duggup

Artist: Widespread Panic
Website: www.widespreadpanic.com/
Track Name: Weekly MP3
Playback: mp3/flash
Download?: Yes

I hadn’t heard of these guys before, but then that’s what it’s about. Widespread Panic is a southern rock band from Athens, Georgia. Founded in 1985 at the University of Georgia as a weekly jam session at the Uptown Lounge in Athens. The founding members of the group are guitarist/singer John Bell, guitarist Michael Houser and bassist David Schools. Drummer Todd Nance would soon join, and percusionist Sonny Ortiz and keyboardist John Hermann joined in the early 1990s.

So that gets the history lesson out of the way. Yep another “Southern Band” but these guys are a lot more like the Grateful Dead and Phish in that they are a “road warrior” band. They played 250 shows a year, touring constantly and would appear never to play the same set twice. BUT they record every show, and you can subscribe to the recordings on their website. They took a year off and have just started touring and recording again.

Each week on their website they offer a new MP3 from the huge archive of live performances. For example the current (at the time of writing this ) offering was recorded in 2001 at Morrison, Coolrado and has four songs.
Fishwater, Airplane, Jack, Blackout Blues

If you like what you hear (and I did), great guitars and great live performances, there is also a fan site that has about 200 shows from the last 5 or so years. That should keep us all going for a while.

Have a listen and turn it up a bit. Actually turn it up a lot.

thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
Email this author | All posts by thatch |