Widespread Panic Erupted In Washington Heights, and I Felt Like a Spreadneck Again

When I emerged from the rabbit hole of the A train on Friday night, I found myself in an unwonted Wonderland. On the sidewalks of Washington Heights, the locals were all but invisible. They had been seemingly bodysnatched and replaced by swarms of good-humored white kids, none of whom I had met before, but all looking eerily familiar. Spreadnecks, I call them, lovingly—the confederacy of devotees of the Georgian rock band, Widespread Panic.

Although I had attended more than a few Widespread Panic concerts during my extended twenties (it took me at least five extra years to get through them), it had been nearly five years since my “retirement” show in Colorado. Despite the time and distance that had accumulated, as I stood on the corner of 175th and Broadway—which is uncharted territory to me—I felt surprisingly at home. I’m not sure if it was the stealthy commerce of homemade t-shirts and handshake drugs, or the whiskey-and-nitrous-fueled atmosphere of high-fives and bear hugs, but I couldn’t help but think, “These are my people.”

I crossed the street and made my way past shockingly non-frisking security guards into the historic United Palace Theatre. There the throng of Spreadnecks choked the lobby, gawking skyward at the baroque décor, where the ceiling and balustrades dripped with golden molding reminiscent of the Fabulous Fox, the ornamental Atlanta theater that formerly hosted Widespread Panic’s infamous annual New Year’s Eve parties.

When I found my seat, I again felt as if I were at a family reunion. My neighbors immediately introduced themselves, shook my hand, and said, “Welcome home.” It didn’t matter to them that they weren’t New Yorkers—in their hearts, they were home. And it didn’t matter to me that their jaws were grinding and their eyes were crossing, it was a nice change of pace to be in gregarious—albeit dude-heavy—company at a New York rock show.

Soon I had met most everyone in my general vicinity. All of my row-mates had flown in from other states: Louisiana, Maine, Colorado, California, and, of course, Georgia. This came as no surprise. Since their birth in Athens 22 years ago, Widespread Panic has baptized themselves on the road, earning their keep not with record sales, but by touring non-stop in the tradition of the Grateful Dead and the jam-band movement it spawned. And their fans have traveled with them. Vacation planning around tour dates is common behavior for the Spreadneck, who will fly or drive from coast to coast to see ten or twenty or thirty concerts each year. Since Widespread Panic plays lengthy shows (usually two 75-minute sets plus a long encore), and since they vary their set lists (rarely will they repeat a song a following night), the Spreadnecks get mucho bang for their buck and never see the same show twice. And this is why a small-town band that has never had a hit single can fly into the big city under the radar, with no advertising in the local media or hype from the bloggers, and sell out a two-night run at a 3000-person venue on the far northern tip of the island in no-man’s land. At $50 a head.

The six men who make up Widespread Panic strode out onto the stage around 8:30, nodded humbly at the screaming horde, and tore into the twang of “Holden Oversoul,” a quick-tempo classic with a county hoedown feel. This was the first of many times that Panic dipped into their back catalog for crowd-pleasers older than the youngest members of the audience. Later in the first set, the band reached even farther back for the slow-swinging “Sleepy Monkey,” the B-side of their debut 1986 single—first released as a 45 rpm!—which provided a backdrop for lead guitarist Jimmy Herring to exercise the jazz muscles he honed with, among others, Jazz Is Dead. A legend in the jam-band community, Herring is relatively new to the Panic lineup. Although he has been with the band for more than a year, this tour is the first time Herring is performing Widespread Panic songs that he helped write.

In the past, the band has sorted most of their songs out in a live setting before going into the studio to record. But this past year, they broke with tradition to record Free Somehow, which they released in February. “This album wasn’t born on the road or on the stage,” John Bell tells me on the phone Friday morning, “it was conceived in the studio.”  Which means that their new guitarist had a hand in creating the songs that they are debuting this week in front of an audience. I ask Bell, the de facto frontman of the group, if he thought that this might result in a subtle shift in the band’s dynamic. “I can’t speak for Jimmy, but I would assume that he might be really happy now that it’s more than just coming in and learning somebody else’s stuff. Now there’s actually equal ownership and creative responsibility there.” And how have the songs gone over live? “Right now they’re just like a shiny, brand new pair of shoes,” Bell laughs. “And they need to be broken in.”

This weekend the band chose only a couple of pairs of these new shoes to break in at the United Palace, opting for older, more comfortable tunes mostly. Herring’s new sense of ownership was evident though, as he played like a man possessed, unleashing virtuosic solos that elevated the playing of the entire band. But as any veteran Spreadneck will testify, Herring is not the star. This band doesn’t have a star, they work as the sum of their parts. Relying on dexterity and guided by telepathy, Widespread Panic delivers a controlled chaos of tribal rhythms and swamp rock, colored by out-of-time jazz leads and the occasional guttural howl. Friday night, all of this was on display as, over the course of three hours, the band segued seamlessly from soft ballads to Sabbath-esque metal, from Parliament-arian funk to celestial psychedelia. It was rock-and-mother-fucking-roll at its finest.

And although it was a New York rock show, people actually danced. Hard. They didn’t bust out the latest hip-hop moves, but they danced like their lives depended on it. “Some of our songs can better be experienced through the body than just the brain,” Bell explains. Panic’s music, Bell adds, appeals to a certain personality type, people who thrive on the live concert experience. “We’re more performance-oriented than just entertainment-oriented. And if that’s your cup of tea, well, you start wanting to drink a lot of tea.”

I have to admit that my taste in tea has changed over the years. I still have good memories of the old days, and acknowledge how the history I have with Panic’s music has helped shape me in certain ways. But whatever bias I may have had going into this past weekend was tempered by the feeling that the band may have already jumped the shark. In fact, after listening to Free Somehow and being less than impressed, I brought more than a little skepticism with me to the show. But Friday night reminded me why this band is still selling out shows night after night, year after year—the Widespread Panic experience is not only unique, it is powerful, transcendent. It’s not only the level of intensity of the music, but also the crowd’s reaction to it, that gives one, in the words of John Bell, “a feeling of wonder.”

Photo by Alexander Wagner