Blues Traveler Announces New Bassist, Keeping It In The Family

11/18/1999 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(11/18/99, 4 p.m. ET) - Blues Traveler has a new bassist in Tad Kinchla, the younger brother of band guitarist Chan Kinchla. Tad, 26, replaces founding member Bobby Sheehan, who succumbed to an accidental drug overdose at his New Orleans home in August (LAUNCH, 8/20).

Commented the elder Kinchla in a prepared statement: "As painful as the situation has been for us, having the opportunity to play with a great musician and my brother makes me excited about the future."

Tad Kinchla previously played bass in Dowdy Smack, a New York City funk-rock trio with one self-released album, Aren't You Delicious.

The addition of Chan Kinchla marks the first good news in a trying period for the boogie-blues band. They not only weathered the loss of Sheehan but the heart trouble and surgery of frontman John Popper (LAUNCH, 7/7). And earlier this month, longtime manager and H.O.R.D.E. co-founder Dave Frey announced that he would cease running the band's operations by the end of the year.

Popper, drummer Brendan Hill and the Kinchla brothers are expecting to return to the studio some time next year.

To read a Blues Traveler feature from the LAUNCH.com archives, click here.

-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

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