Free Somehow

Performer: Widespread Panic
Engineer: Terry Manning
Producer: Terry Manning; Widespread Panic; Terry Manning
Distributor: Redeye Music Distribution

Notes: Widespread Panic: John Bell (vocals, guitar, background vocals); Jimmy Herring (guitars, background vocals); Dave Schools (bass guitar, background vocals); Domingo Ortiz (percussion, background vocals); John Hermann, Todd Nance (background vocals). Personnel: Jimmy Herring (guitar); Bruce Hoffman (fiddle); Terry Manning (cello, harmonica, valve trombone); Jawara Adams (trumpet, flugelhorn); John Hermann (keyboards); Todd Nance (drums); Brenda Barnett, Sandra Rhodes, Charles Chalmers (background vocals). Additional personnel: Bruce Hoffman (fiddle); The Compass Point Orchestra (strings, woodwinds); Tino Richardson (saxophone); Charles Chalmers (tenor saxophone); Joel Johanson (baritone saxophone); Rookie Fisher (trumpet); Terry Manning, Brenda Barnett (background vocals); Jawara Adams, Sandra Rhodes. Audio Mixer: Terry Manning. Recording information: Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas. Seventeen albums into their career, pioneering jam band Widespread Panic change things up just slightly on FREE SOMEHOW. The band's first album featuring songs written largely in the studio and not worked out during their legendary marathon tours, FREE SOMEHOW consciously evokes the sound of 1970s hard rock. Produced by Terry Manning, whose credits run from Memphis power pop kings Big Star all the way to Led Zeppelin, and featuring new guitarist Jimmy Herring, who had previously worked with members of the various Grateful Dead offshoots, FREE SOMEHOW is Widespread Panic's most roots-conscious recording. Still, songs like the epic workouts "Her Dance Needs No Body" and "Angels On High" retain the band's loose, exploratory charm. Seventeen albums into their career, pioneering jam band Widespread Panic change things up just slightly on FREE SOMEHOW. The band's first album featuring songs written largely in the studio and not worked out during their legendary marathon tours, FREE SOMEHOW consciously evokes the sound of 1970s hard rock. Produced by Terry Manning, whose credits run from Memphis power pop kings Big Star all the way to Led Zeppelin, and featuring new guitarist Jimmy Herring, who had previously worked with members of the various Grateful Dead offshoots, FREE SOMEHOW is Widespread Panic's most roots-conscious recording. Still, songs like the epic workouts "Her Dance Needs No Body" and "Angels On High" retain the band's loose, exploratory charm.

Entertainment Weekly (p.67) - "[T]he breezy funk of 'Angels on High is a peach good enough to eat." Q (Magazine) (p.141) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "'Boom Boom Boom,' 'Her Dance Needs No Body' and 'Up All Night' are the work of fertile minds." Harp (magazine) (p.119) - "Frontman John Bell has never sounded better, his trademark tenor growl and howl in full effect."

Though they started out in the '80s in Athens, GA, Widespread Panic are as far as can be from what was known then as the "Athens scene" (R.E.M, Let's Active, Pylon, etc.). Instead, they were among the first of a new wave of jam bands picking up the baton of '60s psychedelic warriors like the Grateful Dead. Though their improvisational skills earned them a huge following, WP bore an important difference from peers like Phish; they had a distinctly Southern sound that mixed rock, jazz, and a bit of Dixie, much in the manner of key influences the Allman Brothers and the Dregs.

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