He’s best known as the lead singer of the alternative-rock band Gin Blossoms.
This weekend, Robin Wilson visits the D.C. area to front The Smithereens at The State Theatre in Falls Church, Virginia, on Saturday, followed by Rams Head in Annapolis on Sunday.
Wilson has been trading lead singer duties with Marshall Crenshaw as regular fill-ins since original Smithereens lead singer Pat DiNizio died in 2017.
“Marshall gets most of the work because my other band, Gin Blossoms, keeps me busy out on the road,” Wilson told WTOP. “I love playing with The Smithereens. It’s great music, and for the first time since I’ve been working with them, I’m going to be playing electric guitar on this run. I’m very excited to play electric guitar on stage again, which I haven’t done in like 17 years. … They’re vintage guitars, the same guitars I played back in the ’90s.”
Born in Detroit in 1965, Wilson grew up in Tempe, Arizona. He was 15 when The Smithereens formed in New Jersey in 1980 for their first album “Especially for You” (1986), which featured the hit single “Blood & Roses.”
“I was a huge fan of their music before I ever started playing with them,” Wilson said. “I’ve been listening to them since their first album came out, ‘Especially for You.’ It was a big record in the music scene where I came up in Tempe, Arizona. The Smithereens had a huge impact on our music scene. Everybody that I knew and all of my friends were all really into The Smithereens. … Very formative years as a young rock ‘n’ roller and songwriter.”
The Smithereens’ second album “Green Thoughts” (1988) featured the hit song “Only a Memory.”
“I actually got to meet them,” Wilson said. “I was working at a record store and they came through town promoting their second album ‘Green Thoughts,’ and we did an in-store appearance. … I went to the show that night and stole the set list off the stage at the end of the show and had it hanging in my recording studio. … In 1997, Pat DiNizio came through town and made a solo record in my studio … and I (showed) him that I had his set list on the wall.”
While “Only a Memory” was featured in the classic baseball movie “Bull Durham,” their next hit song “A Girl Like You” from the band’s third album “11” (1989) was originally written for the movie “Say Anything” but it was dropped from the soundtrack because the filmmakers worried that it contained too many plot spoilers.
“I do remember hearing that they had written a song for a movie, but it had gotten rejected because it was too literal an interpretation of the movie,” Wilson said. “I heard Peter Gabriel the other day and immediately my brain becomes infected with images of John Cusack (holding the boom box to ‘In Your Eyes’). It’s like, ‘Damnit, can’t I just listen to this song without having to think about him?’ He’s a great actor and I’ve always loved his movies.”
Wilson joined Gin Blossoms in 1988 to replace the lead guitarist, but he quickly became lead vocalist. Their first album “Dusted” (1989) delivered early versions of the hits “Found Out About You” and “Hey Jealousy.”
“Our founding guitar player Doug Hopkins wrote ‘Hey Jealousy’ about a week before we were scheduled to record our debut record in Tucson,” Wilson said. “He showed me the song at rehearsal and immediately we knew it was a great tune, so we learned it that night at rehearsal and it sounded so great from the beginning. … I knew it was a great song, but I didn’t really think of it as a single. … I guess there’s something in there I didn’t quite see.”
The second Gin Blossoms album “New Miserable Experience” (1992) re-recorded “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You,” while introducing a pair of hits written by Wilson himself, “Until I Fall Away” and “Allison Road.”
“There was a moment where ‘Allison Road’ made it all the way to No. 4 on the singles chart and Madonna was No. 5 — I thought that was so cool that I actually saved and framed that page of Billboard Magazine,” Wilson said. “There was a guy from the (L.A.]) press who wrote an article that said ‘Allison Road’ is the best Tom Petty song that Tom Petty never wrote. … Last year, our hometown in Tempe renamed a famous street … Allison Road Ave.”
Gin Blossoms followed up with “Til I Hear It From You” on the soundtrack of “Empire Records” (1995), while their third studio album “Congratulations I’m Sorry” (1996) delivered the catchy harmonica of “Follow You Down.”
“When the album came out in Europe, the label over there didn’t give us any choice, they just told us they were putting ‘Til I Hear It From You’ on the record,” Wilson said. “The label called and said, ‘You need to write another hit single.’ This is the moment we were under the most pressure … We had lost Doug Hopkins [to suicide in 1993]. … We went on to write ‘Follow You Down’ and it became a Top 10 single … it’s a really proud moment for the band.”
After breaking up from 1997 to 2002, Gin Blossoms reunited for the single “Learning the Hard Way” on the album “Major Lodge Victory” (2006), followed by the albums “No Chocolate Cake” (2010) and “Mixed Reality” (2018). Around this time, DiNizio of The Smithereens died, so Wilson began pulling double duty for both bands.
Now, this weekend’s gigs in Falls Church and Annapolis are Wilson’s last two chances to warm up The Smithereens for their big show at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, on Jan. 24.
“I’m very excited about it,” Wilson said. “I love The State Theatre, I love playing in Annapolis at the Rams Head and I’m looking forward to a big plate of shepherd’s pie down at the Rams Head. I love both of these joints, I love playing with The Smithereens and I can’t wait to rock.”
Listen to our full conversation on my podcast below:
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