Photo by Jesse Dittmar
For a variety of reasons, Chris Barron is thrilled to talk about this new album Angels and One-Armed Jugglers. It wasn’t that long ago when Barron lost the ability to sing and could barely speak due to a paralyzed vocal cord. To make matters worse it was the second time that he dealt with the condition.
Prior to working his way back to normalcy, the Spin Doctors frontman took the initial steps towards making his fifth solo release. With the extra time to plan its creation, he changed the approach from a solo acoustic recording to a full band effort for what would become Angels and One-Armed Jugglers. The differences can be heard on the bouncy “April and May” and Bourbon Street brass arrangement on “The World Accordion to Garp.”
Although he is able to sing again in the studio and onstage, Barron’s getting by with a matter of will over matter. His vocal cord isn’t resurrected but all his work to fix the problem brought his voice back.
“I’m basically the one-armed juggler. I’m singing with one vocal cord, but I sound as good or better than ever. It’s crazy.”
JPG: In 1999 you had paralysis of the vocal cords and then you had it for the second time last year. You’re not a guitarist like Joe Satriani where it doesn’t matter all too much if he speaks onstage. You’re a singer. So, when it happened again, how did you react? Were you freaked out and depressed or just thought, “I beat this once. I’m gonna do it again?”
CB: I was devastated. It really was like an existential crisis because you have a 50/50 chance of coming back from it. And it was almost worse because it’s not supposed to happen to you twice. It’s not like you get it and then you’re prone to this condition kind of thing. It’s supposed to be like a broken arm. Just because you broke your arm once doesn’t mean you’re going to break your arm again.
My doctor specializes in paralyzed vocal cords. He was at a conference with more than 50 other doctors who all specialize in paralyzed vocal cords, and it’s very rare. He was like, “Incidentally, I’ve got a guy who is having this for the second time. Anybody ever see it happen on somebody twice?” Some of these doctors are pretty senior practitioners; they’ve been around a long time. And out of more than 50, only two of them have seen it happen to somebody twice, which bummed me out. I was like, “Why me?” (slight laugh) “Why is this happening to me twice?”
I did a lot of thinking. Is it psychosomatic? Did I somehow bring it on myself? What the hell is going on?
But, I dug in and I did tons of acupuncture. I went to a speech pathologist. People think a speech pathologist just helps you with speech impediments but they help you with the whole vocal apparatus. I continued to take voice lessons. I did a lot of yoga. I got in really good physical condition. I was doing Alexander Technique.
When I have a problem, my approach is…I call it Throwing the Book At It. Everything that could possibly help I just start going after it.
Actually, it was really emotionally troubling for me. I felt like my body had betrayed me. And for better or for worse I’m one of those people who identify, maybe, a little bit too strongly with my profession. Being a singer is a big part of who I am as a person. When you’re occupation is so physical, it’s hard not to incorporate it into your identity.
JPG: Did you completely lose your voice and you had to walk around with a notebook and pen because you couldn’t say a word?
CB: I could only whisper. Right away, my doctor started me on prescription steroids to jack the nerve back into working again.
I did something that I considered the first time around but the procedure has been updated and refined since then. I opted not to do it the first time. This time I got a collagen injection into the musculature alongside the vocal cord to move it over so that…the two vocal cords had some contact and my doctor said that they had found that people who got this procedure had a higher incidence of their voice returning because it kind of neurologically tricks your brain into thinking that the voice is working, and a lot of times it helps the nerve to come back.
After that I could talk like the Godfather. Basically, I could make myself heard. I could even sing a little bit. I continued to take voice lessons but I had a very thin, raspy reedy Godfather tone.
I actually got my voice back and was singing, did a Spin Doctors show, which is very vocally demanding. I did a solo show. Went back to the doctor and he was like, “This is amazing. Your voice sounds fantastic. Let’s scope you and see that vocal cord.” He did the scope and was, “Oh. Your vocal cord is still largely immobile. Your vocal cord sits in your throat like a V that’s lying on its side, and the V closes together when you make a noise, the two vocal cords vibrate against each other. And they stretch to make the different pitches. Vertically, the stretching motion is back but your vocal cord is not moving laterally.” Basically, I learned how to brace the paralyzed vocal cord, using the musculature outside of the vocal cord. I’ve learned to brace against the other vocal cord.
JPG: It is but at the same time that’s great. Just to wrap up that period of your life. How long was it that you barely had a voice to getting the full range of your voice back again?
CB: It was nine to 11 months.
JPG: I’m glad that you mentioned you had a slight, raspy voice because it seemed as if you had no voice whatsoever. With that in mind I couldn’t understand why you’d bother taking any voice lessons.
CB: Well, that was really cool because through my voice teacher, she had me standing on one of those half spheres so I had to balance with the spherical part down and singing scales. It’s weird, that balancing action is done to brace your vocal cords together. She had me pulling an elastic band while I vocalized. I was also doing Alexander Techniques, so I never knew you could take that kind of control over the musculature of your throat. I sing differently now.
I didn’t realize that I was doing this. I thought I had full mobility with the vocal cords. It felt like I had full mobility. In spite of the fact that the vocal cord itself isn’t that mobile, I might have more mobility than I did to begin with in my vocal fold because I’ve learned to use the musculature instead of the actual vocal cord itself. It’s pretty weird.
My wife was bemused. She’s like, “You are the king of mind over matter.” She was exasperated. “Only you would lose a vocal cord and then learn to sing without it.”
Then, I had written “Angels and One-Armed Jugglers,” the song, before I lost my voice. It was just a line. I was thinking about this old neighbor of mine. When I got my first nice apartment in New York, she lived next door to me. She was a chorus girl, and I was just wondering about her because she was in her late 80s when I knew her. She’d be 120 or something now. She must be long gone.
That line, “angels and one-armed jugglers/sword swallowers and smugglers/good old Adelaide/she must be long gone,” just popped into my head. I wrote that down when I was driving on the 59th Street Bridge. (slight laugh)
It wasn’t until I lost my voice then got it back, and I was making the record and listening to a playback of that song and thought, “Holy crap! I’m the one-armed juggler.”
JPG: When you were working your back to having a voice, I imagine you were working on songs during that time. So, did it represent to you a goal or an exercise to keep you busy?
CB: It’s actually funny. I only wrote a couple tunes while my voice was gone. I journaled a lot, which was part of my process of getting better, although I do that anyway. Part of my process of life is I write three pages of stream of consciousness stuff first thing in the morning; not every day but I try to.
For me songwriting is this constant process ever since I was 14 and my guitar teacher was like, “You take a couple chords, strum ‘em, and sing da-da-da-da-da doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Do that long enough and that turns into words. You write those words down in a notebook with the chords and that’s how you write songs.” I was like, “Wait! What? Are you kidding me?” I always had this penchant for creative writing. At that point I was already writing poetry and stuff.
In seventh grade I had this amazing English teacher and he’s like, “Chris, give me a simile.” I said, “In the distance a bell tolls like a lonely sentinel of a happier time.” He said, “Is that Faulkner?” “No.” “Well, who is that?” “That’s me. I just made that up now.” I saw his eyes go up into his head. He read everything, and he didn’t find it in his memory bank.
I’ve always been a strong writer from an early age. So, once it was revealed to me that songwriting was a process, it’s become part of the way I synthesize information. People who do something creative are so lucky because you synthesize these emotions into other emotions. If you’re lucky, you have some kind of activity that you can funnel these emotions into but a lot of people are like, “I feel sad about these memories that I have and I’m just going to be really angry and drink a lot,” but if you’re a painter or a songwriter or a writer you’re lucky because you take all that stuff and synthesize it. We’re all constantly synthesizing our memories and our emotions and our worldview into something.
I trained myself a long time ago to turn it all into songs. The same that gardening isn’t all about picking vegetables, there’s a lot of different activities going on when you’re working on a garden. Songwriting is like that, too. I practice guitar a lot, and I work on my singing and I write tons and tons and tons of crap in notebooks. I mean, tons of crap. I have three shelves of notebooks. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred notebooks that I’ve filled with bullshit. I sit down to write every day and I give myself permission…if I have to sit there and be like, “You’re an idiot. You’re an asshole. Why are you even alive? What are you doing? This is stupid. You’re stupid. This notebook is stupid. This pen, I don’t like the color of this ink. Look, there’s my cat licking its paw.”
JPG: I like the idea that you write something just about every day and that you have a rule of “no judging” until later when you edit it for song lyrics.
CB: Well, you’re practicing. You watch an athletic event and you see somebody do some incredible athletic feat. For every time you see a wide receiver catch a ball or somebody make an amazing golf shot behind that activity there have been hours and hours and hours, thousands of hours, of stuff that you’ve never watched of them lifting weights and doing conditioning.
Writing is this process in my life. So, not only do I have bits and pieces all over the place in all these notebooks and my computer and in my phone and written down on scraps of paper but while I’m doing that every morning it’s like doing writing push-ups. I’m a big believer in perspiration over inspiration but when inspiration strikes I’m in mid-season form and all my writing faculties are strong and sharp. When I have a really good idea for a song I can sit down and I can come at it with my knives sharpened.
JPG: The songs on the album have been described as eclectic but I see them fitting together as a collection of poppier tunes and others that remind me of The Band, probably in part due to the brass sections on them. You said that the songs were chosen thematically. Can you elaborate on that?
CB: When you stumble across a title early, it’s such a blessing. It’s a frustrating process to name an album once the album is made.
It’s funny because the album is out and I’m really grateful that it’s getting really good reviews. People really seem to like it. I haven’t even gotten a tepid review yet. So, from the other end when the album’s out and everybody likes it, it has this inevitable foregone feeling about it but “Angels and One-Armed Jugglers,” was a really fucked up idea for a title. A lot of people told me (laughs) “That’s a bad title. Don’t call your record that.” People I respect were like, “Really? That’s wordy. Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?” I questioned it a lot, and my wife took awhile to come around to it. One morning, she’s making coffee, and said, “I like ‘Angels and One-Armed Jugglers’!” “Really? You didn’t like it before.” “I know but it’s grown on me.”
I am very intuitive as a writer. I don’t think about genre when I write. I try so hard not to think about outcome when I write. I just write. I learned a long time ago just by going through old notebooks that my brain works thematically, and I think everybody’s does. I would go back through notebooks and I’d look at the notebook from around the Pocket Full of Kryptonite era. “Wow! I was really into ‘pockets’ as metaphors.” Then, other periods of time I’ll look and be like, “Wow! I was really into the sky.” I was writing all these sky metaphors. Then, you go into that a little bit more. The sky, there are images about freedom and space and the divine and the geometry of the universe and how things work together in serendipitous and strange mysterious ways.
I trust myself, as a writer, the process I’ve selected. You end up having a brain buffet but all the dishes go together because it’s one brain that’s generating it. Over time, I’ve learned to write the way I write. I don’t write so differently than I did when I was a kid but now I know the stuff I did when I was a kid works. This thing I did when I was a kid, now, I have a name for this technique. It was an instinct. Now, it’s knowledge.
To answer your question about themes, years ago I was in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. That is a really fascinating museum. It’s an interesting collection because they have a lot of his primary works but they also have a lot of his secondary and tertiary works. I found myself on this one floor and there was this painting in that inimitable Van Gogh style with the chunky strokes of paint. It was ochre and different shades of green in these parallel lines. It was called “Undergrowth.” And the next one was quite similar and it was called “Undergrowth.” I backed up and I looked at the whole wall and all of the paintings on three walls were called “Undergrowth.” I was like, “That motherfucker was leaning under trees and bushes, undergrowth, painting this underneath trees and bushes. He was just painting undergrowth for what looks like a long time. He got all into undergrowth. They’re not his greatest works. You don’t read about Van Gogh’s “Undergrowth” being sold for $52 million dollars on auction.
He was like, “This is my thing. I’m all into undergrowth now.” “What are you painting Vince?” “Oh, undergrowth.”
Can you imagine his brother? “Another “Undergrowth?” What the hell are you doing?” But, he’s fucking Vincent Van Gogh!
That to me was like, “Oh, if I want to write about pockets for a month, then I’m gonna write about fuckin’ pockets for a month. If I want to write about the sky for a year then I’m gonna write about the fuckin’ sky for a year.” There’s something there. Those little funny artistic obsessions, you’ve got to chase those rabbits all the way down the hole.
So, with “Angels and One-Armed Jugglers,” instinctively, I had this title that was a little bit celestial, a little bit terrestrial, a little bit crippled and hurt and beat up but also a little bit magic and divine. It made a lot of room for a lot of different kinds of imagery. Then, I go through my writing. I cherrypick stuff that was in harmony with that funky little obsession that I had.
“The World Accordion to Garp” (off his new album) refers to “I know that high above me there’s an order in the sky/play for the pearly gate man/he’ll show you where they keep the pie.” Love is an angelic, celestial, divine reference there.
On “Too Young to Fade” there’s a line, “I’m on the high wire while the lava boils below.” It’s like a circus, juggler imagery there.
Then, Shawn Pelton, genius drummer, does a little press roll on the drum when I sing “I’m on the high wire while the lava boils below,” a drum roll and then a cymbal crash like a circus drummer doing something for the trick.
Pocket Full of Kryptonite was a pretty successful album in that way, too. The song, “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” is about Jimmy Olsen who has this unattainable, unrequited love for Lois Lane who is in turn in love with Superman. The pocket full of kryptonite idea is about everybody having some inner special thing that makes them the equal of a supposed super person.
There’s a “How could you want him when you know you could have me?” theme, which, of course, is a title from one of the songs. You’ve got “Two Princes” which is also about a guy who’s basically saying, “How could you want him when you know you could have me?” I didn’t do that on purpose but it was one of those things that gave me faith in this process of just writing because later on I went back through the record and I was like, “Wow! There’s a theme on this record and even though the record is varied these all kind of fit together because I write the way I do.
JPG: Thematically, you describe your new album as a “cocktail party at the apocalypse, decline of the American empire, lemmings and neckties going over the edge” but it’s also personal. At the same time you say that it’s the responsibility of the artist to offer some kind of consolation. With that in mind do you write in a way that it leans a little more towards the angels even though the one-armed jugglers exist or musically, if it’s peppy, people won’t notice?
CB: In my mind angels are fallible and one-armed jugglers are to be admired because you’ve got one arm but you’re still juggling. Also, there’s an image of that must be nerve-wracking to keep all those chainsaws in the air with only one arm.
I’m not a nihilist. I can’t write the truth for me and not…I mean that on a lyrical level, I can’t write something that doesn’t leave a kernel of beauty or truth or hope behind. One of the really dark songs on the record is “Still a Beautiful World”…
JPG: Oh, really? Maybe I haven’t listened to it close enough but I thought of it as one of the more upbeat songs compared to “Raining Again” because you point out that it’s still a beautiful world. That’s something to remind yourself of every so often.
CB: Well, it’s still a beautiful world but we destroyed it long ago (is the full line from the song).
JPG: I guess, I’m consciously forgetting the entire line.
CB: One thing that characterizes me as a writer and the Spin Doctors in particular is its sad lyrics with happy music. Spin Doctors had material that was and is as dark as a lot of the grunge bands but we’re more famous for our more upbeat stuff. The difference between Spin Doctors, lyrically and philosophically, was we were not nihilists. I believe in humanity and I still believe that people, even in these dark times…what’s that Martin Luther King line that the universe overall arcs towards goodness?
In a tune like “Still a Beautiful World” there’s a bittersweet slant to it. I say, “Picasso and Rembrandt you know they paint the sunsets now/And Euclid aims the moonbeams as they gleam between the boughs/you can believe they’re up in heaven if it helps your garden grow/it’s still a beautiful world/but we destroyed it long ago.” I always feel funny interpreting my lyrics but what I intended when I wrote that was we are living on this planet that is facing an ecological disaster. Things seem to be going to hell in a hand basket but we still have the genius of Picasso and Rembrandt and the mathematical insights of Euclid. From a human perspective, Euclid aims the moonbeams as they gleam between the boughs. We are this amazing animal that can interpret moonbeams and branches and the angles of those beams, and we see straight lines as straight lines. It’s a totally abstract concept that is a formulation of the human mind.
As a species, we’re this double-edged sword. Even if we don’t make it, there’s gonna be some really beautiful vases (slight laugh) and things for the aliens to find. We’ve done a lot of really beautiful stuff, and that beauty without a human mind, there is nothing. There’s no beauty to be interpreted because it’s all from our minds.
JPG: You were going to record the album solo acoustic and then it morphed into a band record. Did that change come about during the writing process and why did you change it?
CB: It’s still my intention to go out and tour it solo acoustic. I wanted this record to be a vehicle for me to just go and play. Eventually, I want to get this band together and do some shows with them. I had this misguided notion that I should represent that on the record; that that’s what the record should be. You make a record; you’re better off presenting the songs as they would be best portrayed and presented. So, luckily, I was working with [co-producer Roman Klun]. Roman heard the material and he didn’t really have any preconceived notion. I came to him, “I want to make this stripped down kind of thing,” and he’d just grin, “Okay.” I could tell he saw a bigger production in his mind. He’s got this really funny way of agreeing with you when he doesn’t agree with you. And he was grinning.
When I lost my voice, my whole head did a reboot, changed the way I look at everything. Roman and I had started the record before I lost my voice. So, while I was off, I was slowly internalizing a lot of the unspoken stuff that had been going on in many areas of my life. When I got back, I was like, “Fuck this.” It’s really not indicative of my process at its best to be working from an outcome. I’m much more of a “Let’s get a real big pot!”
It’s actually funny. I saw this Julia Child quote after the record was done just a couple weeks ago. Julia Child’s a famous chef (American known for her cookbook on French cuisine) who said, “Always use a bigger pot than you think you’ll need.” I was working with two small pots. The first thing I did when I came back, “Let’s get Sean Pelton.” That’s more indicative of the way I work; more like “Let’s put this factor in the equation and then see how it works out.” It was like putting a different lens on the camera. All of a sudden, we were working with a wider angle lens and it became more of the landscape.
Then, it’s not a good artistic reason to make an album that’s stripped down and acoustic then you’re going to go out and tour stripped down and acoustic. It’s actually kind of cooler once I started wrapping my head around it. We’ve got these full beautiful productions on this record; some of it is more stripped down. “The World Accordion to Garp” has just three instruments — tuba, accordion and guitar. Some of it’s really big with orchestrations and horns. But, if I was a fan, I would love to see somebody be like, “This record has got this full production but I would love to see the person lay the tunes out, just them and the guitar, break it down to its most essential elements and see it and interpret it in a very different way than it is on the record.”
Also, it’s funny, a bit of a parallel thought. I started out playing solo acoustic. I always do it around the house. I’m constantly playing guitar and singing. I’ve done a lot of gigs that way over the years but I’ve never gone out and done it a tour. I always end up working with the Spin Doctors. I’ve just never really made time to do it, and, I guess, to speak to your readership, I think they probably are pretty aware of the Spin Doctors. If I heard the guy from the Spin Doctors was coming to town or had a record out I think I would picture some guy in a Guatemalan hat singing “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes” and a couple other silly songs; songs that might be silly or might not be.
Every time I do a solo concert, I’m like, “Thanks for taking a punt on me” because I don’t know what I would expect if I saw the listing for my solo acoustic show. But, I’m happy to have the opportunity to put myself out there as a writer and that the results of the career I’ve had and that we’ve had as a band is people really know us from “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes,” but Spin Doctors’ fans know that there’s a deeper, darker side.
We put out a blues record a couple years ago that was very well received critically. I’m happy to have the opportunity to show a bit more of the scope of what I can do as a writer and my guitar playing. It’s really fun to get out and play guitar. People come up to me after the show, “Wow! You’re a really cool guitar player.” And I’m not like a super crazy virtuoso guitar player but guitar players like my guitar playing because I have a personality on the instrument. Men and women who play really well don’t express themselves very much on the guitar, and I’ve got a really eclectic odd style.
So anyway, I’m really grateful to you guys for putting something out about the record and getting it out there. When you’re a performer and you’re known for something, and you want to do something different, you have to canvas your audience a little bit and see. I spent some time. Does anybody even want to see me out there playing guitar? Should I undertake it seriously because you don’t want to see Tom Hanks play the bad guy, you know what I mean? So, I put myself out there and I was really gratified that people seemed interested in seeing me and hearing me in this capacity.
JPG: You wanting to make a full band record and then go out and play it solo acoustic, that’s where it’s understood that those who are under the wide umbrella of the jamband genre, which encompasses so much more than the Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers Band and now includes everything from Beck to Pretty Lights, it’s a mentality more than anything else rather than just endless jamming and improvisations. Talking about not wanting to go out and not do the same thing that’s on the record, that’s the jamband mentality. You don’t want to do the same exact thing that you’ve done yesterday. You want to do something new.
CB: That’s a really interesting insight that you made because one of the reasons, I think, the jamband umbrella has gotten so wide is that jamming refers to improvisation and improvisation is really vital, and I mean vital in terms of having vitality. It’s this vital ingredient in most American forms of music – jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and blues. In classical music, generally, the piece is notated. It’s going to be played somewhat similarly except maybe the dynamics might change a little bit. But this kind of music, when it doesn’t have an improvisational element, it can get really stale in rock ‘n’ roll.
I’ve been taking guitar lessons with Woody Mann, who studied from Reverend Gary Davis and he was saying that Gary would teach him a tune and then he would come back the next week and Gary would be playing it and it would be different and he would be like, “What are you doing? That’s not how you played it.” And Gary would be like, “Yeah it is. That’s the song.” “But, you’re playing it differently.” Gradually, he realized that was his approach, improvisational approach. Every time I play a song, whether I’m playing it alone or with The Spin Doctors, it’s wide open to interpretation. I’m not going to do “Two Princes” as a bossa nova but you know there’s a certain level of novelty and spontaneity that’s got to be in the music, and that level of spontaneity stems from the ability to improvise extemporaneously and vary the song in, sometimes, really subtle ways. It’s like a good writer can say the same things in several different ways and a good player can play the same thing a lot of different ways.
JPG The Spin Doctors 30th anniversary is coming up next year. Are there any plans that you can divulge at this point to celebrate that
CB: No, not really. We’re just going to go out and play our asses off. I’m sure we’ll do something cool but we haven’t formulated any kind of plan. I really gotta say that after all these years it’s a lot of fun being in that band. We really play beautifully together after all these years; that kind of savage energy that you saw on the show that I was tightrope walking. We’re four really different guys and we play with a lot of aggression and a lot of humor. We’ve always had this really special musical rapport. Over the years, it’s deepened and we have this wonderful intuition when we play together.
I’m just really grateful. A lot of musicians play their entire lives, and they’re fantastic players, but they’re never fortunate enough to be part of a really special ensemble. They just don’t happen to meet their musical soulmates during the course of their playing careers or in the right part of their playing careers. I was a 20 year old kid when I met those three guys. I was super green and the artiste singer songwriter guy and they really showed me the ropes of being in a band. I learned so much about music from those guys. They’d all been in bands their whole lives. Spin Doctors was like the third band I had ever been in.
I love playing with those guys and settled in to this really nice professional thing. And when I say professional, I feel very fortunate that I’m still a professional musician. Music as a profession really hit me hard when I got my voice back, and when my voice was gone just how much I love guitar picks and guitars and strings and microphones and cables and stages, backstages, bottles of whiskey, other musicians and talking to other singers and talking to other guitar players and going to a guitar shop and just talking about guitars for like an hour. I love rock ‘n’ roll and I love show business. I love my band and I love my guitars. I love you, John.
