AT: You mentioned a lot of different people. Who have been some of your favorite people to sit in with Panic over the years?

DS: Obviously, Warren, because he’s so good. And Chuck. Stanton Moore from Galactic has always provided a really exciting drum-break thing. There’s been a couple of times where I chorded the bass and he played it with drumsticks and that was pretty neat. We did that at JazzFest two years ago. He’s always a pleasure. With the Colonel, something strange is always bound to happen.

Really, every night with Panic is a different experience. There’s usually something different about every concert that sticks out, or that I can feel good about. That’s what really keeps it fresh after fifteen years.

AT: You’re heading back to JazzFest this year, which is a big gig. What are your thoughts on that?

DS: Hey, there’s great food at JazzFest. [laughs] And everyone plays down there, there’s all the music you can eat.

AT: One absence from this year’s spring tour is the Myrtle Beach House of Blues show.

DS: Yeah, you know, it got too big. It’s just too small for us, really. I understand why people love it and we enjoyed it too. It certainly didn’t suck to spend three or four days at the beach or anything. It had gotten so bad, though, that we couldn’t go out anymore. People were trolling up and down the beach looking for us, writing requests in letters that were eighteen feet high out across the beach. You could look out the balcony out of any high-rise and see what songs we hadn’t played yet on that tour, written on the beach until the tide came in and obliterated it. It was always fun, but it’s time to move on.

We’re pretty much strictly playing arenas now and, with the new sound system and new lights, we’re able to shrink the size of some of those rooms. So, it really sounds good and we’re able to still make it feel intimate for the fans.

I know, as a fan, it’s great to see something in a small place and be up close. And I’m sure that those occasions will still happen. They probably just won’t be the kind of thing that you can buy tickets a month in advance .

And you know, everybody’s got their solo projects. JB does his Hannah’s Buddies thing and you never know what’s going to happen at one of those. Dave Matthews could show up, all of us could show up, so that’s really something else. We all have our side projects and we all have our side things that are sort of efforts to try and help people. It’s good that we’re all, as individuals, backing different things because that way we can put more help where help is needed. I don’t think I ever want to get as involved as people like Bob Geldoff, or Peter Gabriel or Bono. Maybe you feel inclined to do so when you were the singer for the greatest band in the world or something. But really, it’s the little local things that count. Not the big things that get written about in the paper: that stuff can help to raise awareness. But you can do something for people on the local level.

AT: One thing you mentioned that I wanted to ask you a little more about are the changes Panic has gone through over the past year. You’ve changed labels, changed sound and light equipment and crews. Comment a little about that.

DS: It’s a natural evolution, you know. Change is always a good thing. It keeps it fresh for everybody. Some things that happened last year with Panic, within our crew, sound crew, light crew and everything, really made it necessary to whitewash the whole thing. It was a natural step and some things had happened, but everyone is a lot happier. It’s a lot smoother of an operation. The whole point of living is to survive change.

AT: You guys recorded a demo to shop around to record labels before you landed with Sanctuary and it got out into the Panic fan community. One track that I found very interesting on the demo was “Tears of a Woman”. Talk to me about it and how it came about.

DS: Funny you should mention that. I just got a phone call from John Keane, who’s in the process of finishing the mix of the new record. He called me and asked if I would mind if he edited that demo track down and used it as a segue-piece, kind of like the Trance Man thing between “Dyin’ Man” and “Party at Your Mama’s House” and the mandolin thing Mikey did after “Surprise Valley.” I said sure.

Basically, it evolved out of something where Todd and Sunny were doing this thing coming at the end of the drum solo. Todd had acquired a marimba and was sort of playing this modal piece on it. I juggled it around a couple of times and fell into some natural things that fit with what he was doing on the marimba. We did it a couple of times and by then the hyperanalysts had decided that it was a legitimate song and thus deserved a title. So, I remember it was at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia that this kid grabbed me through the fence and said, “What is that called?” And I had just broken up with my girlfriend, so the first thing that came to mind was “Tears of a Woman”. That’s basically the whole story.

We really haven’t played it since we cut it down to the demo, but it’ll be neat and work well within the context of some of the music on the new record. I don’t know what songs it’ll come between, but I’m sure it’ll sound great.

AT: It’s an interesting piece. At the New Orleans Halloween run in 1999, it seemed like you played a conscious variation on the theme each night.

DS: Right.

AT: It was a really cool thing to watch, coming out of drums every night it was something new, but right along that same thought process.

DS: Right. It’s a constant evolution of theme and variation. Like this year at the Halloween run, I don’t know if you noticed….

AT: The Sun theme.

DS: Yeah. The sun theme. “Here Comes the Sun”, “Sunshine Go Away” and “Third Stone from the Sun.” There was also another one I wanted to do if it would have been four nights. “Invisible Sun”, the Police song.. I was asking the girl that works for us, Mary, what the more memorable melody was, “Sunshine Go Away” or “Invisible Sun”. And she said “Sunshine Go Away”, so….

AT: Going back to “Tears of a Woman,” after the ’99 Halloween run, that New Year’s you did another variation on the theme and added chants to it. Is that something you worked with? Or was it spur of the moment?

DS: Well, it was spur of the moment. Things that happen like that are best left to try and not recapture them. If it’s something that presents itself more than once and feels natural then obviously it’s making itself known that, “I’m a song maybe. Work with me.” And I think that’s what Panic applies to everything. It’s got to be organic. It has to feel right and not feel contrived. And not formulaic. With that chant thing, it worked that night and I didn’t really ever try it again. So, it’s only available on that show. But we did get multi-tracks and there were some hot numbers that night. So maybe “From the Vault” or something some year. Who knows.

AT: Is that a possibility with the new record label?

DS: Well, the label has given us our own imprint. It’s only a three record deal. So it’s the new record, the soundtrack to the Hanson movie which will be coming out before Christmas [editor’s note: this a documentary about life on the road with Panic made by the Hanson brothers (Scrapple)], and then another studio record. It’s a pretty short span of time and, if things go well, I can see a contract being negotiated to allow us to put out our live shows through their distribution. Everybody benefits and the fans are the ones who benefit the most.

The difference between something like that and a Dick’s Picks thing is that most of the Dick’s Picks are two tracks. This would be fifty-six, like Light Fuse Get Away, which requires a lot more effort to mix and put out. At the same time, there’s a lot more opportunity to really make it sound good. So, who knows what the future holds, but we’ve captured as much as we can. We record every show, which isn’t to say that every show is viable. There are technical glitches and shitty performances. Lopsided performances and things, you know. Putting Light Fuse Get Away together was really hard. And putting Another Joyous Occasion_ was hard because most of the things we did with the Dirty Dozen were off the cuff. A lot of the performances might have been something really great to witness and see happen, but isn’t necessarily worthy of being set in stone. I think we captured some really great stuff on Another Joyous Occasion and we proved with that record that Widespread Panic could market their own records as well as any label had done for us previously, which is probably a big part of why Sanctuary became interested in us. That and seeing how the crowd responds.

AT: Back to last night to wrap it up. “Soulshine” and “Mule” are the two big moments for me from last night’s show. What about you?

DS: “Mule” was great, especially with the “What is Hip?” thing in the middle of it. “Mule” is kind of their early signature song. If people have seen Gov’t Mule and you ask them what they remember, they’ll probably say “They played that song, ‘Where’s my mule, where’s my forty acres.’” Powerhouse, man.

We all looked at each other during “Mule” and we realized that this is going to work and it’s going to be fun and it’s going to go over well. I mean, there’s always some trepidation in approaching the first show of a tour with a new combo.

And “Soulshine.” It was loud and our ears were worn out and it was a great version. I personally wiped out…

AT: Chuck played to death. He killed it!

DS: Chuck’s intro was amazing. So yeah, I got down on my knees and put my ass up in the air as we were going into the dressing room for the encore and said, “Ok, everybody take a good, swift kick, ‘cause I blew it.” But I made it through “Thorazine Shuffle,” and that was my big thing.

AT: Yeah, definitely. And you opened with it.

DS: That’s a really hard one to play and I wanted to go out there and do Woody right on that one. Let the folks know that he was in my heart. That this tour is to help everyone heal and get over it. Forward and onward.

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