The Spinto Band
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It began in Wilmington, Delaware with two sets of brothers, Thomas and Sam Hughes, Jeff and Joey Hobson, and their high school friends Albert Birney and Jon Eaton. A weekend side-project band called Free Beer began to distill in the Hughes family basement. Nick Krill joined the band in late '97 and brought along the Spinto band name. While rummaging through the personal effects of his late grandfather, the guitar player Roy Spinto, Nick discovered a number of lyrics his grandfather had penned. He showed the songs to his musician friends and they hit the ground running, ultimately abandoning the work of Roy Spinto but keeping his namesake while making their own kind of music. The energy was undeniable. They wrote quirky 4-track recordings and noodled around as a studio band, never really thinking about live shows. Sam, who plays keyboards now, was initially on drums.
They put out a few albums through MP3.com and played a small handful of shows, but kept it mostly studio work. In 1999, Producer, Robin Eaton, got involved after hearing a Spinto band song about a psychedelic carrot. He invited them to record at his Alex the Great Studios in Nashville. The band went down and did a 2-song recording in Nashville, then went home. They were invited back to Nashville and continued to visit every year to record more and more.
The group now features six members, with Albert Birney now serving as a visual component of the Spinto Band (creating artwork, videos, etc).
The band’s sound exudes a finesse that belies their youth (their ages range from 19-22). Yes, the Spinto Band has finally made it; through high school that is. With rich, textured guitars, and multiple-part vocal harmonies, the Spinto Band’s repertoire is a vortex of indie perfection. It’s unique, energetic, radiant, and aptly engaging.
While many members of the Spinto band have moved on to higher learning, they have continued to meet up on vacations and weekends to record and perform, quietly building a devoted fan base from Nashville TN to Syracuse NY, Madison WI too
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Just as the school year comes to a close, Bar/None is proud to have dropped Nice and Nicely Done, the album from the Spinto Band. As you are about to find out, Spinto Band songs can send you careening into the heights of lysergic bliss while providing the catchiest vibes to shake your tail feather to. Any way you shake it, this six-piece outfit has the goods to deliver us all from the doldrums of banality. A special limited-release single on the Stolen Transmission label will soon drive that point home. It features “Oh Mandy” from Nice and Nicely Done and a couple of B-sides including a mash up mix by the Oohals of “Oh Mandy” and the Yeah Yeah Yeah “Maps”.
