With influences ranging from Black Sabbath to James Taylor, the Guess Who to Talking Heads, they played a fair amount of reggae, originals, and covers culled from their own record collections. In Athens - a creative hub that’s given the world R.E.M., Pylon, Vic Chesnutt, the Indigo Girls and the B52s - Widespread Panic didn’t fit. Then we met Todd Nance, who’d been playing in a country cover band, so we had to peel the carpet off his drumheads.” We found this guy Joel Morris, who made a single with us. So I just followed them around on my bass. They didn’t have a drummer, and I didn’t know they were looking for me to be a metronome. “There was a house on King Avenue in Athens. The way Mike Houser played the guitar, there was something very special right away. “JB picked me up at the dorm,” bassist Dave Schools remembers. It was more than just being in a band or playing with some other guy. When we got back together, we realized we really liked what we were doing. “We went our separate ways for about six months. “The first time Mikey (Houser) and I got together, we played a little bit,” says lead singer and guitarist John Bell. With little fanfare, they settled into being the band Billy Bob Thornton, who directed their “Aunt Avis” video and a documentary during their early days on Capricorn Records, describes above: lean, musical, true. Today, they’ve weathered the death of bandmates, years of relentless touring, side projects, the record for most sold-out shows at Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre (61) and now the pandemic lockdown. They came together at the University of Georgia in the mid-’80s as a way to have fun, and they made spending money playing music. Widespread Panic, in many ways, serves as the doppelganger of every garage, indie rock or frat band ever. Widespread Panic? Those guys are a really good rock ’n’ roll band, but they’re not some rock band who sings ‘We’re gonna rock you all night …’ They are a slow moving locomotive: steady, and always there for the people who love them.” - Billy Bob Thornton “Rock ’n’ roll doesn’t need to be reinvented, rock ’n’ roll is about keeping it alive, and honoring it.

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