“If Hollywood made a Widespread Panic movie who would play all the band members?” Matthew
Wow, that’s a good one. Gee, I haven’t given that one much thought. Let’s start with Steve Lopez, our tour manager, very important. Horatio Sanz plays Steve Lopez. Now let’s see…Maybe you could put a beard and some long hair on Philip Seymour Hoffman and he could play me…John Bell could be played by Timothy Olyphant, the guy from Deadwood…Gosh that’s tough. Maybe we should solicit some ideas.
“Do you have any hobbies outside the music world?” Jon J.
I do. Okay, I’m going to go ahead and say it…I collect old Hot Wheels. This is something that began in like 1968 when I was 4 and Mattel first started putting the little toy cars out. I really enjoy that. It’s fun and I’ve met a lot of people from all walks of life who don’t give a damn about what anyone does for a living, we’re all here to talk about little toy cars.
After I moved, I also broke out my vinyl from storage and got a pretty nice tube amp, a new turntable, a good stylus and resurrected my old Cliff speakers. And I’ve really enjoyed going through that, cleaning up the records and buying what’s out there in the used record stores. I love that. It’s really, really enjoyable.
I’ve been doing a lot more writing lately, too. That’s what they told me I was going to do when I was growing up. Of course being a rebellious person and a rock and roll kid, there was no way in hell I was going to do what they told me I ought to do. But here on this side of this life I’m really enjoying that.
In terms of your vinyl collection, when you’re out the road, do you see a renaissance of record stores? So many were going belly up for a while. Do you think that’s stabilized?
I think that most of them are doing okay. There are two kinds I’ve seen that remain successful. One is the little almost bodega style, that’s musty and dusty and has been around for 30 years. Either the owner owns the building or the overhead is so low that they’ve never run into trouble. What they offer is a great selection of used records and those places seem to be relatively successful. The one here near where I live in Santa Rosa is called the Last Record Store. They’ve been around since the 70s and they sell new CDs and used CDs too but they also have a great selection of vinyl. I talked to the guys who run the place after Record Store Day happened a few months ago and they told me, “We can’t keep stuff in stock.” So that’s one kind of place that’s still successful.
The great example of the other kind is a place called Twist And Shout in Denver. They have everything you could ever want new on CD and they have an immense collection of used vinyl with great prices. And the ratings there are some of the truest ratings I’ve seen. If they say something’s near mint, it’s neat mint. And they also sell tchotchkes and posters and prints and everything music. They’re not trying to be the goth store or the emo store or the alternative store, they’re just trying to be your one stop place for all things music. And those kinds of stores if they play their cards right, still seem to be having some success. But the market’s in the toilet.
CDs are going bye-bye but I don’t think vinyl’s ever going to go bye-bye. The music gets around you and you feel it, especially this generation of kids who think that the way an mp3 sounds is the way music is supposed to sound and feel. When they hear a record played through a tube amp and good speakers and they feel the air move and sense the three dimensionality, pops and clicks be damned, it’s a totally different experience.
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