The Spinto Band
This irreverently poppy band introduces Caralyn Green to their Sorry!-playing ways
By Caralyn Green
Published: August 18th, 2005 | 1:59pm
The Spinto Band is loitering, pack-like, in a dark alley in State College, Pennsylvania. The six members, plus a handful of friends and kinda-groupies (minus the whole sex thing), amble along a narrow, unlit way behind the basement bar they’ll soon play. And before my half-priced vodka tonic hits me at full strength, the Spintos and Co. plop on the ground and play a fierce game of Sorry! — the first but definitely not last of the mid-summer night. Yes, the band tours with a Sorry! board. This detail might seem trivial, but the Wilmington, Delaware dudes who’ve been friends for, like, ever are heavy into the Sorry! scene. They’ve got their own made-up rules of how to play the game: you can’t win until your partner has all his little plastic pieces safely into home. The Spintos swear Team Sorry! is “all about trust,” and from the ways they interact on the board to the ways they interact on the stage, it’s easy to see that the Spinto Band is all about trust as well.
This band with a board game fetish and a dexterity for maniacally catchy indie pop includes gangly, suspender-garbed guitarist Nick Krill and animated bassist Thomas Hughes, who share writing and vocals; Thomas’ li’l bro Sam, who bangs up the keys; chatty, easygoing Jeffrey Hobson on drums; Jeffrey’s lank-haired, younger brother Joey with his own guitar tricks and licks; and elder statesman Jon Eaton, who adds to the mix with, you guessed it, another guitar.
When I hung with the Spinto Band, the boys were on the first leg of their summer tour in support of Nice and Nicely Done, their first album on a label, which came out June 7, 2005 on Bar/None. The collection of new tracks plus old faves, which is actually the prolific band’s 12th release, falls somewhere in between the Pavement, Weezer and Jackson 5 schools of rock — it’s poppy without remorse, coolly apathetic, lyrically dweeby and often accompanied by suburban-white-boy choreography. Plus, there’s enough kazoo, mandolin and xylophone action to sustain even a kindergartener’s attention span.
“We didn’t realize we were making Nice and Nicely Done at the time we recorded it,” says Thomas. “Jon’s uncle owns a studio in Nashville, and the opportunity to be in a real studio was really exciting after being in a basement for years. So whenever we had vacations, we went down there and recorded two or three songs at a time.”
The Spintos, who’ve been irreverently self-described as anything from “lollipop” to “heat rock,” have been together for about eight years, with half of those spent scattered across the northeast due to differing college paths, says Jeffrey. “In the beginning we would all just hang out, and whenever we felt like it we’d go down to the basement and do a little song. Whoever wanted to play would play. Now it’s gotten slightly more professional,” he says, alluding to the notable-for-indie-label connection of Bar/None, the “Band to Watch” nod in Spin magazine’s August 2005 issue and the recent Entertainment Weekly review that dubbed Nice and Nicely Done a “slacker-pop gem.” The Spintos certainly have come a long way, baby, since plunging into the musical terrain after finding and adapting lyrics penned on a Cracker Jack box by Roy Spinto, Nick’s late grandfather and the band’s namesake. But just how did the Spinto Band stick together with all that daunting collegiate space between? Nick explains, “Before we were a band, we were friends. We were buddies. You just have to trust each other.” Ah, trust. Shoulda known.
See, if you can get past all the cute, trustworthy, family fun stuff, the Spinto Band might just be the most spastic, clever, and adroit band climbing the rock echelons. Simple charisma could be the Spinto Band’s most winning asset. Following a swanky Pittsburgh show where the Spintos managed to deflower a preppy, martini-sipping crowd, they slung back their obligatory shares of on-the-house vodka (mustn’t be rude), then beelined to a friend’s pad for some of what all bad-ass bands crave in the early a.m. after a raucous performance — peanut butter. All-natural. Creamy. Straight from the jar. And another round of Team Sorry! Of course.
Issue #25
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