Widespread Panic Meets the Stones

4–6 minutes

·

June 27, 2024

·

Galleries, J. Angel Photography, Stories

Photos: Jon Angel

Words: Slade Rand

Widespread Panic renewed its lease on Red Rocks this past weekend, but not before making 50,000 new friends and a few beer-soaked enemies across town Thursday night.

Panic lit up Empower Field at Mile High with 40 minutes of grease and one ‘Chilly Water’ ahead of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Hackney Diamonds Tour’ stop in Denver. For the next three days, the band doused its 70th-72nd straight sell-out crowds at Red Rocks with an entire new album and the first ‘Coconut’ in Morrison since 2006.

Panic favored new material in Colorado this weekend. The band gave loving, full-bodied renditions of tunes released this year and a first-time-play of ‘Small Town,’ off the new album ‘Snake Oil King.’

The six-headed-monster out of Athens, GA even repeated a pair of new songs across the four shows, breaking tradition for something worthwhile.

Scroll down to view a full gallery from Widespread Panic at Red Rocks on Sunday.

Bandleader John Bell sang ‘Cosmic Confidante’ under the full moon Saturday night, and honed in on the raw hope of ‘Little by Little’ during separate performances at Mile High and Red Rocks.

The band is “JB” on guitar and vocals, Dave Schools on bass, Jimmy Herring on guitar, John “JoJo” Hermann on keyboards, Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz on percussion and Duane Trucks on drums. Panic played 69 songs at Red Rocks this weekend, and finally accepted a decades-old offer to open up for the Stones.

On Sunday night, Panic opened both sets with tunes from the Neil Young universe. JB played his newly refurbished, thin bodied electric-acoustic on ‘For What It’s Worth’ and ‘Don’t be Denied,’ plus Panic’s own ‘Space Wrangler’ and ‘Holden Oversoul’ that night.

“Summer was all that there was,” JB sang on ‘Holden.’ “We were working, breathing the heat. Terror rising out of control.”

JB broke out the Gibson Chet Atkins SST just recently after years of semi-retirement for the instrument. Guitar tech Joel Byron said the hollow guitar needed repairs and just wasn’t sounding right until recently. He hinted at its return in a 2020 gear rundown video.

“This guitar is really, really cool. The neat thing about it to me is just all of the wear that’s on it,” Joel said. “You can really see years and years of shows and hard playing on it.”

Dave Schools on Sunday wore tie dye and told us all about love.

The bass freak who remembers a time when Panic was the band that “scared the hippies away” preached some truth to 10,000 friends stacked 70 rows tall.

As the crowd favorite ‘Flat Foot Flewzy’ simmered to a breakdown, Dave rambled on, “… there’s another thing that’s called Love…”

“There ain’t so much different about none of us,” Schools said. “Push those biscuits to the center of the table and we can all have some…That would be really tasty.”

“I love you guys.”

Frantic Friday night energy bled onto the stage all night long to start the weekend.

The band fired off long intros on tunes like ‘Greta’ and ‘You Got Yours,’ and baked teases of the Grateful Dead’s ‘Bird Song’ into ‘Party at Your Mama’s House’ late in the second set. A rambunctious ‘Tie Your Shoes’ referenced both the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint it Black’ and the Meters’ ‘Hey Pocky Way.’

To kickstart a tribute to baseball legend Willie Mays, Panic played ‘Rebirtha’ in the encore for the first time since 2011. ‘One Arm Steve’ and ‘Expiration Day’ capped a closing run in memory of the “Say Hey Kid,” who died last week.

Another thoughtful nod to the Stones fell upon Red Rocks as Panic’s encore notes faded Friday night.

‘Moonlight Mile’ began to echo through the Amphitheatre while friends and family packed up for the trek down, satisfied. The tune honors friend and bandmate Neal Casal, who passed following the Lockn’ Festival in 2019.

The song off 1971’s ‘Sticky Fingers’ appeared in a note from Casal displayed during his memorial concert at the Capitol Theatre.

Neal asked his friends to play ‘Exile on Main Street’ all the way through for him, followed by ‘Moonlight Mile.’ Panic queues up the Stones classic (which also bookended a Sopranos episode in 2006) on Casal’s Nov. 2 birthday during Halloween runs that span the date. Casal, Schools and Trucks made music for years together as ‘Hardworking Americans.’

At the midway point of the weekend, fiddle player Jason Crosby stepped from stage right to join the band for a handful of classics. The seven musicians took flight on ‘Ribs & Whiskey’ and ‘The Take Out’ as the sun set Saturday night, and everyone smiled. They closed that set with The Dillards’ ‘There is a Time’ and, of course, ‘Porch Song.’