By Zach Hanner
For Weekly Surge

In the fall of 1989, I was a college sophomore when some friends and I were in the midst of a long weekend road trip, following Boston legend The Pixies on the Southeastern swing of its tour. After catching a show at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, my pals and I drifted out to dig the various bands playing at the school's fraternity houses. As I and around 15 other people watched one group simply go off - without heed to the size of the crowd - I asked the guy next to me, "Who is this?" "Widespread Panic," was his reply.

It's safe to say that more than two decades after its first gig in Athens, Ga., in 1985, Widespread Panic still isn't worrying about the size of its crowds. The six- piece band (guitarist/singer John Bell, keyboardist John "Jojo" Hermann, bassist Dave Schools, drummer Todd Nance, percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz and newest addition, Fayetteville, N.C., native Jimmy Herring on guitar) has grown to be one of the most successful live acts touring today. A three-night stand at the House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach starting Monday is the second time in the last five years WSP has sold out a trio of shows at the venue.

Mike Greenhaus is an associate editor at Relix magazine, the journal of note for the musical style known as the so-called "jam band" scene. And while that label can easily be misleading, especially for an act such as Widespread Panic, Greenhaus discovered the group after dipping his toes in the genre with other groups.

"I, like a lot of people, got in the 'jam band' sound through the Grateful Dead and Phish," Greenhaus said. "But Widespread Panic was one of the 'second generation' jam bands that really caught my attention. I've seen them around 30 times and, though they've gone through some changes, most notably the death of (original guitarist) Michael Houser, I think they're having a renaissance right now with the addition of Jimmy Herring."

Wild Eyed Southern Boys

While the group sells out nearly every venue it plays, WSP's fan base is particularly strong in the South.

"In the early '90s, particularly with the H.O.R.D.E. Tour, these bands really started to draw audiences," Greenhaus said. "And while Phish kind of ruled the Northeast and lots of bands had fanbases in Colorado, Widespread is the signature band in the Southeast. But the cool thing is that they weren't really competing with each other, but rather supporting each other."

And like Deadheads before them, diehard Widespread devotees - Spreadheads - are fanatical about their favorite group. Mark Passon is golf director for Signature Golf Packages in Myrtle Beach and has been following the group for nearly a decade.

"I moved down from Pennsylvania in 1997 and had some friends that were in to them," Passon said. "I saw them for the first time on October 19, 2000, in Charleston, the first show of their fall tour and I've seen them around 60 times since. The whole experience and the interaction between the crowd and the band is just unreal."

Britt Johnson and his wife Missy Johnson own Loose Lucy's, a funky shop at Broadway at the Beach that specializes in hippy-esque merchandise such as black lights, Guatemalan fabrics and WSP clothing items, even going so far as to offer 10 percent off purchases to anyone that shows their WSP ticket or stub. When asked how many shows he's caught, he lets loose a hearty laugh.

"God, I've lost track," Johnson said. "My first show was in 1990 at the Purple Gator and I'm pretty close to my 100th show. I used to catch them at the Afterdeck playing for about 100 people. "

Deejay Scott Mann of WAVE 104 hosts a weekly program called "Scott Mann's Headshop," and he feels the reason for the group's, pardon the pun, widespread success, is self-evident.

"This may sound a little too simple, but they're just a good band," Mann said. "The music business is filled with bands. Some make it, some don't and some just keep going and going because they have something special that nobody else has. They take the jam concept and combine it with a true Southern spirit which is truly special, particularly in this part of the country."

Sunny Day

Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz is a Texas percussionist who happened to sit in and jam with an early incarnation of the group in 1986, eventually joining full time in 1989. And while Ortiz enjoys the group's occasional forays into the recording studio, he's well aware of where the power truly lies.

"We're very fortunate that we're not a band that relies on record sales and, being a band that makes their living on the road, we get the best of both worlds.," Ortiz said. "In our eyes, there's nothing that can compare to a live audience and while being the studio is fun, it's kind of sterile. You don't have the time to expand, to jam, to explore the songs. "

And explore they do. For years they would play more than 200 shows per year, honing their chops and improvisational skills. "The road has been our way of escape," Ortiz said. "But once you've been out on the road as long as we've been, you want to cut back a bit and not play so often. We never want to be a predictable band to where people are saying, 'Oh, it's June. They're going to be at Red Rocks' or 'It's July. I'll catch them at some festivals.'"

And speaking of Red Rocks, the iconic amphitheater near Denver, earlier this year the band broke the venue's longstanding record for continuous sellouts, passing the Grateful Dead and Willie Nelson with 32 shows in a row.

"Colorado is a great place to escape," Ortiz said. "It's kind of our second home. We started
out with a small tour there, just playing small venues but with the response we got, we knew that this could be another stronghold for us.

We first played there with the H.O.R.D.E. tour along with folks like Blues Traveler, The Samples and Dave Matthews. We hope we're able to play another 30 shows there."

And as much love as the members of Widespread Panic have for the mountains of Colorado, the beach still holds some magic for the band. "We started playing Myrtle Beach back in the '80s," Ortiz said. "We played The Afterdeck, right next to Thee Dollhouse! That was a big deal for us, playing on that great stage, outside, was just unreal. It was the hottest thing in earth. We'd take two days off before the shows and just hang out at the beach and then we'd take another day off after the shows were over to just relax. It would be like a mini-vacation for us."

That isn't to say that playing the House of Blues is anything to sneeze at. "It's a great room and people really enjoy the vibe there," Ortiz said. "It's the next to the last stop on the tour so it's a big week. We're saving a lot of special things for these gigs so people should be excited."

Parking Lot Circus

Like the fans of the Dead before them, Widespread Panic fans like to make the entire day of a concert an experience rather than just show up for the gig.

"Being that their music is filled with improvisation and experimentation, they draw the same type of crowd that flocked to acts like the Dead and Phish," Mann said. "The atmosphere of the fans following the band, the parking lot circus, all of it is at a different level today but it's still there and it's still fun. It's like that whole southern tradition of 'tailgating' has morphed with the parking lot scene."

Mark Passon and his pals have a time-honored tradition when it comes to seeing their favorite act. They've even traveled as far as New Orleans and San Francisco to see the band. "You try and get there early in the afternoon so you can hang out and meet people," Passon said. "Everybody's so laid back and fun, just there to have a good time. You get to make friends from all over the country."

And while in days past, you might wallow in the mud with a crowd of patchouli-wearing, unshaven hippies (not that there's anything wrong with that), you most likely won't encounter too many of them at these gigs.

"One of the first things you'd notice if you were an aging Dead fan that decided to go check out a Widespread show, is that rather than the parking lot being filled with Volkswagen busses, there are lots of SUVs and higher end vehicles," Mann said. "The Dead came out of a time where materialism was being shunned and Widespread originated out of the conspicuous wealth era of the '80s."

Despite demographic differences, the audience shares a common love for the experience of a WSP show. "There's a family bond among the crowd," Johnson said. "Good music and good people. I'm part of a few Panic sites on the Internet and, as my mother passed away last week, I was trying to find a particular piece of music for her service and someone I didn't even know saw my post and dropped off a CD at the shop for me."

Jam or Not?

While people sling the 'jam band' label around pretty freely these days, due to its wide ranging repertoire, it's not really fair to pin the title on Widespread Panic.

"People always like to make comparisons but I think they have their own flavor," Passon said. "They're more of a rock 'n' roll band in my opinion than a jam band. They do a little of that but it's more rock as I hear it."

Greenhaus understands this argument but doesn't necessarily agree. "We did an article on, for lack of a better term, the 'New Sound of Southern Rock' a couple of years ago and we had an interview with Dave Schools and he said that people always wanted to peg them as 'Southern Rock'" Greenhaus said. "And though there are traditional elements of that in their sound and in their songwriting, they probably owe more to The Grateful Dead than to Lynyrd Skynyrd."

And the band covers songs by both. In fact, creating a nightly set list has become an art form of itself. "In the beginning, there wasn't really a set list because we played mostly covers," Ortiz said. "When we released 'Space Wrangler,' back in '88, we decided we needed to come up with a master list of both covers and originals. Now it's a big, color-coded list where we can see what we've played over the past few evenings and make our choices for the current show based on that. There are over 350 songs on there."

And that versatility and spontaneity is appealing to fans. "The cool thing is you never know what they're going to play," Johnson said. "The show is never the same and you might catch a song you haven't heard in three or four years, which is exciting."

For The Love Of The Groove

One of the many things you'll notice about the band's live performance is the fact that the musicians truly love what they're doing and appear to have a rapport that stems from their often wacky tangential improv sessions.

"We're really lucky to have a great camaraderie between us," Ortiz said. "It's like a marriage. We really appreciate each other's input, on and off the stage. There's the six of us and a crew of about 30 and when we're out here on the road, this is our family."

That is, until July 26 when the summer jaunt comes to a close in Charlotte, N.C., although the band will play a few festival dates in late August.

"Once the tour is over, we say our goodbyes and go our separate ways," Ortiz said. "We take off and revitalize and rejuvenate our systems. Then, when the next tour comes around, it's like a big family reunion. We catch up, share musical ideas and get things moving again."

 

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