http://www.jambands.com/Features/content_2003_10_28.09.phtml

"If the Song is Good, You Can Do it by Beating on a Box":
Stepping Up to the Plate with George McConnell
Mark R. Pantsari
2003-10-28

On August 10, 2002 Michael Houser passed away and Widespread Panic lost its
founding namesake and trademark ‘lingering lead.' But the band got by and
continued to let the music play—finishing out their summer and fall tours
with guests Randall Bramblett and George McConnell. The release this year of
the group's eighth album Ball seemed to make the statement that the Panic
would continue to spread. Meanwhile, George McConnell made the transition
from special guest to full-time guitarist.

I recently had the chance to talk with McConnell concerning his role in the
band, the shoes he had to fill, and a bit about Panic's upcoming
hibernation.

For additional perspectives on these events (as well as an archived
interview with Mike Houser and some additional words from George) pick up
the latest issue of Relix.


MP- Can you tell me a little about how your role in the band developed?

GM- I'm an old, old friend of the guys and the way that it all started was
me just coming to help out on the tour when Mikey (Houser) got too ill and
went back home. I knew right after that tour the band was going to head into
the studio. At that time, that was all I was hired for and I thought it was
a great experience and it was great time going out with those guys. I had
great fun playing with Randall Bramblett, that was just an honor--what a
great guy and just a fantastic musician. He's just as good of a piano
player, drummer, and guitar player as he is a saxophone player. He's also
one hell of a songwriter. So it was great hanging out with him.

To be honest with you, at the end of that tour I assumed that would be it
and I knew the guys were going into the studio. In a way I felt a lot of
pressure, but not so much in that I was just helping out. And I know that
how close the Panic audience is, they're family to each other. They see each
other over the years and the people in the audience know way more about the
inner-workings of the band than I do. They know them way better than I do as
far as what was happening in the in-and-out days. I knew the audience was
aware of what was going on and that they were sympathetic to it. I really
didn't feel a huge pressure from the audience as I did just to do Mikey some
justice. I love their songs and I'm a fan first. There's no way, nobody, or
any machine or computer that could ever replicate the way that Mikey played.
And I knew that from the get-go and I wanted to get the signature licks
down, but the guys in the band for the most part were really encouraging me
to "aw man, play it the way that you want to interpret this part. We hired
you to come play guitar the way that you play."

When they went into the studio they went in by themselves for a couple of
weeks. And still at that point I thought "wow, it was a great experience and
a lot of fun, and I'm just gonna hang close and see what happens." Close as
far as being a support member for Mikey's illness, I didn't think about
playing, I thought of being close as being a friend and try to offer some
type of support.

I was just as shocked as anyone as everybody that they were doing whatever
they were going to write that day in the studio, that was what was going on
the album—whatever they had written in the studio. I was kind of shocked
about that and from there was when it became more concrete when I began
playing on the studio stuff.

MP- I would imagine that the decision to record was both a big step and kind
of therapeutic at the same time. Can you share your unique perspective on
these events?

GM- I've always respected these guys a lot and my level of respect for them
shot up immensely because those guys stepped up to the plate big time. The
guys were extremely broken up about all of it, I don't even know the right
words to use to express how hurt, bewildered, freaked out and lost—lost
seems to be more appropriate than anything. In my opinion it was really huge
of them to do this (Ball), and to be honest—all the guys in the band are
pretty serious contributors to the songwriting. That was something I
realized when I went into the studio, was how much they equally contribute
to each other's stuff. Somebody might bring in the idea or the germ of it,
but they're very open to each other's suggestions and that comes from their
brotherhood. Hell, those guys have been slugging it out in the bar scene for
about 20 years and they know each other so well and know enough to
appreciate each other's input—the strength of the team basically. They
realize that.

Anyways, I realized the guys were doing something pretty major to do this
without Mikey. In my eyes I give them a lot of respect for getting back out
there. A lot of people would've quit. But this is just part of who they are,
their make up. In a way it was sort of therapeutic.

MP-What about your first official show as the quote/unquote new guitarist,
to what extent did you consider fan expectations?

GM- It was in Milwaukee, right around July 4th. Me and Randall had gotten
used to hanging out with the crew more than anybody, I know a bunch of the
crew from other bands they had worked with that I had in my bar-circuit
playing. So we were just kind of hanging out, I was playing maybe one song
every other show or something like that—just hanging out and having fun and
being there to help out.

I guess we had left the hotel and were on the way to sound check when the
road manager came on the bus and told us that Mikey was heading home. There
was nobody in the audience that was more shocked than I was I promise you.
It was weird, but once again this goes back, and I can't say enough good
things about the boys. They were very supportive and were like "man, don't
worry about that shit, just get out there." Basically we got back into the
dressing and it was like "well, what songs do you know?" I guess maybe they
had 50 or 60 that I had worked up, and some of those weren't in rotation—and
for the most part we tried to keep that alive. They worked really hard with
me. Hell, JB came in every day early and sat down with me and went over
stuff. Sam Holt (guitar tech) would come into the dressing room with me and
would sit down and show a specific lick—wherever I could grab it from. They
all were helpful and still are—I'm still going in pretty much everyday and
trying to learn the back catalogue and get some new songs in. They have a
really strong work ethic, these guys are no slouches. They know about work
and that is something that is a part of this band. There are no prima donna
instances at all, and that's really refreshing to be honest with you--a band
of this popularity and caliber to be as easy going as they are and easy to
work with. I was freaked out but I gotta say that the guys really gave me
courage about it."

PM- What about direct response from the fan base?

GM- It was weird at first, I don't have a computer and the guys were like
"Do you surf the web very much?" So they said, "Don't read the Spreadnet." I
asked why and they said, "Well, they get a little crazy over there and
there's going to be somebody out there that's not going to like you.

I really didn't pay much attention to anything. I had a couple of instances
along the tour where somebody was a little buzzed and wanted to speak their
mind about some stuff—a couple of instances where somebody wanted to give me
grief. For the most part, I think everybody put it into perspective—and I'm
this way too—where if I start thinking about my personal loss with Mikey
about me missing hearing him play or getting to hang out with him
backstage—and I think the majority of the fans are the same as me. My loss
pales in comparison to what his family has gone through and I think about
his wife Barbette and his two kids and his mom and dad who came out for that
last leg of the tour. When I think about their loss anything else seems
silly. I'm not trying to make it trite, each of us—the fans—the loss with
Mikey, I'm not trying to make that trite in any way, but when I really think
of it in that way it really puts it into perspective of what's real to worry
about and what's frivolous. And that, to me, is a big part of it too—and I
think about the personal loss of the guys in the band.

So for any negative comments I hear I immediately slag that off and I think
about Mikey's family and his brothers—these guys in the band. I think about
their tightness and everything else seems to pale in comparison.

MP- Talking about voices on the Internet, how cognizant is the band of what
goes on via the fans on-line?

GM- They're actually very aware of what's going on, these guys are in the
high-tech world, they've got all kinds of gadgets. I think it's a weird
catch-22—they know that the fans like the fact the band is playing stuff
that they enjoy and that's what the fans enjoy. That's how it appears to me.
If the band is having fun, getting off, playing what they play then the
audience is going to enjoy that. And I think if the audience saw the band
coming out trying to put on an oldies-review or a greatest hits or starting
to pull out new hit cover songs, I think the audience—and that's what I love
about the Widespread audience—they can smell a fake from a mile away. They
really can. That's why they've chosen this band. It's hard to find Panic,
it's much easier to find the bands that are in Rolling Stone and on MTV,
basically the stuff that's shoved down your throat by the media.

I always look at in that regard, these fans over growing up have been force
fed this type of music or told this was cool or this was hip, and somewhere
along the line they've shed all that and they've come to this band. Why did
the come to this band? Because it's honest and it's real as the damn day is
long. To me I get tickled when people use the phrase jamband because to me
it's about the song and the jamming is the consequence of good songwriting.
It's like, "Hell the song is so good, they didn't want to quit playing it."

I look at a lot of other bands, and I've been around, I'm an old man I've
been around a while, so many other bands come up and just jam and write a
nursery rhyme on top of the song just so they can make it song. It's really
nothing about the song; it's more about the jamming. Not that those guys
aren't technically good and don't have incredible musical prowess, it's just
that the songs aren't there.

By the same token, if the song is good, you can do it by beating on a box,
you can play it on a piano—you can play it on any instrument and the song is
good. That, to me, speaks a lot to that songwriting and that's what Panic
was always about—the song itself.

It's a thing where I think Panic realizes their audience has come to them
because of their honesty and their integrity and the fact that they will
take a chance. They're one of the few bands out there anymore, especially on
the level—they get mad when I say ‘they' they want to me say ‘we,' but I've
been a fan for so many years and they punch me in the arm when I say it, you
get beat into the band and beat out of it, sort of like a gang—they're
aware. When they get to a certain town they'll think about what are going to
be good songs to play in this town, but they don't necessarily say. "Oh we
have to play something popular for this audience."

In fact I've seen times where there were TV crews and stuff there and they'd
chosen the setlist and I said, "Man, we got national TV here and all this
shit and all this other stuff going on" and they were like, "Man, we ain't
playing for them. We're playing for these people. Those TV cameras are going
to be gone tomorrow. The fans are going to be at the next show." That's
their attitude.

Getting back to your question, they do listen to what's up and they got
their ear to the ground, but it's a weird catch-22. They know if they
catered to their audience's whims, it'd kill it all." It's funny because
there's no criteria or ground rules set as far as "oh well, we do this we or
we don't do that." It's pretty much wide open how these guys work."

MP- Speaking more on the fans, I'm sure a few are frantic about the hiatus.
Can you set some minds at ease and explain the reasoning behind it?

GM- Basically, number one, these guys deserve it bigger than Dallas. It's
been 18 years and I don't think they've ever had a break if I'm not
mistaken. I know they've taken Christmas vacation or if somebody was getting
married or something really big like that. But other than that, if they
weren't on the road then they were in the studio. And I got to be honest
with you, studio work is way more frustrating and more of a mind-fuck—going
on the road is a relief. The road work is not as painful as the studio stuff
is and anytime that they had anytime off, they sequestered away in some
cubby-hole studio and started writing songs and recording stuff.

It's pretty impressive compared to other bands that take two years off and
write a record and won't play at all. Number one, the guys deserve a break
and deserve time to reflect about everything that they've been through this
past year. They were hit really hard by this and I hesitate to speak on
their behalf in that regard. But as an outsider just watching it, it was
obvious that they took all this really hard. And in a way it was also a slap
in the face in that you never know what's going to happen and you better
enjoy each day as it comes to you. And that seems to be, once again, the
unspoken overall philosophy that is permeating around right now. "Let's
enjoy this." It's been bittersweet, but it's been that type of attitude.

I really don't get the vibe at all—we're all kind of joking "I bet it won't
last a year" or someone will crack after six months and say, "I gotta go on
the road I'm going crazy." I really think it's a time to take time to smell
the roses, smell the coffee, smell the dog, get outside some and be with
their families.

I think that's something we as fans overlook; these guys have families and
kids and have some really cool, understanding families by the way. Not many
people could have the strength in their relationship to allow each other to
do these types of things. These guys have really strong, committed
relationships and they've got some great people with them. And that goes
down to the crew guys. To the guys in the band, the guys in the crew are
just as important as they are and are just as much part of their family as
anybody else. That's also a big part of the consideration as well."

MP- Kind of let everybody take a freaking rest for once?

That's the bottom line of it. And I know, Jo Jo's got his side project. And
Todd's got his band Barbara Cue and Dave has his band Acetate which is
bad-ass, they're really good. And I got an acoustic duo called Drunk and
Disorderly, so I know we're all gonna be doing little side projects and
chomping at the bit.

The other thing about this year off, the guys have talked about other
projects and projected releases. They've talked about getting some things
out there--something from the vault, something from recent times and who
knows what else.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/7113015.htm

Posted on Mon, Oct. 27, 2003

REVIEW
Jam band's new guitarist is a good fit
By Walter Tunis
CONTRIBUTING MUSIC CRITIC

In one of its final performances before taking a yearlong hiatus, Widespread
Panic played Rupp Arena last night with the sort of tightness and vigor more
indicative of a band about to hit the road than one coming off of it.

Fortified by a new guitarist, a clarity in its rhythm section that was
vastly sharper than in past Lexington appearances, and a variety of clean,
fluid groove tunes that ran from contained, meditative mood pieces to
surprisingly rootsy workouts, the veteran Georgia jam band seemed to be,
after nearly 18 years of touring, finally coming into its own.

Helping most in cleaning up the Panic sound was Mississippi guitarist George
McConnell, who joined the band last year after the death of co-founder
Michael Houser. From spotless guitar breaks that kicked Nebulous into gear
to the breezy melodics that surfaced out of calypso grooves on Meeting of
the Waters, McConnell was a consistently resourceful guitar voice. More
important, his drive proved infectious to the other players.

The two-man percussion team of drummer Todd Nance and percussionist Domingo
Ortiz have, frankly, never played better at a local Panic show. Ortiz,
especially, was an able and agile exponent of the band's rhythmic makeup. An
exquisite example: starting the concert with modest taps on a woodblock that
eventually, once McConnell grabbed hold of the foggy melody, became Vic
Chesnutt's Aunt Avis.

Bassist Dave Schools and keyboardist John Hermann seemed to have a field day
with McConnell on board. After creating an organ and bass foundation for
Weight of the World, Schools and Hermann all but threw the groove to the
guitarist, who wrapped the tune in a solo full of clean country accents that
recalled the early '70s work of Dickey Betts.

The odd man out on the Panic team remains guitarist and vocalist John Bell.
Where the band's other five players seemed content to structure modest jams
and colors to the music, Bell was the only one seemingly bent on playing
rock star. As a vocalist, his face was in regular states of contortions with
vocals that too often fell into the sort of scorched and uninterpretable
vocalizing popularized by Dave Matthews.

Granted, none of the band members is exactly Caruso. But even Nance's froggy
vocal lead on Down boasted an unassuming, homey charm that at least
reflected the tune's swampy attitude.

There was also a welcome efficiency to this performance. Most of the mammoth
jams and solos were saved for late into the second set. Without exception,
the players were at their best when they edited their work. McConnell's
brief solos punched up the rhythmic intensity on J.J. Cale's Travelin'
Light, while Herman's keyboard breaks crisply paced a group jam that grew of
Old Neighborhood.

Such specifics mattered not one bit to the half-house Rupp crowd of 3,000.
Most patrons danced like demons to whatever music the band dished out. The
only exceptions were those determined to make their way to the arena floor,
which was cleared of chairs for a general admission party zone.

Ushers had their work cut out for them at this one, checking the tickets and
wristbands of everyone entering the floor area. One exhausted usher probably
spoke for many when a patron asked how she liked the show: "Well, this
hasn't exactly been my favorite concert."

10/26/03 Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY
1: Aunt Avis > Bear's Gone Fishin', Dyin' Man, Old Neighborhood, Yard of
Blonde Girls > Proving Ground > Daisy Mae > Proving Ground, Travelin' Light

2: Let's Get Down To Business, Nebulous > Love Tractor, Meeting of the
Waters, Action Man, Down, Weight Of The World > Drums > Hatfield, Rebirtha >
Junior

E: Walk On, Nobody's Loss

10/25/03 AmSouth Amphitheatre, Antioch, TN
1: Chilly Water > Drums > Ride Me High > Chilly Water, Don't Wanna Lose You,
Give, Blue Indian, Use Me, Makes Sense To Me, Climb To Safety

2: Thin Air (Smells Like Mississippi)*, Pigeons, Worry, Fishing, The Take
Out**, Pickin' Up The Pieces**, Porch Song**, Wondering, Stop Breakin' Down
Blues, Conrad, Tall Boy

E: Visiting Day, Ain't Life Grand

* with Hunter Williams on percussion
** with Vassar Clements on fiddle
[Acoustic 'Fishing' through 'Porch Song']

10/24/03 Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, TN
1: Bowlegged Woman, Imitation Leather Shoes, Greta, Driving Song > North >
Driving Song, Gradle, Thought Sausage, Henry Parsons Died

2: Space Wrangler, Papa Johnny Road, Ribs And Whiskey, Doreatha, Stop-Go* >
Drums > Arleen* > Hope In A Hopeless World*, Postcard, Fishwater

E: One Arm Steve, Sometimes

* with Derek Trucks on guitar
[Everyone remained on-stage during 'Drums']

10/22/03 Civic Center, Asheville, NC
1: Send Your Mind, Sleeping Man, Tortured Artist, I Like The Things About
Me, Old Neighborhood, Bust It Big, Monstrosity, Radio Child

2: Action Man, Let It Rock, Casa Del Grillo, Blackout Blues, Surprise Valley
> Red Hot Mama > Drums > Surprise Valley, Proving Ground, All Time Low

E: Counting Train Cars, Are You Ready For The Country?

['Superstition' tease before 'Drums']

10/21/03 Township Auditorium, Columbia, SC
1: Papa Legba, Tall Boy, She Caught The Katy, Bear's Gone Fishin', Travelin'
Light, Barstools and Dreamers, Dyin' Man, Love Tractor

2: Slippin' Into Darkness > Disco > Weight Of The World > Mercy > Thin Air
(Smells Like Mississippi) > One Kind Favor > Chilly Water > Drums > Ain't
Life Grand > Chilly Water

E: Old Joe, Can't Get High, Climb To Safety

['Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin' rap during 'Barstools and
Dreamers'; 'Four Cornered Room' tease before 'Slippin' Into Darkness']

http://widespreadpanic.com/news/

10.21.03 :: Tickets to be released for House of Blues Myrtle Beach, SC
shows!

At 10am est on Wednesday 10/22, there will be additional tickets released
for the HOB shows on 11/6, 11/7, and 11/8. There will be a two ticket limit
per show per customer. The HOB boxoffice can be reached at 843 272-3000.
Ticketmaster can be reached online at www.ticketmaster.com or by calling 843
679-9333.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/7071502.htm

Posted on Wed, Oct. 22, 2003

Widespread Panic show is nonstop party
By OTIS R. TAYLOR JR.
Staff Writer

Trunks and hatches were opened. Drinks, beer cans and flasks were in hand.

Music blared from car and SUV speakers parked on Barnwell, Henderson and
Pickens streets.

Even a food stand on the corner of Taylor and Barnwell advertised “food for
the soul.”

The Tuesday night tailgaters weren’t there for a USC football game. Their
destination was the Widespread Panic show at The Township auditorium.

While the show has not even registered a blip on mainstream radio,
Widespread has legions of fans who follow the band’s every move.

Three hours before the show, people decorated the lawn of The Township. They
talked about the last show they saw, “Seinfeld” episodes and how cool their
buzz was going to be.

Some walked through the crowd with an index finger raised, hoping to find an
extra ticket. About 200 others were doing the same.

Brandon Matz, who followed Widespread from their last gig in Florida, was
desperately offering $50 for a ticket as fans walked into the concert hall.

“It’s like we can’t get enough of the band,” Matz said. “We’ve been on tour
for two weeks and we’ve only seen five shows.

“It’s the experience we’re after.”

Neo-hippies, frat boys, Abercrombie girls and dreads filled The Township’s
3,200-seat capacity. And they all danced nonstop to every song.

It takes a lot of energy to be Widespread fans. They flailed their arms,
shook their hips and bobbed their heads, never taking a seat.

The audience looked like a rolling sea as members danced in unison, all
looking for a place to shed their skin.As always, Widespread played a mix of
the music that spans its 17-year touring career, and it all was
groove-worthy.

“Everyone dances. It’s like a release,” said fan Madelin Barnett. “Even in
an auditorium where the space is confined. Dancing is an expression of
freedom.”

Some twirled with notebooks and pens in hand. They were logging the set
lists. It’s not uncommon at Widespread shows, since fans like to discuss the
songs they’ve heard.

“We’re documenting why we’re here,” said Brian Rice.

Rice will document another show in Asheville, N.C., tonight. He’ll surely
see many of the faces he saw at The Township.

Reach Taylor at (803) 771-8362 or otaylor@....

http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story/entertainment/43494#

Widespread Panic brings new sound to Asheville on Wednesday

By Jedd Ferris
Oct. 16, 2003 1:41 p.m.

It's been quite a turn of events for Widespread Panic, the southern groove
kings from Athens, Ga., who have amassed an underground fan base almost as
big as that of the Grateful Dead.

For the past 17 years, the band has been touring extensively, building
themselves up to a premiere level as mainstay arena rockers. But last year,
at the height of their musical peak, the group experienced a devastating
loss.

Lead guitarist and founding member Michael Houser, whose nickname "Panic"
was the band's namesake, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer on Aug.
10, 2002. Although his illness was hardly a secret, the band's large
community was shocked that Houser passed so quickly, as just two months
prior, he played fiercely during four acclaimed sets at the Bonnaroo Music
Festival in Tennessee.

Fans around the country mourned the loss of the musical hero - a small
memorial was even held downtown at Pack Square - and awaited the fate of
Widespread Panic.

Surprisingly, the band decided to play through the grief without even a
brief break, doing two memorial concerts for Houser the next week in
Colorado and starting a full fall tour that October.

"There was no time to stop and go home and curl up," says drummer Todd
Nance. "That wouldn't have been healthy, and that was not Mikey's wish
either. We just had to make sure we were still a band. Instead of getting
out there and pretending, we said let's just start from scratch and see if
we can do it."

The five remaining members - Nance, drummer; John Bell, rhythm guitarist and
main vocalist; Dave Schools on bass; keyboardist John Herman; and
percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz - enlisted former Kudzu Kings guitarist
George McConnell and saxophonist Randall Bramblett to fill out the sound
during the time of transition. The initial shows, though, were not easy,
with their integral member missing.

"You could feel it in the crowd too, people being unsure," says Nance. "It
was almost like having to talk people into it. It was a lot of hours in the
rehearsal room and a challenge, but George was just amazing, and I can't
believe how far he's come."

McConnell's prowess and familiarity with the band's music earned him the
spot as Houser's permanent replacement. With a schedule of 92 shows in 2003,
the band has been able to readjust their sound in a way that is conducive to
McConnell's style.

"It's definitely a different sound, but now we've been doing it for about a
year and a half, so it's not so new to us," says Nance. "It's starting to
settle in pretty nice actually. It'll definitely be a lot different for
someone who hasn't seen the band since George joined us, but it's worked
itself back into Panic business as usual."

The new work with McConnell also recently yielded Panic's eighth studio
album, "Ball." In the spirit of new beginnings, the band took a new approach
in the recording of the latest release. Where they usually road test all
material before putting it on a studio album, this time around they went
into the studio with nothing and did all of the writing together at the
sessions. The result is a cohesive, well-crafted blend of acoustic and
electric improvisational rock that rivals the best of the band's former
records.

"We just all went in a room," says Nance. "It was just about every
combination of songwriting you could come up with. Every single person in
the band donated to the creativity of `Ball', from lyrics down to rhythms to
riffs to whole songs."

Yet now, after proving to themselves that they are still a band and can
still make new music together, Widespread Panic has decided to take the
entire year of 2004 off to recover from the exhaustion of re-inventing
themselves. This will not come, though, before a full fall tour that
includes a cache of big send-off shows including a two-night Halloween stand
at New York's Madison Square Garden and a New Year's gala at Atlanta's
Philips Arena. The tour stops at the Asheville Civic Center on Wednesday
night.

"If we tour next year that would be our 18th straight year and that's a bit
much, so it's time to take a little break," says Nance.

But he is quick to insist that the band will be back and ready after the
break. "We don't know how to do anything else."

Jedd Ferris writes about music for the Citizen-Times. E-mail him at
ferrisjedd@....

10/19/03 Stephen C. O'Connell Center, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
1: Papa Johnny Road, Chunk Of Coal, Nebulous, Party At Your Mama's House,
Pilgrims, Porch Song, Sharon, Bayou Lena, Pigeons

2: One Arm Steve, Sleepy Monkey, Swamp > Low Rider, Little Lilly > Tie Your
Shoes > Drums, Makes Sense To Me, Christmas Katie, 1 x 1

E: Down, No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature

10/18/03 Macon Centreplex, Macon, GA
1: Flat Foot Flewzy, Henry Parsons Died, Fishing, Trouble, Space Wrangler,
Sparks Fly, Dirty Business, Down On The Farm, Daisy Mae

2: Travelin' Man > Jam > Diner, Stop Breakin' Down Blues > Ride Me High >
Driving Song > Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys > Drums > Low Spark Of High
Heeled Boys > Driving Song, Give, Fishwater

E: Let It Bleed, Mr. Soul

10/17/03 North Charleston Coliseum, Charleston, SC
1: Ain't Life Grand, Imitation Leather Shoes, Doreatha, Ribs And Whiskey,
Pleas, Bust It Big, Who Do You Belong To?, All Time Low, Love Tractor

2: Thought Sausage, North, Visiting Day, Rebirtha, Goin' Out West, Surprise
Valley > Drums > Surprise Valley, I'm Not Alone, Arleen, Papa's Home, Action
Man

E: Don't Wanna Lose You, Cream Puff War

10/16/03 Cricket Arena, Charlotte, NC
1: Little Kin, Bowlegged Woman, Weight Of The World, Thin Air (Smells Like
Mississippi), Jack, Let's Get Down To Business, Old Neighborhood, Papa
Johnny Road, Climb To Safety

2: Tortured Artist, Chilly Water, It Ain't No Use, Junior, Pickin' Up The
Pieces*, Fixin' To Die**, Drums, Hatfield, Tall Boy, Conrad

E: Nobody's Loss, Knocking 'Round The Zoo

* with Drew Emmitt on mandolin
** with Drew Emmitt on mandolin, Vince Herman on vocals
[Leftover Salmon opened]

http://www.free-times.com/archive/coverstorarch/widespread_panic.html


Travelin’ Men

After Death of Bandmate, Widespread Panic Enters Unknown Terrain


By Kevin Foster Langston

Widespread Panic
Township Auditorium: Thursday, Oct. 21 (7:30 p.m.)


When the members of Widespread Panic gathered in a Georgia studio last
October, much of what had become familiar and comfortable to them during the
course of their long career had changed.

Formed in 1985 at the University of Georgia, Widespread Panic’s blend of
blues, roots rock, boogie and country — and their word-of-mouth reputation
for great live shows — had gradually made them one of the most popular
touring bands in the nation. Though not enjoying quite the status of Phish
in the post-Grateful Dead landscape, Widespread Panic — John Bell (vocals,
guitar), Michael Houser (guitar), Dave Schools (bass), Todd Nance (drums),
Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz (percussion) and John “JoJo” Hermann (keyboards) —
nonetheless had legions of “Spreadheads” following them around the country.

But in August 2002, guitarist Michael Houser died from pancreatic cancer.
Faced with grief over the loss of their friend and daunting uncertainty over
the future of the band, Widespread Panic departed from a longstanding
tradition of road testing songs before recording them and instead recorded
their first-ever album of previously unheard material, Ball. They also
brought in longtime friend George McConnell to replace Houser on guitar.
Both moves have been met with mixed reviews from fans and critics, and the
band has been dealing with the reaction since releasing Ball in April.

Despite the mixed reaction to the band’s new album and lineup, Widespread
Panic remains an immensely popular live band and something of a touring
juggernaut. For the past five years, the band has been on the road as many
as 90 days a year; prior to that, they played as many as 200 dates a year.
But after building its reputation on the stage, Widespread Panic will take
an unprecedented break from touring in 2004.

Given the popularity of Panic’s live shows and the fans’ knowledge that the
band will not be touring next year, it’s not surprising that Tuesday’s show
is sold out. Those fortunate enough to have a ticket, however, should know
that doors open at 6 p.m., and Panic goes on at 7:30 p.m. Call 252-6530 for
more information.

Free Times spoke with bassist Dave Schools last week. Following is an edited
transcript of the conversation.

FT: I work with a couple of Widespread Panic fans, and when I asked them
what they wanted to know, first of all they brought up that the band will be
taking a break after this tour. Is that true?

Dave Schools: That’s very true. [Laughs.]

FT: Now, I admit I know of the band primarily through reputation and word of
mouth, and it didn’t seem to be big news to me. But it sounds to them like
it’s a pretty big deal. How big of a deal is this?

DS: Well, you know, we’ve never been one of those bands that puts out a
record every two years and then tours around the world for 18 months to
support it. It’s always been more of doing three or four tours a year, and
we’ve been doing that for like 17 or 18 years. And records, we put [them]
out when we have enough songs that we think are worthy of being captured in
time. And even the songs on those records are worked out live on stage. It’s
kind of reverse of the normal big rock band process. So, for us to actually
say we’re not going to tour for a length of time, in which we would normally
have done four tours, it is big news for the fans.

FT: Is this being looked at among band members as a hiatus?

DS: I’m calling it a sabbatical [laughs]. I don’t know what anyone else is
calling it. I’m planning on doing much academic research in my time off
[laughs].

FT: Well, let’s talk about the fans here for a second. What is it about your
music and about your band that draws this kind of a following, where people
follow the band on the road for weeks, sometimes months or years, at a time?

DS: You know, it’s pretty multi-faceted. I think, as far as the direct
connection with what we do goes, there’s probably two big reasons. The first
and foremost is there’s a whole lot of songs in our repertoire, and we’ll
cycle through four or five shows, really, before we get to where we repeat
one. And on top of that, we don’t play them the same way twice. There’s a
lot of improvisation on stage, a lot of listening.

And then the second thing is, in terms of that listening and everybody
getting a chance to add their voice to the musical conversation, I think the
audience really feels that they’re a part of it. And I know from our point
of view they’re an integral part of it. The energy they provide can make or
break a show, and it really does fit into the equation just like, “Did each
of us get up on the right side of the bed?”; “Does it sound good on stage?”;
“Is the air conditioning on in the coliseum?”; [and] “Is the flap-back
coming back off the back wall at an odd time interval?”

You know, there are so many factors, and I think that whereas most bands
work up a set, and they rehearse it, and they get the lighting cues down,
and the audience can pretty much expect the exact same show the next night
... not so with us, because of all these factors.

FT: You actually have a color-coding system, do you not, for your shows, so
as not to repeat songs?

DS: [Laughs.] Yeah, that’s one of the things our poor, beleaguered set-list
keeper came up with to help us. We don’t have to hit him up for his little
book for what we played earlier that tour. So he does have his little
color-coding system; it’s all explained in The Earth Will Swallow You
documentary. And it helps us. We can look at that and know that the ones
that are crossed out completely in black are the ones we played the night
before; we don’t want to go anywhere near those. The ones that are in red we
played two nights before. Maybe we’ll pick, like, one or something if we
really need to. The ones in green were three cities ago, and we could pick
out of those. But believe me, after black, red and green, there’s still
probably, I’d say, 60 or 70 songs we could pick from; they’re just kind of
rare.

And that’s another thing, you know, the fans will go see five or six shows
chasing a song. Maybe they’ve seen us 80 times and haven’t heard song “X.”
It’s a pretty amazing phenomenon; it really is. And to get back to your
initial question, the thing that’s not directly related to the music of the
band and the interaction with the crowd is this sort of ever-growing and
constantly evolving subculture they’ve created about themselves, which
includes hyper-analytical set-list keeping, bootleg T-shirt making,
spreading of recordings that they make at the shows, trading them like
baseball cards. You could spend a lot of time wandering around the parking
lot before the show and probably have a pretty entertaining time.

FT: I’ve read and heard that the band credits a lot of what you’re talking
about for helping to make Widespread Panic a national name and the touring
powerhouse that it is.

DS: Yeah, well, it’s the truest definition of grass roots, you know? Record
labels that are trying to break bands wish that there was a secret formula;
they could push a button, and overnight, band “X” would have a philosophy of
how to build a fan base, and they’d have it, and they’d sell millions of
records, and everybody would be happy. But it takes hard work, you know? And
it takes doing things that sort of fly in the face of what normal record
labels would be willing to accept.

It’s funny, because record labels will think that the bootleg tapes will
hurt record sales, but they don’t. They have to remember that these are
fanatics who are trading these tapes. Joe Consumer is really not interested
in a questionable-quality recording of a live concert. He’s interested in
the official product. The kids, the fans, they’re going to rush right out to
get the product the day it comes out, and then they’re going to go back to
trading their tapes. But they’re fanatics; they’re fans. And what I do know
is that, thanks to the taping, the first time we ever went to California,
people knew our songs already. We didn’t even have a record out.

FT: Now, you touched upon this previously. It’s taken a lot of miles and a
lot of years for Widespread Panic to build up a fan base. How did it all
come together for you guys, and what were those years like?

DS: Just years learning to put up with each other in a van. Probably, from
1987 or ’88 to ’97 or ’98, we were doing an average of 200 shows a year.

FT: And how many would you say you do these days?

DS: Somewhere between, probably, 75 and 90.

FT: A lot of bands, once they’ve reached a certain level of success, tend to
ease back considerably from the touring. But I would say Widespread Panic
tours almost more than any other band I know of. How much of a priority do
you guys place on touring, and does it supercede your studio existence?

DS: Yeah, it always has. As far as financial concerns go, if I was talking
to you from Fortune Magazine, I’d be telling you things like the income that
we get from records could not sustain the organization that we have. But the
touring allows us all to tour in relative ease and comfort and also to
sustain a merchandise wing that’s on full-time salary, and an office in
Athens, Ga., that’s on full-time salary. And also several of our key road
crew members are on full-time salary. You know, we set it up like a smart
business ... and it’s all worked pretty brilliantly. I mean, it’s been hard
work living on the road, but it’s eased up considerably in the last few
years. We’ve been able to come in and play multiple nights in cities — two
shows, three shows — and then move on.

FT: Well, there’s got to be a certain element of fun for you guys, as well,
or else I would imagine you wouldn’t do it as often as you do.

DS: Well, that’s the key. If it wasn’t fun ... believe me, there’s plenty of
time when 21 hours of the day out here are terrible. Boredom in some city,
in some hotel room. It doesn’t matter how fancy or nice it is, it’s still a
big square with a bed and a bathroom. And that is kind of like a blue-collar
prison. [Laughs.] But the three hours on stage make it all worthwhile. And
we have a great organization; our crew is top notch, and they’re also
hilarious. So they provide a few more hours of entertainment.

FT: Now, your live persona seems to be something of legacy, or else droves
of fans wouldn’t commit themselves to following you or traveling great
distances to see you. What is your band’s approach to performing?

DS: We is what we is. [Laughs.] And that’s all that we is. [Laughs.] You
know, it would be easy for me to look back on our formative years and say
that we sat around and said, “Here’s our plan: We are going to just be
ourselves, and by the virtue of doing so, we will be allowed to write in any
genre of music we choose, and it will still sound like us.” But that’s not
what happened. We’re just guys that got together at the University of
Georgia and had a good time playing, and we were lucky enough to have really
unique and easily identifiable voices, i.e. John Bell’s singing voice, Mike
Houser’s guitar, the way I play bass, the way Todd Nance plays drums, and we
wound up with not a bunch of technicians planning how to play a certain
style of music, but as a bunch of guys who couldn’t help but sound like we
were when we played together. Do you see what I mean?

FT: Absolutely.

DS: And I think if we had all been heavily academically trained as
musicians, that lucky happenstance probably wouldn’t have occurred.

FT: You’ve taken a different approach on this tour, from what I am told,
opting for smaller, more intimate venues. What was the inspiration behind
that?

DS: Mainly because of the death of Mike Houser last year, we’ve had to bring
in a new lead guitarist, and no matter how hard you try to learn 150 or so
songs, you’re just not going to get it. It’s going to take a long time, and
it’s a lot easier to do that in a smaller venue than it is in a coliseum. I
know that earlier this year we had done some really small places ... and it
was really nice to take it down to that level. It was real intimate and very
easy to hear each other on stage, and it was just key that we logged hours
with George McConnell in front of people, because that’s the only way that
we’re going to make things happen with this version of the band.

FT: This tour also comes at a time when the band had taken a new approach
with recording Ball. You decided not to road test material before heading
into the studio.

DS: It was kind of a necessity in dealing with grief more than anything. It
was an uncertain time. Losing someone who you’ve been playing with for 20
years is tough, and to venture into the idea of thinking about going into
the studio without that person, we knew that we were going to have to do
something to make it into a new process. We had a lot of stuff on the back
burner that we had written with Mikey, but we thought it might be better for
our process, and sort of getting on a whole new page, if we just forgot
about that stuff for a while.

We went into the studio with no preconceived notions and no ideas; everybody
brought whatever ideas they had to the table, and we recorded every bit of
it. And [for] the first sessions, we did not invite George; it was just the
five remaining of us and our longtime producer, John Keane, who was equally
grief-stricken and subject to the trials and tribulations of the process as
we were. And it was really difficult at first, but we got over it. And we
did a fall tour, and we came back, and we invited George, and things got a
little easier as time went by. And we started having fun, and the process
began to work.

We were interested in recreating the band; it’s a much better option than
re-treading the past, and I think the best way to do that was definitely to
go in with a clean slate and cultivate some new ideas. And I think it was
successful. I know reviews of that record have been everything a fan could
possibly come up with, but that’s kind of always the case with the studio
records. Even more so, there are some who absolutely love it; there are some
who think it’s joy and exuberance emerging from terrible tragedy and grief;
there’s others who think it’s more bound and morose. It’s hard for us to
tell; we’re inside the bubble. But I’m very proud of the record, and I think
we’ve taken another step in songwriting, which is really what we’ve always
been about in the studio. We don’t want to go into the studio and noodle
around for 10 minutes. We want to write concise songs and present them. We
can dress them up and ornament them as much as the studio will allow,
because that’s what it’s there for. We want to make a snapshot of how we
were at that time, and then the live shows is where the evolution of the
songs happens. It just happens that we had to learn how to play them on
stage this year. [Laughs.] Quite the reverse of the [usual] process.

FT: How did the fans react to hearing the songs live?

DS: Well, you know, how would you react to anything you hear for the first
time? If you go see a band you’re very familiar with, and almost padding
your life around, and they hit you with some stuff you’ve never heard
before, you’re not really going to know what to do until you’ve had time to
process it. So, it was a little weird at first, but we decided we weren’t
going to play any of those songs until the record had been released, to sort
of give people a chance to digest it a little bit. Because some of it is
extremely different, but I think that’s important and necessary.

FT: Now, you’ve said these recording sessions were difficult, and for
obvious reasons, of course. But how did it feel to complete the album and
walk away with something you could be proud of after all that had happened?

DS: I guess it’s one of those times where people who tell you what you ought
to do, despite you thinking that it’s the opposite of what you want to do —
it’s one of those times where those people turned out to be correct. And I’
ve seen it from the other side of the coin with my personal experience with
Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule, being asked to fill in for Allen Woody after
he tragically passed away. They didn’t know what to do; they were
grief-stricken. They were thinking about breaking up the band, and from an
outsider’s point of view, yeah, you’re grief-stricken. You knew the guy; you
were good friends with him, but you aren’t part of the band. All you know is
those guys need to know that they have to go on and get back up on the
horse, and I helped them to do that.

And so it was a little easier for me to take, after Mikey passed away, when
people were saying, “I know this sounds f#cked up, but you’ve got to get
back up on the horse.” And to me, at the time, it’s like, “I know that’s the
right thing to do, but it sure seems like the last thing I want to do right
now.” So really it just reaffirmed my faith in the greeting-card industry
side of people. [Laughs.]

FT: I see that you ended the album with one of his songs. What was the
motivation for that?

DS: That was a song that he had — it was really the last song he showed to
the band, when we were rehearsing for a summer tour, which we knew he might
or might not make it through any part of. And we never really worked it up
live. He never got a chance to play it with us live, but [we] did have a
really good demo version of it that we recorded in our rehearsal space. So
we basically just used that arrangement and cut the song. We thought it was
a great song. It’s a fitting song; it’s most definitely a Mike Houser song.
And that’s still kind of a tough one to play live. I think one of us or all
of us, any given time we’ve played it so far, has been almost choked up to
the point of not being able to play it. Because he knew that he was dying of
cancer; he wrote it, and it’s just him basically saying he wished he could
stay on the road.

FT: One of his last wishes was that the band carry on in his absence. Was
the thought of breaking up ever a possibility?

DS: I don’t think it was a possibility. It was certainly something that I
had thought about, being a big Led Zeppelin fan: the band that molded me
more than any other band I’ve probably ever cared about. They lost a key
member and said, “Well, we can’t go on as the same thing. We should just go
and fold it up.” I can’t say that that thought never crossed my mind. I can
say that every time it did, I knew I had to brush it aside. I think it was a
no-brainer that we were going to continue. It was just a matter of, “Do we
take a break and assess the situation or do we keep going?” And the way that
circumstances unfurled, was that we basically had to keep going. It’s what
we do; the wheel has to roll, and so it did. And hindsight gets closer and
closer to 20/20 with each passing month. But I think we made the right
decision, and it allowed for the band to grieve in their own way and to miss
Michael in their own way.

FT: How have the fans responded to George’s stepping in?

DS: Well, there’s plenty who love him and probably plenty who can’t stand
him. One of the reasons, and the main reason, that George got the gig is
because he’s family. He had played with our keyboardist, John Hermann, in a
band called Beanland years before, and he had always come and jammed with us
and been a part of our family in the Mississippi and Tennessee area, and he’
s just an all-around good guy. The chemistry’s right, and that’s what counts
for us. We’re not out here to kiss the fans’ asses, as it were. I don’t want
to sound pretentious or anything, but it’s got to be good for us.

One thing we’ve always kept in mind was if it ceased to be fun or good for
us, then there’s no reason to do it. So just hiring a sideman, gunslinger
guitar player wasn’t really going to do the trick. George is a very
different guitar player, and I think if anyone has a problem with him, it’s
probably because of his style. However, it’s something that we really like.
It’s not imitative of the way Mike played in any way, and we think that’s
important. If we’re going to move on and be what we’re supposed to be in the
future, then we needed to make a clean break. And that’s a bunch of logic
and reason, which doesn’t necessarily always work in music, but when you’ve
got to live on the bus with the guy, it does. [Laughs.]

FT: What has it meant to you, and to the band, to be able to press on after
such a huge loss, as friends and as musicians?

DS: It’s tough, because the first time a friend of mine died, my mother’s
advice to me was, “This is just life, and the longer you live it, the more
friends you have to say goodbye to.” And it enabled me to realize that sage
wisdom comes with older age and experience. And if I ever wanted to truly
possess that wisdom, we just had to keep going. It’s a great gift to be
allowed to play music and to be successful enough at it to make a living and
pay your bills. It’s a great gift in the first place. But then to be able to
weather this kind of tragedy and have your fans support you and grieve with
you — I mean, my god, I see people crying every night. I saw it with Gov’t
Mule. I’ve seen it with The Dead. It just means that the music is so loved,
and it’s important enough to — god, this is going to sound cheesy — but we
get the privilege of playing it and being this sort of semi-conductor that
passes it on. And that’s quite a privilege.

10/14/03 Memorial Auditorium, Chattanooga, TN
1: Disco, Monstrosity, Gradle, Dyin' Man, Pigeons, Casa Del Grillo, Clinic
Cynic, Meeting of the Waters, Radio Child

2: Sometimes, Blight, Rock, Travelin' Light*, Greta, Blue Indian, Drums,
Machine > Barstools and Dreamers, Blackout Blues*, City of Dreams

E: Coconut*, Tonight's the Night

* with Carrot Top on percussion
['Machine' Dave, Sunny, and Todd]

10/10/03 Kiefer Lakefront Arena, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
1: Chilly Water > Proving Ground > Chilly Water, Papa Johnny Road, Me And
The Devil Blues, Stop Breakin' Down Blues, Yard of Blonde Girls, Tall Boy,
Are You Ready For The Country?

2: Papa Legba, Bayou Lena, Rebirtha > Drums > Stop-Go > Little Lilly > Climb
To Safety > Use Me > Thin Air (Smells Like Mississippi) > Old Neighborhood >
Action Man

E: Old Joe, Ain't Life Grand


10/11/03 Kiefer Lakefront Arena, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
1: One Arm Steve > Henry Parsons Died, Walk On > All Time Low > Space
Wrangler > And It Stoned Me, Doreatha, Thought Sausage

2: Red Hot Mama > Visiting Day > Driving Song > Sleepy Monkey > Driving
Song, Nebulous > Busted Big > Drums > Surprise Valley > Pilgrims, North* >
Fishwater*

E: Don't Be Denied > Love Tractor

* with Brad Rosen on percussion, Jerry Joseph on guitar/vocals
['Nicaragua' rap by Jerry Joseph during 'North']


10/12/03 Kiefer Lakefront Arena, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
1: Send Your Mind, C. Brown, Counting Train Cars, Down, Can't Get High,
Ophelia, Party At Your Mama's House, Fishing, Dear Mr. Fantasy

2: Porch Song > Makes Sense To Me > Big Wooly Mammoth > Tie Your Shoes >
Give > Mercy > Drums > Let It Bleed > Imitation Leather Shoes

E: Slippin' Into Darkness > She Walks Right In > Shake, Rattle, And Roll

[Only 'Let It Bleed', Only 'She Walks Right In'; Set 1 acoustic; 'Spanish
Moon' jam and 'Birthday' before 'Give']

10/08/03 Verizon Wireless Theater, Houston, TX
1: Little Kin, Travelin' Light, Tortured Artist, Aunt Avis > Ride Me High >
Diner > Greta, Genesis, Pigeons

2: Monstrosity, Dyin' Man, Weak Brain, Narrow Mind, Who Do You Belong To?,
Pickin' Up The Pieces, Travelin' Man > Drums > No Sugar Tonight/New Mother
Nature > Imitation Leather Shoes

E: I Like The Things About Me, Red Beans

10/07/03 Verizon Wireless Theater, Houston, TX
1: Sometimes, Bear's Gone Fishin' > Sleeping Man, Don't Wanna Lose You,
Junior, Party At Your Mama's House > Blue Indian, Radio Child > Conrad

2: Mr. Soul, Surprise Valley > Coconut, Down, Sparks Fly, Tie Your Shoes >
Worry, 1 x 1, I Walk On Guilded Splinters > Drums > Christmas Katie, Give

E: Let It Rock > Blackout Blues

[Everyone remained on-stage during 'Drums']

10/05/03 Backyard, Bee Cave, TX
1: Tonight's the Night, Fishing, Pilgrims, Clinic Cynic, Trouble*, Counting
Train Cars, Driving Song > Breathing Slow, Can't Find My Way Home, Mercy,
Nobody's Loss, Space Wrangler

2: Old Neighborhood, Henry Parsons Died, Thin Air (Smells Like Mississippi),
Busted Big, One Arm Steve, Light Is Like Water*, Road To Damascus* > We'll
Be Fine*, Fishwater**

E: Love Tractor

10/04/03 Backyard, Bee Cave, TX
1: Nebulous, Blight, Rock, Disco, Casa Del Grillo, Wondering, Chunk Of Coal,
Papa Johnny Road, Action Man

2: Slippin' Into Darkness, Doreatha, Barstools and Dreamers, Travelin'
Light, Can't Get High, Visiting Day > Drums* > Papa Legba, Makes Sense To
Me, Climb To Safety

E: Bowlegged Woman, End Of The Show

* with Cecil Daniels on percussion
** with Ray Ramsey on percussion
[DJ Logic and Mofro opened]

10/03/03 Backyard, Bee Cave, TX
1: Weight Of The World, Tortured Artist, Tall Boy, Aunt Avis, Fixin' To Die,
Dyin' Man, Porch Song, Who Do You Belong To?, Bayou Lena

2: Ophelia, Rebirtha, Surprise Valley, Arleen*, North, Drums > You Better
Run** > All Time Low**, Use Me**, Chilly Water**

E: Ain't Life Grand

* with DJ Logic on turntables
** with Warren Haynes on guitar
['Ribs And Whiskey' rap by JB during 'Arleen']

10/01/03 Canyon Amphitheatre, Lubbock, TX
1: She Caught The Katy, Thought Sausage, Greta, Sleepy Monkey > Red Hot
Mama, Monstrosity > Travelin' Man, Little Lilly, Are You Ready For The
Country?

2: Imitation Leather Shoes, Stop-Go, Busted Big, Love Tractor, Yard of
Blonde Girls, C. Brown, Gradle, Diner, Pusherman, Pigeons

E: Stop Breakin' Down Blues, Daisy Mae

[Acoustic 'Yard of Blonde Girls' through 'Gradle'; 'Kinky Reggae' rap by JB
during 'Sleepy Monkey'; 'Time Waits' rap by JB during 'Stop-Go']

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/articles/0,15114,489773-1,00.ht
ml

SHOW BIZ
How Panic Spreads
Rockers Widespread Panic thrive by consistently offering 'nothing' to their
absurdly loyal fans.
FORTUNE SMALL BUSINESS
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
By Joshua Hyatt


No sooner has the band Widespread Panic taken the stage at Colorado's Red
Rocks Amphitheater than I notice that everyone in the audience is pointing
at me. Some use both index fingers; others jab in my direction with just
one. Okay, I know I stand out from the other 9,399 audience members. My new
FSB baseball cap, with its stiff brim, is facing forward. While other heads
bob to the opening bars of Neil Young's "Are You Ready for the Country?"
mine builds up to a rhythmic quiver. I am wearing a blue blazer, which has
been slapped with a yellow schools' zone sticker, featuring the
distinctively distended silhouette of Dave Schools, the band's bassist.
Wherever I walk, fans tap the sticker, then give me a thumbs-up accompanied
by a we-both-know-what-that-means glance. I don't, of course. And when I
confess my ignorance to Kevin Teel, a 35-year-old diehard (104 shows) who is
(I'm not making this up) an industrial hearing-testing program salesman and
is sitting—actually standing, like everybody else—in the fifth row, he pats
me on the back and puts me at ease. "The Schools' Zone," he assures me with
a thumbs up, "is where you want to be." Whew!

I resume my awkward shuffling, only to feel something hit my back. A
marshmallow lands at my overdressed feet—a tribute perhaps to "Cream Puff
War," a punkish Grateful Dead song the band covers? That's what somebody
tells me, but nobody's sure how the ritual began. Still, when I feel drops
of water pelting me, I'm proud that I get it: The bluesy band has broken
into Van Morrison's classic "And It Stoned Me." Folks reflexively flick
their water bottles as soon as the sextet reaches the three-peated line:
"Oh, the water."

What's happening onstage at a Widespread Panic gig is only a small morsel
from a big, flaky feast. Therein, dudes, lies the key to its ongoing
profitability: In an era in which the piracy of recorded music has leeched
away revenues, the band's ability to turn live shows into its primary
distribution channel may turn out to be the wisest of business decisions.

"The band really puts a lot into what it does," proclaims 33-year-old Laura
Kelly (75 shows), a bookkeeper. "The audience feels it and tries to give it
back." Fans position themselves nose to nose, shouting the lyrics into each
other's wide-open mouths; they throw rubber duckies and dance with alien
balloons; they claw and punch the empty air. As for the pointing? Well,
there's a lot of it—at the band members, at one another, between any two
people who make eye contact—and it's so obviously random that only an
especially self-conscious soul could misinterpret it as I did. Such
aggressive gestures are just outlets for all the energy and the unity and
the ... hey, what's that sweet smell?

Should the audience stop sensing those vibes, these guys are goners.
Nobody's going to be begging them to reunite for a Hall of Fame induction
either. In their 11-CD career, they've sold maybe two million discs. And you
aren't going to catch their tunes blasting out of a passing radio. "I wish I
could say they got airplay," says Buck Williams, 57, the band's co-manager
and agent. "But radio is awfully narrow-minded and jaded."

That being the case, Widespread Panic doesn't sustain itself by selling a
shrinkwrapped product. Like business consultants and tax attorneys, these
folks make money only when they work—that is, up on stage providing "the
soundtrack to this big party that's going on," as drummer Todd Nance puts
it. Widespread Panic sells the experience of seeing its live performance,
which is even airier than it sounds. "You're calling nothing something, and
you're selling that," explains John Bell, the band's 41-year-old co-founder.
"It's like Seinfeld."

Widespread Panic isn't the first band to make a go of it this way. The
Grateful Dead is the granddaddy of role models, but even it scored a top-ten
hit. And Phish, a better-known descendant of the Dead, can claim a Ben &
Jerry's flavor named in its honor. Relatively few people, I'm guessing, own
a pair of the Widespread Panties I saw being hawked outside. But the fans
keep coming back and will keep doing so because—why, again? "They come
because their buddy from Georgia or Washington State is here," theorizes
Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz, 51, Panic's percussionist and a father of two. "They
want to come out and see us screw up."

Maybe that's it; the spontaneity Widespread Panic cultivates is what has
created such loyalty. After all, about half of the attendees of the three
Red Rocks appearances used mail order to buy a three-ticket package for all
the shows. Last year the band played 41 dates (this year it'll play around
90), grossing about $12 million, with an impressive 35% profit margin. The
revenue's on par with Bonnie Raitt's, and better, for example, than either
Alicia Keys's or Willie Nelson's, according to Pollstar, a music industry
publication. Come Halloween, Widespread Panic hopes to turn Madison Square
Garden into one of its haunts (it's playing New York City's big arena for
the first time). "I feel in my gut the business is there," says
agent-manager Williams. "We're going to give them a good product at a good
price." Radical, yes, but it just might work.

Making money from nothing is harder than it looks. The band's company, Brown
Cat, does have an official merchandising department (annual revenues:
$500,000, with 20% margins) working out of its headquarters in Athens, Ga.,
selling everything from T-shirts to faux Georgia license plates. Even so,
"people call us all the time looking for certain T-shirts that turn out to
be bootlegs," says Paul "Crumpy" Edwards, one of three employees in
merchandising. "You just can't snuff the stuff out." Unless you co-opt it.
Don Hess (180 shows) was once a pirate but then became a licensee, making
promotional merchandise like ultimate Frisbees for the band. "They busted
us, but we've gone legit," says Hess, proud co-founder of Mountain High
Productions (for more on other businesses that have sprung up around the
band, see Something From 'Nothing,' right). The upshot for the group: better
control over quality and higher profits.

One group Widespread Panic won't ever try to unplug is the amateur tapers.
With the music industry suing individual fans for downloading songs over the
Net, it's jarring to see a special section at the band's concerts reserved
for these guys—right behind the soundboard, where they're out of the way of
most Spreadheads. (To get closer, tapers have been known to mount tiny
microphones on their eyeglasses.) These fans, the logic goes, create new
acolytes by sharing their CDs with them. "The people who make tapes are
responsible for us having great crowds the first time we went west of the
Mississippi," recalls Schools, 39. He joined the fledgling group—which took
its name from its late co-founder Michael Houser's bout with panic
attacks—in 1984. "They figured out early what their fans wanted," says
Williams, whose clients include REM. "And they catered to that." That's why
Travis Tarr, for one, has taped about 30 shows since 1997. Today he has
$6,000 of equipment stashed inside a green waterproof bag. "None of us make
a dollar on this," says Tarr, 31, reassuringly slipping his arm around me.
"The band just wants us to spread it out."

By "it," he means the band's music, which isn't as marginal to the overall
experience as you might assume. Widespread Panic's style is quite unlike the
spacey and psychedelic drifting of other improvisational jam bands. The
lyrics are sometimes silly and sing-songy ("And if I had my way / I'd give a
coconut to everyone") and other times, uh, less so ("I got a real good mind
to beat you senseless"), but nearly always stuffed with images. In
"Travelin' Man," the last song on Ball, the CD that the band released last
April, Houser seems to couch a reference to his terminal illness in terms
more appropriate to a Star Trek episode ("Got a big hole / In my deflector
screen"). He died of pancreatic cancer in August 2002 at the age of 40. At
Red Rocks, the band performed that song as one of its encores during its
Saturday night show. Fans knew that last year's Red Rocks show was Houser's
second-to-last stage appearance, and the hard-core followers, who love to
decode messages in what the band does during shows, deciphered a tribute to
Houser. Not that anyone in the band mentioned that—or much else—between
tunes.

Indeed, Widespread Panic gives away as little as possible, the better to
keep its listeners guessing. "We've got to be consistent in our
nothingness," jokes Bell. To make sure that there's a unique set list for
every concert, the band devised a color-coded system that guarantees the
same song doesn't get played more than once every three concerts. When their
catchy "Coconut" tune got too many requests, they stopped playing it
altogether for a while. "None of us really wanted a career based on one
song," says Nance. And to keep things lively on stage, the band brings up
guests like Cecil "P-Nut" Daniels, who blew through a digital saxophone
called a Midi Horn. Percussionist Ortiz proudly points out that while "most
people look for short songs with a hook ... we've never followed anyone's
direction." In fact, when the photographer for this story asked Bell to
cross his arms, he resisted. "It feels fake," he told me. "Take a picture of
us the way we are."

The band's dislike of "practiced off-the-cuffness" may be what forced it
into its definition-defying niche. As Bell tells it, he was scarred by an
experience he had as a teenager. Excited to see his favorite act in concert,
he returned for a second night and was disillusioned to discover that all
the natural-sounding, light-hearted banter was scripted (Bell won't name the
offender). "My heart just sank," he says. "It really made me think about the
value of lack of predictability." Co-manager Sam Lanier, 54, adds that it
helps that Panic "evolved, with a very independent touring base and not
having to be dictated to by a record company, radio, or anyone else."

Sitting in a hotel suite, with a copy of a recent Rolling Stone magazine on
the coffee table in front of him—it happens to mention Widespread Panic as
one of the best live bands ever—Bell turns cranky when I ask him whether,
after nearly two decades of regular touring, he's pocketed any serious
scratch. "It's nobody's business as to what my personal holdings are," he
says.

The band isn't interested in following the conventional path to big bucks.
It won't play at most radio-sponsored shows, Bell says, because Widespread
Panic "can't express itself in an hour." He gives a similar reason for
turning down a feeler about opening for the Rolling Stones. "Our fans would
be disappointed." The band has played twice on The Late Show With David
Letterman (and once on The Tonight Show last August) because "it felt
right." Serving those fans remains a priority even in New York City, where
tickets cost just $45 (the average Garden price is $65 to $75), so true
believers can soak up both nights. Without them, as I now know, there's no
show.

Driving with Nance to the gig that afternoon, I ask him as we approach Red
Rocks, Wouldn't all these folks lining the streets explode into, well,
widespread panic if they knew you were in the car? Not at all, he insists.
To prove it, he turns and waves out the window. One fan, draped in tie-dye,
smiles broadly and then—of course—points. "It's not like we're the Beatles
or anything," Nance says quietly. "Here, the band and the audience are
responsible for each other's existence." Finally, I'm convinced he's right.


Something From 'Nothing'
Widespread Panic doesn't just make music. It breeds entrepreneurs.

$500,000, or "just shy of being in the black," as filmmaker Chris Hanson,
37, puts it, is what's been grossed by The Earth Will Swallow You, his
documentary of the band's summer 2000 tour.

$77,000 gross sales since 1998 for Everyday Companion, published by Ted
Rockwell, a book crammed with Widespread Panic's song lyrics, set lists, and
stats. "I probably could have turned this into a real business if I'd been a
little more serious about it," says Rockwell, 34.

$500 a show is how much Henry Parsons Project, a Widespread Panic tribute
band, takes home. Good thing, then, that "we're not doing this for the
money," says lead singer Tori Pater, 33. "We're doing it for a hoot."

09/28/03 Adams Center, Missoula, MT
1: Let's Get Down To Business, Papa Johnny Road, No Sugar Tonight/New Mother
Nature, Down, One Arm Steve, I Like The Things About Me, Ribs And Whiskey,
Mercy, Travelin' Light

2: Conrad, Sleeping Man, Jack, Junior, Tie Your Shoes > Drums > Ride Me High
> Tie Your Shoes > Papa's Home > Coconut, 1 x 1

E: Old Joe, Climb To Safety

Panic plays fast and loose with songs recorded before tour

By GENE STOUT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER POP MUSIC CRITIC

Write 'em, road test 'em and record 'em. Those are the three R's for
Widespread Panic.

The long-running jam-rock band usually gives each new song a good workout on
the road before committing it to a recording. But the Athens, Ga., group
took a different approach on its current album, "Ball": The entire album was
recorded before any of its fans had heard a single song.

"From the people I've talked to, it seems that a lot of the old-school fans
are excited about the new album because they were used to the traditional
way things were done," said guitarist George McConnell with a slight
chuckle.

"When they bought a new album, they pretty much knew what songs were going
to be on it and what they'd sound like. On the other hand, some of the newer
fans are upset because they didn't get a chance to hear them first."

The good-natured McConnell, who replaced founding guitarist Michael "Mikey"
Houser, who died of cancer last year, said many of the new songs have
changed dramatically since the album's release last spring.

"Some of these songs are really taking on a new life of their own on the
road. It's really amazing," he said during a tour stop in Salt Lake City. "
'Papa John Road' has really taken off, and 'Thin Air' has been fleshed out
into a whole new thing.' "

The six-member band's latest trek, which plays White River Amphitheatre
tomorrow night and closes with two Halloween weekend shows at Madison Square
Garden, includes an acoustic set among all the electrified tunes.

"We've been doing some of the heavier, more rocking songs acoustically,"
McConnell said. "And rocking out on some of the quieter songs. It's been a
lot of fun."

After the tour wraps up Nov. 1, band members will take a long hiatus before
returning to the road in 2005.

"Those guys have been on the road for 17 years, and they deserve a break,"
McConnell said.

Widespread Panic is one of the leading groups of the jam-band circuit, which
exploded after the 1995 death of Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. The band
blends rock, blues, jazz and other styles in its energetic, free-wheeling
performances. No two concerts are alike. The group has maintained a strong
concert following despite modest record sales, no MTV airplay and minimal
radio play.

"Ball" was recorded last October, just two months after Houser's death.
Still grieving, the group finished up its summer 2002 tour and entered the
studio, while McConnell remained on the sidelines.

"They went in by themselves for a couple of weeks and just laid down basic
ideas," he said. "Some pieces were 30 seconds long, others were five, 10
minutes long. Just crazy ideas. Then they invited me to come down. I was
involved in maybe six or seven of the songs."

"Thin Air" recalls Santana as well as the Doobie Brothers, while "Don't Want
To Lose You" carries a hint of Tom Petty. The final song on the album, the
powerful "Travelin' Man," is the last song Houser wrote. The single
"Fishing," a haunting ballad, made strong showing on radio when it was
released last month.

McConnell, who has known keyboardist John "JoJo" Hermann since both played
in a cover band called Beanland in the early '80s, isn't sure of his plans
after the tour ends. But other band members will work on solo projects while
pondering the band's future.

"Kinda everybody in the group has a little side project going," McConnell
said.

"So I imagine some of those will get fired up again. Todd (Nance) has a
little group called Barbara Q. And Dave (Schools) plays in a band called
Acetate.

09/27/03 White River Amphitheatre, Auburn, WA
1: Tall Boy, Bear's Gone Fishin', Send Your Mind, Doreatha, It Ain't No Use,
Blue Indian, Sometimes, Henry Parsons Died

2: Give, Fishwater > Casa Del Grillo, Nebulous > Flat Foot Flewzy >
Nebulous, Driving Song > Thin Air (Smells Like Mississippi) > Driving Song,
Blackout Blues, Radio Child

E: Pilgrims, Cream Puff War

09/26/03 Cuthbert Amphitheater, Eugene, OR
1: Disco > Wondering > Climb To Safety, Tortured Artist, Mr. Soul, Old
Neighborhood, Don't Wanna Lose You > Love Tractor

2: Little Kin, Weight Of The World, Visiting Day, Space Wrangler, Fishing,
Counting Train Cars, Imitation Leather Shoes, Chilly Water > Daddy's
Drinkin' Again > Drums > Chilly Water > Action Man

E: Heaven, Ain't Life Grand

[Acoustic 'Fishing' through 'Imitation Leather Shoes'; Bluegrass version of
'Imitation Leather Shoes'; Soundcheck: 'Bear's Gone Fishin'']

09/26/03 Cuthbert Amphitheater, Eugene, OR

1: Disco > Wondering > Climb To Safety, Tortured Artist, Mr. Soul, Old
Neighborhood, Don't Wanna Lose You > Love Tractor

2: Little Kin, Weight Of The World, Visiting Day, Space Wrangler, Fishing,
Counting Train Cars, Imitation Leather Shoes, Chilly Water > ??? > Drums >
Chilly Water, Action Man

E: Heaven, Ain't Life Grand

['???' may be a new JoJo song]

09/24/03 Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT
1: North, Proving Ground, Makes Sense To Me, Pickin' Up The Pieces, Worry,
Porch Song, Thin Air (Smells Like Mississippi), All Time Low

2: Monstrosity, Slippin' Into Darkness > Barstools and Dreamers, Thought
Sausage, Surprise Valley > Drums > Surprise Valley, I'm Not Alone, Pigeons,
Rebirtha, Papa Johnny Road

E: Greta, Goin' Out West

['Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin' rap during 'Barstools and
Dreamers']