Spirit Caravan

Scott "Wino" Weinrich channels decades of underground touring and survival into the measured, smoldering tone of his guitar work with Spirit Caravan. After Obsessed collapsed, partly because a major-label contract fell apart, he landed in Southern California exhausted and without money. The oft-told tale claims he shouldered his lone possession, a Les Paul, and boarded a Greyhound for his hometown to regroup; whether literal or not, the episode captures his uncompromising drive to keep making music.

The band took shape in 1996 around Maryland gigs, first under the name Shine, with drummer Gary Isom and bassist Dave Sherman, both longtime associates of Weinrich. Once persuaded to run through old Obsessed songs in casual rehearsals, he turned those sessions into a permanent trio. Spirit Caravan’s approach stayed close to Obsessed’s fusion of Grand Funk Railroad’s organic stomp, the Dictators’ lean American punk, and Black Sabbath’s weight, yet it folded in a layer of cryptic psychedelia.

In 1997 the group cut its first vinyl EP, Lost Sun Dance. A cease-and-desist from another act called Shine forced a rename to Spirit Caravan. Two releases arrived in 1999: the album Jug Fulla Sun and the CD-EP Dreamwheel, the former issued on Tolotta Records by Fugazi’s Joe Lally. After sustained touring in the U.S. and Europe, the trio delivered its second album, Elusive Truth, in 2001. Bassist Dave Sherman died on September 7, 2022, at the age of 55.