SPOTTISWOODE

Referred to as a “genius” and a “downtown ringleader” by The New Yorker, Spottiswoode is the son of an American singer and an English clergyman. WNYC’s John Schaefer describes the singer-songwriter-playwright-filmmaker as "one of New York’s more colorful band leaders for more than a decade.”

Spottiswoode & His Enemies features Spottiswoode (guitar, vocals); John Young (bass); Tim Vaill (drums); Candace DeBartolo (saxophone); Kevin Cordt (trumpet); Riley McMahon (guitar, kitchen sink); Tony Lauria (keyboards, accordion). 

With the band, Spottiswoode has released seven acclaimed records, performed numerous Manhattan residencies and toured worldwide from SXSW and Lille Europe to Lincoln Center. The band has been profiled on NPR’s Weekend Edition and has been featured on the nationally syndicated radio programs XM Loft, World Cafe and Soundcheck. 

Spottiswoode’s songs have won or been nominated for at least half a dozen Independent Music Awards. His songwriting has drawn comparisons to Leonard Cohen, Ray Davies, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, David Bowie, Randy Newman and many others. Still, he is his own man. He composes mostly on guitar, sometimes on piano and occasionally in his head - "very rarely, but those are often my best."

His tunes have featured in a wide variety of television shows and films (A Street Cat Named Bob, She’s Out Of My League, The Ledge, Tart, Bridget, Bloodline, Kingdom, Nancy Drew, Zone Blanche) as well as in his own short film, The Gentleman, which he wrote, directed and scored and which played for several years on the Independent Film Channel. His earlier trilogy of music videos, Loneliest Woman In The World, earned consecutive Student Emmies in Los Angeles.

Spottiswoode’s newest album, IT WASN’T IN THE SCRIPT - due for release on April 21st - focuses on the joys and humiliations of fatherhood and growing older. Sentimental. Irreverent. Morbid. Light-hearted. Rock. Gospel. Pop. Americana. Cabaret. A typical Spottiswoode record! Except this time one of the backing vocalists is his own daughter, Sophie Lee.

Before becoming a dad Spottiswoode moved to London and released Lost In The City, his farewell to New York, an epic brew of jazz, chanson, rock, blues and minimalism. The Enemies’ seventh record was included on several international Best-Of-Year lists and nominated for three Independent Music Awards.

It “feels like the punchline to a joke that begins ‘Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and Frank Sinatra walk into a bar…’ The man and his jaw-droppingly tight seven-piece are simply that sophisticated, that eccentric, that charismatic, time after time after time." (The Daily Vault)

Lost In The City was itself a swaggering antidote to the band’s sixth and more atmospheric collection, English Dream: "A gloriously lush album!" (Popdose); "One of the half dozen best albums of the year" (New York Music Daily).

The band’s fifth album, Wild Goosechase Expedition - a critically hailed “miracle” about a rock band’s doomed wartime tour - won two Independent Music Awards: Best Adult Contemporary Song (for the piano ballad, Chariot) and the Vox Populi Award for Best Eclectic Album.

Ironically, Spottiswoode has always hated being called eclectic. “We are expressionists!” he pleads. Although his songs travel the gamut from raw rock and roll anthems, confessional jazz ballads and gospel-inflected hymns to vaudevillian ditties there is a distinct signature to Spottiswoode’s work and a compelling emotional unity to the band’s shows.

WXPN's Dan Reed concurs: "They do something that few bands can do: evoke real emotions, sometimes several different ones in a single song.” Paste Magazine describes the live show as “nothing short of transportive!” 

In addition to recording with the band, Spottiswoode has released four acclaimed solo albums and the IMA-nominated duo record, S&M, with band guitarist Riley McMahon. New York chanteuse Bronwen Exter also covered thirteen of the Englishman's loungier songs for her beautiful debut album, Elevator Ride. 

Spottiswoode’s most recent acoustic foray, I Have So Many Friends, is a collection of unplugged songs - new tunes and greatest hits - recorded live in Germany with a European quartet. Since the release he has continued to tour extensively in Europe - solo or with friends - and in the USA with His Enemies.

Of course there are other ways to tell stories besides singing and writing songs. Spottiswoode works with longer narrative forms as well. His musical, Above Hell’s Kitchen, played to sold-out crowds at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Loosely inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni, it’s part ghost story, part romantic comedy; a gothic rock opera about a musician and his psychotherapist on a collision course with the truth. In January 2026 Breaking Borders, a New York based theatre company, presented a staged reading of the most recent incarnation - Between The Angel And The Old Kent Road - to an invited audience at London’s Seven Dials Playhouse. Their goal is to find investors to take the project forward.

Spottiswoode’s screenplay Either Side Of Midnight - four interweaving tales set over one Friday night in New York City - was recently turned into a feature film by the James Bond director, Roger Spottiswoode. Amazingly, Roger is no relation.

Alas, despite all his songs and scripts, Spottiswoode still hasn’t settled on a style or even found his voice. He does portraits, landscapes, love songs, emotional psychodramas, abstracts, expressionist hallucinations, ornamental screens, stick figures, cartoons, and old-fashioned soda pop. He is happy to work in oil, clay, acetate, latex, wax, collage, mixed media, ceramics and crayon.

Clearly, Spottiswoode doesn’t know what he stands for. He recognizes this as a commercial liability and agrees with any critic who would consider it a long-standing artistic pitfall. It is the symptom of a life-long, not yet life-threatening, identity crisis.

He blames his mother.