos of the parfumerie in SHE LOVES ME. Popper played Mr. Maraczek, the overbearing owner of the shop.

I don’t remember Chris Barron being onstage but I know he was everywhere we sang. He slips in and out of rooms with an odd subtlety considering he is so floppy. The adults responsible for teenagers in Princeton are remarkable people. You might think that there is something in the water there to produce three of the great Gen-X musicians but NO! Its the parents, teachers and store owners. They expand the boundaries of whatever topic you are interested in and they make you explore topics you hate too. Laurie, John and Chris benefitted from the same delusional environment I did; we all thought we could be famous and leave a significant mark on the world however we choose. I am still suffering in this delusion as evidenced by writing this vlog and expecting anyone to read it.

Princeton High classes of 1986-91 knocks the music industry on its butt!

Chris wrote two pop mega-hits that are still hot today and then became the Richie Havens/Leonard Cohen of My Generation.

Laurie figuratively raised thousands of kids with her infectious hooks laced with life lessons. She is like the Joni Mitchell/Raffi of My Generation.

Popper is like no one I can imagine…maybe Miles Davis? His lungs, in combination with his grasp of rhymes, history and heartache single-handedly put the harmonica on the map. It did not exist in pop music before he played it - no apologies to Dylan.

Not songwriters, but critical to the success of My Generation, I must mention other PHS grads in the hallways in those fertile years of 1986-1991. Bobby Sheehan plucked the bass with a funk only rivaled by Mark White of SD. Along with Brendan Hill on the drums, BT invented the HORDE/JamBand 90’s sound. Dave Matthews and Big Head Todd&The Monsters learned it from them (and yes, of course, I recognize that BT learned it from The Allman Brothers and The Dead but they are all Baby Boomers).

Chan Kinchla was the best offensive and defensive lineman on our football team my junior year, I was his back up; he never left the field so I never left the sideline. His guitar is just as tenacious. Later, after Bobby’s premature death, Tad Kinchla ditched his other successful band, Dowdy Smack, and kept the jam going. His presence in the story forces me to reluctantly recognize PHS Classes post-1987 and if he wasn’t so darn talented and nice, I would skip it. At a recent BT show at NYC’s famed venue, Irving Plaza, Popper, Tad & Brendan built the set list with transitions from one song to another like butter. They link four or five songs together with improvisation and tempo changes; even though the tunes were released 30 years apart. It makes me go live on Facebook so everyone can feel what I feel as I jump and down (getting my exercise for the year) and yelling to them from the mosh pit,

“Where are we going next?!? (musically)

because my entire humanity is wrapped up in this transition!”

Dr. Anthony Biancosino our Jazz Band teacher and the inspiration for the maniac in Damien Chazelle’s WHIPLASH

That Jam started in Band Class 1984. It was taught by an aggressive, aspirational musician who GUARANTEED that we could play the charts he handed at the beginning of each year. I cannot stress how different he was from all our other teachers. It’s indescribable. And on top of it, he was always right. We won every competition we went to. I recently went to buy a muffin at Lilly Pies in the Princeton Shopping Center and the owner behind the counter told me about how good her Middlesex County Jazz Band was at Berklee in 1987 and they thought they would win it. They didn’t.

If you don’t get me, listen to Brendan, John and many of us, play Hank Levy’s CHAIN REACTION at PHS (thank you Jeff Chen’88 youtube page!)

& then listen to them play CRASH & BURN on Letterman 10 years later.

After high school they went on to play The Continental and The Wetlands in NYC and I went to college at Syracuse University to be a lighting designer. It never occurred to me not to go to college; I assumed it was the first requirement to being an professional who understood commerce and the craft of how to build a career in the Arts. I sat around my frat house bragging that I had designed the lighting for BT. I tried to get them to come play a party. By that time their Manager was getting $10K per show. We booked Professor Spoon; they were cheaper.

I was stunned after I designed a dozen plays in college that Laurie, John and Chris had built such music industry credibility as they went to school too! It was beyond my wildest dreams. I thought we all went to college and drowned our budding artistic ambitions in beer and low production values.

NO they accomplished so much more!

They all moved to NYC, wrote amazing song and lived together in Brooklyn. (Laurie avoided the hovel that was home to Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler) but they started working as artists by the time I got back to the City and joined them. Pre-kid’s music, Laurie’s bands Lois Lane and Red Onion didn’t pay her rent. I attended all the shows and supported the cause best I could; I have always paid for my tickets and the VIP passes are a bonus! I thought they should reciprocate by coming to my off-off-broadway theatrical extravaganzas! They were busy I guess; becoming great songwriters.

Ms Sonnenfeld was our wicked insightful Orchestra leader. She brought something beyond the choir and band classrooms.

For Chris, he went way beyond his high school friends. The Spin Doctors were brought to my attention by Rob Perle, another superb jazz musician PHS’88 who works in Mergers&Acquisitions. I went to visit him at Columbia University in the winter of 1990ish and he pulled out a box full of cassette tapes. He handed me bootlegs of hundreds of hours of BT and SD playing around town. “But Anyway” had made its way up to Syracuse by then but “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” had not. He was in the TWO SKINNIE Js, another band in the scene and is way cooler than I am.

He said, “BT is cool but I really like what Chris Gross is doing, it’s more. More funky!”

Soon after I had twins in September of 2000 I learned that Laurie was famous! In a Mommy&Me class at the YWCA in Forest Hills, Queens, someone was passing around a CD of children’s music that her kid loved. On the cover of the CD I saw one of my high school crushes! All the 3 year olds in the room knew the words to her smash hit Victor Vito. It is so catchy I can still sing all the lyrics to this day.

Mr Trego is conducting and Mr Parella is at the reel-to-reel deck. I suspect that probably isn’t me learning over his shoulder

How dare I compare them head-to-head? This is stupid.

I agree with that negative voice in your head but please stick with me: I was inspired to assemble this silly exercise when I heard that all three of them were putting out new albums in the same year. I don’t believe in coincidences so I was drawn to the cycle that led them to continue to succeed to have a family, own real estate and a full-time job that they loved. We are not all so lucky.

My final comparison breaks down this way: All three songwriters are icons; empire builders. While many other decent musicians in our high school choir chose to become investment bankers and lead major academic Sciene Departments, John, Laurie and Chris took the road less travelled. What could be more impressive?

Laurie Berkner is a very different genre than Popper and Barron. She plays in a vertical of children’s music and she is the Queen. Her energy is contagious, her band is enthusiastic and her writing is ingenious. On face value she is revolutionary and inventive. Her writing is rhymey and inspires me to jump up and down; I worry that I will crush a child in my wake.

John Popper is a genius. If you listen to Travelers and Thieves as often as I have (but still don’t know all the lyrics) you will find a dense, wordy, awesome path to connect History to Present Day in equal measure. He changed the optics with his harmonica. He is a character on SNL. He is a cultural icon because his chops are out of this world. No one has heard a human blow like John Popper can blow. He won Grammys and plays today like a soaring wingspan about the horizon.

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Chris and I reconnected recently. I designed and produced an indie film, THE INCOHERENTS, written and starring Jeff Auer (as “Bruce”) and co-starring original music by Alex Emanuel (“Jimmy”). The movie is available now on iTunes/Play stores and is great. At its core, its about a band that was rising in the same era as BT & SD but aborted; in 2019 they are getting the band back together.

Jeff wrote a plot point where Jimmy runs into a more successful 90s rocker at a gig one night and gets crushed. On the page it was written for Popper or Chris or whomever we could get to do it for free. Hootie would have been great in the role! One night BT played a lounge in Atlantic City and I snuck backstage and handed Popper the script. I never heard back from him. On twitter I DM’d Chris and he wrote back with his cell number! The other Producers of the film and I were impressed and excited! We agreed to wait out in the street outside a solo gig Chris was playing on the lower east side in Manhattan one cold night and shoot the scene.

Chris played himself and dropped the “Two Princes” STREET CRED BOMB on “Jimmy” with the grace of a seasoned actor. Jimmy was deflated and Alex (the actor and the guitarist in real life, it turns out had auditioned to be a part of the SPIN DOCTORS in the mid-2000’s but it didn’t work out. Remarkably, I saw the SD play the Brooklyn Bowl recently and they are going into the studio soon with the original line up of Shenkman’s nimble fingers, and White’s aforementioned massive funk. Aaron Comess DRIVES the beat. Without him, I worry that Chris would just to continue to flop around. (literally). He would sing and play his guitar elegantly but

Then Chris surprised me. He invited my girlfriend and me to go out with him and Lindsey! We sang together walking the streets of Manhattan and I had to remember my role. I tried to sing the melody so Chris and Lindsey could rock the gorgeous harmonies. Know thy place I said to myself. I attended Chris’ 50th birthday party in their apartment! As we became friends again we sang more, I saw him play solo with just a guitar at dive bars and I heard about so many things we had in common such as divorces, custody battles and crazy sleep patterns that tortured whomever slept next to us. I heard his story about vocal paralyzation which kept him from singing for two years. He played chess quietly in Washington Square Park. He wondered if he could ever make a living as a rock star again. I wondered why I hadn’t become a rock star and realized that the answer was right in front of me: commitment. He and Laurie and Popper had put in the work.

Spin Doctors have put out 5 studio albums so far. After the 1991 smash Pocket Full of Kryptonite they followed up with the equally pop hit machine Turn It Upside Down. Then they put out two albums that I didn’t know about until I just read their WikiPedia page but with If the River was Whiskey in 2013 I was paying attention again and I heard My Generation’s first rockin blues band since Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble (John Meyer and Gary Clark Jr are Gen-Y in my book). I should have noticed where SD was headed from their 3rd album, You've Got to Believe in Something but i missed it. There was Chris combining his eclectic influences from Choir, Orchestra and Physics Class all the way to his travelers as a Massive Rock Star and everything in between; and he figured out how to put it all out on stage with his heart on his sleeve.

Then Chris surprised me again; he crowd sourced his latest album on KICKSTARTER. I bought a custom In 2019, 422 backers pledged $36,730 to help bring the album to life. No record label. No middle man robbing the band of their profits. No jet planes or stadium tours. Just a creative man making his art and hustling.

Angels and One Armed Jugglers is a shining example of why Chris Barron is the Greatest Singer/Songwriter of My Generation.

Beyond the talent, persistence and work ethic, Chris combines an inner light from his soul with some-kinda-way to get me hear the lyrics (I usually just hear the hook). His metaphors are personal to him and feel personal to me. His YouTube videos of himself playing are magnetic and endearing at the same time. Even during COVID-19 quarantine he is in his NYC apartment playing a regular Thursday Happy Hour on STAGEit. Sure, D-Nice and DJDariusthe1st (also PHS’88) do us all a huge favor by going live on Instagram as a pick-me-up in these crazy times, and Chris does that too, but as an entrepreneur myself, I feel in his lyrics and his ethic that capitalism and art have to merge. He is a rock star who needs to make a living. It’s never easy and Chris brightens my day and inspires me with his music.

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Epilogue: of course there are a ton of other amazing singer/songwriters from my high school. Here are a link to more info from an informative article by the inimitable Barbara Figge Fox:

https://princetoncomment.com/2010/01/25/home-grown-jazz-talent-2/

Disclaimer: Chris did not pay me to think or write this though I will gladly consider bribery offers from Popper or Laurie or Trey Anastasio but Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi need not apply!

Thank you for reading til the end. Please feel free to comment and correct. This vlog was originally published after a drunken night with BT/SD in Feb 2018. It was heavily edited May 2020 when Chris quoted my in his most recent biography.

Thank you and Peace in this new normal.

Sincerely,

Charles (aka ChuckieJabbaNYC)

+1 917-453-4762 in my direct line if you wanna chat…

Princeton High School singer/songwriter head-to-head battle!