Live In The Classic City

Performer: Widespread Panic
Artist: Count M'Butu; Randall Bramblett
Engineer: Billy Field; Danny Friedman
Producer: John Keane; Widespread Panic
Distributor: BMG (distributor)

Notes: Widespread Panic: John Bell, Michael Houser (vocals, guitar); John Hermann (vocals, keyboards); David Schools (vocals, bass); Todd Nance (vocals, drums); Domingo S. Ortiz (vocals, percussion). Additional personnel: Anne Richmond Boston, Col Bruce Hampton (vocals); Derek Trucks (guitar); John Keane (pedal steel, banjo); Randall Bramblett (saxophone); Chuck Leavell (keyboards); Bill Berry, Peter Jackson, Count Mbutu, Charlie Pruet, Dr. Arvin Scott, Garrie Vereen (percussion). Recorded live at The Classic Center Theater, Athens, Georgia on April 1-3, 2000. The arrival of LIVE IN THE CLASSIC CITY is manna from heaven to the kind of jam-band enthusiasts who refer to String Cheese Incident simply as "String Cheese" and to these fellas as "Widespread." Like any jam band worth its salt, Widespread Panic's magic can only be fully experienced in a live setting, and the three-disc documentary of the band's 4/00 Atlanta show certainly does the trick on that score. Widespread Panic may not be the only band on the jam circuit to mix funk, rock, blues, and jazz, but these Southern boys do it with a hell of a lot more grit and less noodling than many of their contemporaries. Oh, and there's a drum solo.

CMJ (7/15/02, p.12) - "...Panic serves up some raw and gritty tunes that beat harder than the Southern sun on a sweltering Georgia day...a plethora of classic Panic tunes..."

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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