In 1991, record producer Johnny Sandlin stood in front of the Georgia Theatre in downtown Athens, Georgia. He was asked by an interviewer about rising Athens rock act Widespread Panic, with whom Sandlin was working on the band’s self-titled album.
“There’s a trend of getting back to real music now, played by real people,” Sandlin said. “The [1980s] seemed to be so computerized, where technology took over the music. And now, it’s getting back in the hands of the musicians and the players — the way it should be, the music that affects you in your heart.”
Many decades later, as Widespread Panic approaches their 40-year mark, Sandlin’s sentiment remains at the core of the ensemble.
“We’re in there and exploring the music together,” lead singer and guitarist John Bell tells Rolling Stone. “Sometimes you’re fighting to catch a wave and it takes all six of you [onstage] to catch the wave. And when you’re catching it together, you get that big inward smile going. Everybody’s listening, everybody’s present.”
The balancing act of tension and release within the live setting is the epitome of what Panic set out to do when they started playing Athens dive bars and fraternity parties in the mid-1980s. It’s also the foundation of Panic’s new album Hailbound Queen, the band’s 14th studio LP and the second offering this year from the group. In June, they released Snake Oil King, their first studio record in nine years.
“It’s a bunch of guys who’ve tried just about everything,” bassist Dave Schools says of the musical one-two punch. “We slowly amassed this group of songs and had the idea of ‘Let’s give them something to chew on’ and drop [Snake Oil King], then save the other songs for November and drop them by surprise.”
In truth and in method, Widespread Panic is the musical amalgamation of the Southeast. There’s the swamp rock of North Florida à la the Allman Brothers Band and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, the hard rock of Atlanta in the same vein as the Black Crowes and Drivin N Cryin, and the thick thread of Memphis R&B/soul and Mississippi Delta blues. There’s also an oozing jazz/swing element straight out of New Orleans.
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“We all understand each other when we have the blues/Sometimes when we’re lowdown we’re levitating too/We’re the lucky ones, we’re trashy but we’re true,” Bell wails in his fiery pulpit vocal on Hailbound Queen’s “Trashy.” Clocking in at over nine and a half minutes, the soaring number was written by the late Daniel Hutchens of another legendary Athens band, Bloodkin.
The long, winding journey of Widespread Panic begins in 1981 when Bell and guitarist Michael “Mikey” Houser met while students at the University of Georgia in Athens. The duo started jamming together and writing tunes, quickly building a musical relationship based on a desire to wander the endless sonic textures of the guitar fretboard in a rock band.
“We both tried playing in other bands,” Bell says. “But we [finally] came together and said, ‘You know, you and I had something that we’re not finding out there.’”
In 1984, Schools entered the picture and a trio was formed.
“I went and watched J.B. perform a solo thing,” Schools reminisces of Bell’s early musical aspirations. “It was great, the vibe and the looseness of everything. I remember thinking, ‘It would be fun to play with this guy. He needs a band.’”
Sporadic shows started bubbling up around Athens. But the group didn’t solidify until Schools called up a friend from junior high, drummer Todd Nance, and asked if he wanted to join.
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“Before we met Todd, nobody really understood the adventure part we were trying to do,” Bell says. “We’re still in exploration mode.”
On Feb. 6, 1986, the band’s first show under the name Widespread Panic (titled after Houser’s panic attacks) took place during a charity event in Athens. The quartet quickly garnered a loyal local following around campus and across the city.
“We were just doing what we wanted to do,” Bell says. “R.E.M. and the B-52’s were the biggest things happening right then. It was a very artistic [scene]. Not just playing a song, but doing weird things.”
“In an SEC college town in the South, there’s that openness and attempting to sort of affect culture and create something beyond academics and football,” Schools says. “It’s extremely obvious in Athens because they have a super-duper art school, and there were the townies and people who wanted to play music.”
From those early days bouncing around Athens for free beer to selling out arenas four decades later, the transition from college town band to national rock act isn’t lost on the members of Widespread Panic.
“At every stage of the game — jamming in the dorm room to the band house to the stage format — it’s a big deal,” Schools says. “For me, it was like stepping out a daydream.’”
The emotional heartbeat of Hailbound Queen resides in a rendition of the late Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart.” A mournful, yet uplifting selection from his seminal 2003 album The Wind, the song is an ode to Zevon’s whirlwind life as he faced a losing battle with mesothelioma and has been covered by everyone from Willie Nelson to Fantastic Cat.
“There are lines in that song that sound like they were written with the intent of remembering someone who knows they’re going to pass away,” Schools says. “There’s something about grief that it will sneak up on me in the least expected and strangest of ways.”
The idea to not only record the song, but also play it live, came from the passing of longtime Colorado promoter and Panic booker Bill Bass, who died in January 2023. At his funeral, “Keep Me in Your Heart” was playing on the stereo.
“When we came through town, our gigs at Red Rock [Amphitheatre] were the first time without Bill,” Bell says. “We put that [song] together and played it in his honor.”
“We’ve been fans of Warren Zevon as a group as long as [we’ve been together],” Schools adds. “Excitable Boy was one of the four records we had at the band house. He’s kind of a thread running through our whole career.”
“Keep Me in Your Heart” hits even closer to home for Schools, whose late father worked with Zevon. While going through his dad’s possessions, Schools came across a tracking sheet from a studio session with handwritten lyrics to Zevon’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr.”
“I knew there was this deep connection with my old man and Zevon,” Schools says. (In August 2023, when Panic was on tour, Schools received word that his father was in the final hours of his life and Panic performed “Keep Me in Your Heart” that night in Napa, California.)
The band’s Zevon cover also memorializes Houser, who died in 2002 from pancreatic cancer. Schools says he still feels the guitarist’s presence when Panic play live. “If there’s anything to be left behind [by him], it would be magnetism, like little metal shavings of his intent whirling through the air,” he says. “When we’re having a special night in a special place, it would be attractive to those little metal shavings.”
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After months off the road, Widespread Panic will finally return to the road in 2025. A three-night run is booked for February at the Hard Rock Live Etess Arena in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Schools says the band is ready to learn new lessons onstage and celebrate guitarist Jimmy Herring, who himself was diagnosed with cancer and recently finished chemotherapy.
“He’s pretty tuckered out,” Bell says, “but things are looking just as they had hoped.”