Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson talks collabs with Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors ahead of Pittsburgh tour stop

Over the course of their almost 40-year career, Arizona alternative rockers Gin Blossoms have hit the road extensively with Spin Doctors, but they’ve never toured with Blues Traveler.

Until now.

The trio of bands, which all scored huge radio hits in the 1990s, is together for a summer tour, which includes a stop Sunday at the Iron City Stage at Pittsburgh Brewing in Creighton.

Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson wanted to create a spirit of community for the tour, so he helped to arrange several collaborations to coincide with the trek. Wilson joined Spin Doctors for a cover of The Cars’ “Dangerous Type” that just released on July 4. Wilson and Spin Doctors frontman Chris Barron are also singing with Blues Traveler on a cover of R. Dean Taylor’s “Indiana Wants Me” that should be out soon. Gin Blossoms and Blues Traveler also made a TV appearance at the end of May with a medley of two of their biggest hits, “Hey Jealousy” and “Run-Around,” respectively.

“It was really good,” Wilson said of the appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” “The feedback has been extremely positive and ultimately I guess that’s important. I’m really pleased that the feedback is so good, but more than that, just finding our common ground with Blues Traveler. We don’t know those guys very well. So just doing something with them that was successful, and that we all felt was musically satisfying (worked out).”

Wilson, who also helps out occasionally on vocals with The Smithereens, as he did on Dec. 18 at Jergel’s in Warrendale, said he was excited to be back in the Pittsburgh area.

“The architecture, I think it’s just beautiful. The way it’s framed between the rivers, it just looks kind of magical,” he said. “You grow up in Arizona and you’re given this impression from Hollywood and television that Pittsburgh is this industrial hellscape, and the first time we ever drove over the hill and saw it, I was just dazzled. It was like Emerald City, just beautiful. I’ve always had friends there, and I’ve just always thought it was a really cool, underrated city.”

In a recent call, Wilson also discussed where he got the idea for the collaborations, his tambourine playing, what’s kept the band together all these years and more:

You just collaborated with Blues Traveler through that mashup of “Hey Jealousy” and “Run-Around.” How did that come together?

That was cool. As far as I know, our managers were trying to get us on one of the late-night talk shows. (Jimmy) Kimmel was interested and then I heard we were doing Kimmel and then about a week later, I got a phone call from our guitar player, Jesse (Valenzuela). And he said, hey, if we drop a key on “Hey Jealousy,” we can do a mashup with Blues Traveler. And I just kind of shrugged and went, oh, OK. I figured he knew what he was talking about and turns out he does and did. It took a few hours of rehearsal to work out how we were going to pull that off, but we got there eventually. And I think it was a smashing success.

So you’ve toured with Spin Doctors before, but you haven’t toured with Blues Traveler?

Correct. We’ve bumped into them many times. We had a lot in common. We were labelmates at A&M Records. We were out doing similar events and festivals, etc. But we had never toured with them before. On the other hand, we have toured with Spin Doctors three times in our career, and we’ve actually done more shows with Spin Doctors than any other single band in existence, so it’s great to be back with them. The first time we toured with them was the summer of ‘93 when they had the hottest record in the world, we were supporting them across Europe. Then in the summer of ‘94 we did the most extensive tour of our career, 55 shows with Spin Doctors and Cracker. That was awesome, and then again we toured with them in 2002. We bump into them from time to time. We’ve always had a great relationship with those dudes, and recording with them for the first time recently was an absolute pleasure. They’re such pros, and they really know what they’re doing in the studio, and it was pretty good.

How does that work whenever you start recording with another band? People are used to doing things their own way, so was that hard to bridge that gap?

Well, for the most part, everybody’s doing this stuff on their own and then sending in the tracks. For the Blues Traveler collaboration, I recorded with our drummer Andy Herrin in my studio and we put down the drums and my parts – guitar, vocals, percussion – and then we sent the tracks off into the ether. The Blues Traveler guys are sending me their tracks. I just got the last of them yesterday. Then with Spin Doctors, Chris and Aaron (Comess), the drummer, came to my home to my studio, and we recorded the drums, we recorded all Chris’ parts and then we did Chris’ parts for “Indiana Wants Me” as well. And then the other two members of Spin Doctors, Jack (Daley) and Eric (Schenkman), did stuff on their own and sent it in.

My studio was kind of the hub and we did all the drums here and all the vocals, but the only way to make something like this work is to get everybody to be able to do it on their own time. It’s really coming out great. We did this last year, we went out with Toad the Wet Sprocket, and this was their idea. Toad put together a cover of “Driver 8” by REM, and myself and Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon did vocals for it, and then we ended up doing it on the tour. And it was such a great idea I decided to steal that from Toad for this summer’s tour. It’s something I’ve been scheming on for months now, and it wasn’t until June 2 that I was able to get Spin Doctors into the studio and was able to start getting stuff done. … We had everybody film themselves when they were recording, so we’re cobbling together a video from that and we’re going to do the same thing with the Blues Traveler track as well.

Looking at the Gin Blossoms music, what do you think helped those songs stand the test of time?

They’re good. (laughs) That’s really a simple answer. We have good songs. It’s really as simple as that. I think that’s the only reason we still have a career, not just because of my awesome voice, and it’s not because of the guitar tones or whatever. It’s a combination of those things that sort of add up to something they wouldn’t be individually and the songs are good.

Is the tambourine the secret weapon, the secret ingredient?

Well, it’s my secret weapon, but it’s just something I love. I think it adds a lot. And one of my heroes as a teenager was Ian Astbury of The Cult. I just loved the way the tambourine added to The Cult’s groove off of the guitar riffs. And I just felt like it enhanced it. Before I was ever in a band, I remember thinking, I’m going to play tambourine. If I ever become a frontman in a rock band, I’m going to play tambourine, so I set the goal to become a really good tambourine player. And it’s just my schtick.

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What do you think helped keep your band together all these years?

Compromise. That’s the only thing that can — or maybe not the only thing — but it is probably the most important thing about keeping a band together, a true band in the sense that we are, that everybody contributes. There isn’t one guy who runs the whole thing. I may do most of the press, but my vote doesn’t count for any more than anybody else’s. We decide everything with a vote. We got to compromise.

Just this week, I’m facing that down. There’s something I really want to do with our merchandise, and my bandmates don’t like my idea. I’m like, the hell with it, I’m just going to pay for it myself. And then they’re like, well, we told you we don’t want this thing, but I guess we can’t stop you from paying for it yourself. But the compromise we ended up making is that I’m not allowed to sell this T-shirt in stores. If I’m going to make it and pay for it myself, it’s got to be something that I’m just giving away. What I’ve wanted to do — I’ve wanted to do this for a long time — is just create a heavy metal T-shirt, so it says Gin Blossoms in blood, and there’s a flaming pentagram and a ram’s head skull. It looks like a metal shirt. I love it. I think it’s hysterical, but my bandmates are like, ‘No, this isn’t us.’ And it’s like, well, don’t you think it’s funny? ‘No.’ Well, OK.

So we come to these moments and I had to make sure, even though I was going to go ahead and pay for it myself, I didn’t want to do anything that was really going to (tick) them off. It’s not worth it. So anyway, that’s the compromise we made, and that’s the big secret: you’ve got to be an adult. You’ve got to show up to the airport on time, do your job without causing any trouble.

Looking back, are there any bands from the ‘90s that you think should have been bigger than they were?

Yeah, Urge Overkill and Matthew Sweet, right off the top of my head. Those two artists, I love them both. Matthew Sweet, I love the sound of his record, I love his songwriting. Urge Overkill is the kind of rock band I always wanted to be in.