Postcards: Live Widespread Panic Blog

This was the second Vegas show of the weekend. The show the day before was outside at Vegoose for a big festival audience. But this show at the MGM Grand's Garden Arena was for Panic fans. In addition to dancers high above the stage and naughty nurses with kneepads in the crowd, there were covers, bustouts and a whole lot of guitar love. It was Panic's finest Halloween show in years. A tight CONTENTMENT BLUES began the show—so it made perfect sense that JB was dressed as a chicken(1).

The second song was the first bustout, a straightforward take on the Doors’ PEOPLE ARE STRANGE. I have no scientific evidence of this, but it seems they really like to cover the Doors on Halloween(2). Panic, pumpkins and the Doors.... An upbeat YOU SHOULD BE GLAD followed and then an all-too-brief moment of guitar bliss. Not even two minutes long, JOHN'S OTHER JAM(3) was way too short. Even at 10 minutes, it wouldn’t have been too long. If I didn't keep my cell phone on vibrate, I’d want this to be my ringtone. OK, you get the point.

Panic then eased into a fine PILGRIMS (with John Keane on pedal steel) before segueing into a long, lively GRETA and then into David Bromberg's SHARON. JB was chatty throughout, applying the song’s lyrics to Fiona Apple(4): “That girl could dance like her back had no bone.” After TIME ZONES, they went into a perfectly spacey STOP-GO, with JB doing a THREE LITTLE BIRDS rap and then later offering “a moment of prayer for Allah, a small, flightless little friend,” before finishing strong with IMITATION LEATHER SHOES > CHAINSAW CITY.

With John Keane back on guitar, Panic showed some Athens, Ga., unity by opening the second set with R.E.M.'s CANT GET THERE FROM HERE(5). Another cover, War's sprawling SLIPPIN' INTO DARKNESS—first covered on Halloween 2002—followed and went right into WHEN THE CLOWNS COME HOME(6). What was played up to this point was really very good, but what followed was special. First, an 18-minute DINER with great musical interplay and plenty of JB rapping ("And sometimes, why do I just start talking like Chris Rock?") into PROVING GROUND into a short DRUMS with Carrot Top and Outformation's Jeff "Birddog" Lane(7) joining TODD and SUNNY.

Then something really surprising happened. With JB singing, Panic played AIRPLANE for the first time since Mikey’s last show. As the song cascaded over the crowd, a palpable emotion swept through the room. And then, to the delight of many, Panic jammed out of AIRPLANE into Bonnie Dobson's oft covered MORNING DEW(8). They closed the set with a quick LOVE TRACTOR, leaving everyone to wonder what covers remained for the encore.

When the band returned to the stage, JB greeted the crowd: "We always have a lot of fun here in Cleveland. Thanks for having us." And then they made their way into THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC(9), the first of three covers. The second song of the encore was another bustout, the first cover of Golden Earring’s(10) RADAR LOVE in 10 years. The crowd was loving the music and would not be disappointed with the finale, the Beatles' I WANT YOU (SHE'S SO HEAVY). (It was light years better than the WHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD cover in 2002.) The song's culminating guitar frenzy was the perfect end to this show, sending thousands of cheering fans out into the corridors of the MGM Grand.

This was the spring-tour closer. The previous Panic show I’d seen, two days earlier at Jazz Fest, played for a big festival audience—a completely different kind of crowd—had a weird flow. This show didn’t. It was blastoff from the first note. The Nokia Theatre in Dallas is, I suppose, cooler than not cool, but kind of corporate and stale. The sound, however, was superb.

The first set started hot right out of the gate with a strong ARLEEN opener. I was on Schools’ side in the first row off the floor, maybe 50 feet back and six feet up. So I was watching him as the show started and, immediately, I thought, “That’s strange. This sounds like ARLEEN. There’s no way they’d open with that.” Fortunately, I was wrong. And thanks to a playful lead-in, Panic then smoothly segued into Bloodkin’s WHO DO YOU BELONG TO? It was like we’d somehow been dropped into the middle of a second set. Only two songs in and I was already surrounded by grinning fools doing the Rerun Dance. The third song, another upbeat one, UP ALL NIGHT, certainly resonated with me as I’d just seen Gov’t Mule > New Mastersounds > Galactic in New Orleans before catching a flight to Dallas, a journey sponsored by Gold Bond and Jameson.

Musically, things then shifted from the light of the first three songs to the moodier PAPA’S HOME > LITTLE LILLY > PAPA’S HOME > FISHWATER. The FISHWATER, in particular, was dark and dirty. And the RIBS AND WHISKEY that followed was so spirited, I figured it was the end of the long, loud first set. But then Sunny’s percussion kicked in. The set wasn’t finished. For a song Panic doesn’t play that often, the crowd, surprisingly, seemed to know from the beginning that it was SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. The band tore it up. That is how you end a set. Even now, five months later, when I close my eyes, I can still hear all the woo hoos.

ALL TIME LOW was a high-intensity start to the second set. And the PROVING GROUND > BOOM BOOM BOOM > PROVING GROUND continued the boisterous groove. A well-played PIGEONS and DARK DAY PROGRAM were next, and then NRBQ’s FLAT FOOT FLEWZY (fittingly “singing flewzy woozy boogie on a Saturday night”) before heading into a 20-minute DRUMS. As DRUMS grew longer, and other band members joined in, JoJo channeled a little James Brown. When everybody was finally back onstage, they launched into a hard-charging DINER > TALL BOY to end the set. While a CHILLY closer, which the band’s set list indicated, would’ve been a fantastic finish, the set still closed on a high.

As this was the end of the tour, the band thanked the crew during the encore break. “Because we love ’em so much,” said Schools, “we’re gonna make ’em stay up late, and play another set.” And while it wasn’t actually a third set, the stellar encore lasted nearly 30 minutes: THREE CANDLES, a perfectly placed ROCK between two thick slices of SURPRISE VALLEY and a sing-along version of END OF THE SHOW to, well, end the show.

The plush Silva Concert Hall at the Hult Center, a performing-arts center in the grandest sense, has terrific sight lines and crystal-clear sound. The only negative is that you can’t bring beers to your seat, which would’ve been nice to know before I’d bought four of ’em. But it didn’t even matter because this show in Eugene, Ore., was a smoker.

Any set-opening jam is all right with me. And if DRIVING > DISCO > DRIVING follows that, even better. Panic then launched into GOOD PEOPLE, and listening to its piano interlude now, it’s easy to spot where JoJo’s DARK BAR so easily fits in today. Next, to the crowd’s delight, the band played GLORY—for only the second time in six years—before moving on to a tight version of Willie Dixon’s WEAK BRAIN, NARROW MIND, with Schools’ bass thumping away (as it did throughout the night). LITTLE LILLY, BLIGHT (again, Schools seemed to be feeling it) and an extended YOU SHOULD BE GLAD finished the set.

People stayed in their seats to hear DJ J Boogie spin throughout intermission. He closed his set with the Doors’ BREAK ON THROUGH (TO THE OTHER SIDE). But before he finished, the accompanying sound of Schools’ bass reached the stage before Dave actually got there. And then the rest of the band joined in on the jam.

Again, it was a great start, and, truthfully, the whole set was one jammy, delicious highlight. Eight second-set songs were each at least nine minutes long. There were smooth transitions from Jerry Joseph’s NORTH into Howlin’ Wolf’s SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING—which JB owned—into Widespread Panic’s CONRAD. After about 35 minutes, there was finally a long enough pause in the music for JB to say, “We might as well. We’re here already.” And then they finished the set the same way they started it: all passion, guitars and thundering bass—SLEEPY MONKEY, TALL BOY, REBIRTHA > DRUMS > PAPA LEGBA, SPACE WRANGLER.

The encore break was noisy, with people screaming and stomping their feet. “Well, thank you, Euguene,” said JB. And then after a beat, he added, “If I ever have a kid, gonna name him Eugene!” Time was winding down, so we only got a one-song encore, which is usually disappointing. But this searing version of RED HOT MAMA was a great way to end one of the best Panic shows I’d seen in years.