Spin Doctors, known for songs like “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes,” and Arrested Development, which had hits in the early 1990s with “Mr. Wendel” and “Tennessee,” are the latest acts announced to headline concerts in Lynchburg this summer.
Both bands will perform Saturday, July 14, as part of the Academy Center of the Arts’ Riverfront Park Concert Series.
Spin Doctors first formed in the 1980s and released its debut album, “Pocket Full of Kryptonite,” in 1991. Album sales and radio play had taken off by 1993, thanks to what The New York Times in 2005 described as the band’s “cheerful melodies that contrasted with the angst-ridden music of Nirvana and other grunge bands at the time.”
Arrested Development also became popular in the early 1990s, known for its “defiant lyrics of hope,” according to the Academy’s news release about the show. In 1993, they became the first hip-hop group to win the best new artist Grammy.
“The southern rap collective sampled Sly and the Family Stone, Prince and Buddy Guy on their break-through album ‘3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life of . . .,’ writing lyrics that were socially conscious and completely clean,” Rolling Stone wrote in 2013. “It was the kind of rap your parents could appreciate.”
The concert series kicks off Saturday, April 21 with Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, and the Secret Sisters, with opening act Leah Blevins, and continues on Saturday, June 9, with Naughty By Nature and Big Daddy Kane, and a yet-to-be-announced show in August.
The Academy will reveal the August headliners on March 29.
General admission tickets to the concerts are $11, with more expensive VIP tickets also offered. Visit www.academycenter.org for more information.