5/4/05 Interview w/ John Bell

LIVEDAILY.COM INTERVIEW
May 04, 2005 01:50 PM
by Don Zulaica

Here's your understatement for the day: people want to see Widespread Panic (music). How badly? Asheville, NC: sold out in four minutes. Three shows in Chicago: five minutes. Louisville, KY: 12 minutes. Three shows in Atlanta: 14 minutes.

The Georgia-bred jam band is in the middle of a run that will see them, once again, anchoring the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, TN, as well as the 10,000 Lakes Festival in Detroit Lakes, MN. This is after an unprecedented 15-month hiatus, and following the 2002 tragedy of guitarist Michael Houser losing his battle with pancreatic cancer.

The band has also opened a website, www.livewidespreadpanic.com, to allow fans to download entire soundboard-quality concerts. The first shows are being offered for free, and other selected shows will sell for $10.95-$15.95 (depending on file format), complete with cover art.

liveDaily spoke with vocalist-guitarist John Bell via phone from Tallahassee, FL.

liveDaily: The sellout stats I read are insane. What's going on?

John Bell: I think, just taking the time off and being well organized; there was clear communication on when the shows were going to go up for sale. It was probably a little chain reaction. For Chicago, New York and Atlanta, it was three-day weekends in a fun city, and those sold out pretty quick. We're surprised and really grateful that the tickets were cookin' like that.

You've also launched www.livewidespreadpanic.com to let fans access entire shows. Why did you decide to do this?

It's the same reason we started printing CDs. [laughs] That was just where technology in the music industry was going. It's pretty much just one of the things that bands are able to do. Since our shows are different from night to night, that also makes it a little feasible. If we were doing the same show every night, you could download it once and that would be it.

With your thriving trading community, I'd guess you were never into the "sue your listeners" thing.

No, we kind of count on them to be ... responsible with their freedom, as everybody should be. It's a new world, so it's still kind of like the old west out there. It's not thoroughly regulated. There's the opportunity to take advantage, and there's also the opportunity for folks that really don't see the line of cause-and-effect, how their excitement of getting something for free could kind of backfire in the whole system. It will work itself out, it is working itself out. As the years go by, the record companies are getting on board, they're not in denial about the Internet anymore. [laughs]

That worked real well.

It's kind of a good thing, because record companies were still working in old formulas, and arguably--not in every case, but in a lot of cases--artists and fans, you could be taken advantage of on both ends. And, all of a sudden, new technology comes through where you've got to re-adjust, and that gave some of the freedom of movement back to the artists and the fans. It's interesting to watch.

But, to answer your [original] question, we're more fascinated by the whole thing than to want to be [complaining] about missing some royalties, which is the case. But we're in the middle of a phenomenon, and we're doing well enough in our world that nobody's going to feel sorry for us [laughs] if we do get all cry-baby about it.

How many shows do you play a year?

I could be wrong, but I'd say between 80-100. It varies from year to year.

How do you keep in shape for the long haul?

We don't do anything out of the ordinary, individually. Being part of a rock-and-roll band, we've always been geared to doing what we want to do, and along with that is feeling good. So, as far as diet, exercise and activity, you've got a good idea of what it takes to maintain the quality of life that keeps you happy. So everybody works with that on an individual basis. Folks start exercising more when they begin a family. [laughs] I've noticed that trend.

How long into a show before you feel things are really gelling on stage?

You know, during the night it could come in portions. It could be as small as a portion of a song, or it could be a three-song stretch, or something like that. But after a while, you get those evenings where it's a full evening or a full set. New York was three days, and we were pretty on by then. It's one of those things where you know it when it's happening. If you're sitting there thinking, "Is it happening?," it ain't. It's one of those Zen-ny things where you've got to be in it, then you recognize it.

Do you write much new material on the road, or is it all spur of the moment?

Yeah, whenever something comes up, then you report on it and put it into some kind of form that you can explore, communicate and work with, to see how it develops. So it happens at any moment. On a napkin at a bar. I've got a digital memo machine that you just press record--let's say you've got a melody line in your head, you can hum it in there. I keep a little notebook in my pocket so I don't have to use napkins all the time. And we've got little, not elaborate, recording devices. You don't need that much to get your point across. If you have too much stuff, you'd spend half your time ramping up chords in a hotel room, which isn't that much fun.

When is the next studio album coming out?

We'll probably start it in the beginning of next year. That's usually because of touring. Touring is a spring-summer-fall kind of thing, so winter is the most logical time to be in the studio. It's a seasonal thing, this rock-and-roll bit.


-end-

4/22/05 - 4/23/05 Walnut Creek, Raleigh, NC show review

JAMBANDS.COM

Widespread Panic, Walnut Creek Amphitheater, Raleigh, NC - 4/22 & 23
Tom Baker
2005-05-12


When Widespread Panic left the stage at Atlanta's Philips Arena in the early
hours of January 1st, 2004, it was unknown just when or in what state they
would return. When reports surfaced that band members scarcely saw each
other during the ensuing fifteen months, choosing either to immerse
themselves in new projects (like Dave Schools' Stockholm Syndrome and JoJo
Hermann's solo album) or to drop out of public view almost altogether (a la
John Bell), it wasn't exactly what a lot of fans wanted to hear-the band was
essentially in stasis for over a year, and it's safe to say that while their
return was eagerly awaited, most fervently hoped the band would not be
picking up exactly where it left off, gamely soldiering on after the loss of
an integral player and dear friend but struggling with crucial issues of
chemistry and repertoire.

The two-night stand at Raleigh's Walnut Creek Amphitheater seemed an ideal
convergence of events on paper: several shows in, Widespread seemed a good
bet to have its tour legs back at the site of memorable shows past. The
hiatus-ending Atlanta Fox Theater shows were generally solid under the rust
but heavily freighted with pent-up expectation, making it next to impossible
to separate honest appraisal from simple giddiness at the band's return.
The three-night stand at Radio City Music Hall was well-received and sounded
good on tape, but even the best recording doesn't tell the whole story.
Raleigh seemed the best chance I had, for better or worse, to assess the
current model of Widespread Panic, so I signed on for the four hundred mile
drive northeast from Atlanta and found myself in the Walnut Creek lot just
as the opening notes of "Arleen" started riding out of the clear spring
evening sky. In between that moment and night two's exuberant closer
"Conrad," I saw a band well on track again, recommitted and eager to revisit
nearly every significant chapter of its long history and start writing new
ones as well, not just by playing with fresh material ("You Should Be Glad,"
a cover of the Beatles' "Run For Your Life") but also by finding new spaces
to explore on even well-traveled roads like "Fishwater" and "Give." It was
a bountiful, heartening, nearly overflowing performance, equally measured
with both grit and polish, weathered and craggily beautiful, marked with
seemingly a half-dozen great moments for each of the few false starts and
dead ends.

Even if guitarist George McConnell's reading of "Surprise Valley," the
benchmark by which many still compare McConnell to the late Michael Houser,
still comes across slightly on the mechanical side, his sound is now
noticeably more ingrained into the band and his rapport with the other
members clearly much deeper, regardless of how the year-plus break was
spent. The first night's centerpiece, the ambitious run of "Chilly Water"
into "Driving Song" into "You Should Be Glad" and back out, might not have
been as thematically or sonically seamless as the band intended-the parts
seemed to unfold more awkwardly than organically, and they definitely didn't
stick the landing back into "Driving Song"--but the willingness to try spoke
loudly enough. Other first night highlights included an atypically riveting
exploration of the heretofore undercooked "Bust It Big" and the ocean-space
jam out of "Nebulous" into a fierce, roaring "Mercy."

The second night's opener, "Give," is usually a straightforward, almost
radio-length rocker, but here it rumbled for more than eight minutes before
flowing into a lustily-approved cover of David Bromberg's "Sharon." And the
unearthing of the rarely-played gems "Goin' Out West," "Casa Del Grillo,"
and especially "The Last Straw" found Panic in near-classic mode--the
ferocious triple-threat churn of bassist Schools, drummer Todd Nance and
percussionist Sunny Ortiz creating a pulsating space for the interplay of
Bell's and McConnell's guitars to spar with Hermann's dirty-blues keyboards.

Far more turned out for these performances than the band's last turn in
Raleigh two years earlier, and the band has entered the home stretch of its
reunion spring tour with its familiar gravitational pull waxing once again.
It's fitting, then, that Widespread Panic took the stage both nights wearing
sunglasses - they might have been shielding themselves from the glare of
sunset and, at the same time, looking head on at a still-bright future.

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