You mentioned you recorded two studio albums together, which helped with the process. Does Panic have any upcoming plans to record?

Absolutely. We talk about it at least two or three times a week. It comes up all the time because a lot of stuff didn’t get recorded on the last record. For instance, a lot of the music that I brought in is still around. We all bring in stuff and we write together. Sometimes JB will come in with a complete tune and sometimes all he’s got is a riff. Sometimes I’ll come in and all I’ll have is a set of chord changes but not a vocal melody and JB adds that and Dave will go, “What if we did this for a bridge” and that type of thing.

We’re constantly talking about recording again. Jojo is a hell of a songwriter. On that last record we had a songwriting session before we went in for preproduction and Jojo had so many incredible ideas for songs. He’s just got a ton of ideas for songs. He’ll also finish your song. If you come in with an idea: “This could be a verse,” or “This could be a riff that leads into a verse,” he’ll learn it, think about it and within five minutes he’s got a bridge. That’s what great songwriting in a band is all about to me, collaboration.

A number of people also wanted you to talk about your favorite Panic songs and a favorite night on the band’s fall tour.

That’s hard because the longer I’m here, the less favorites I have because you get a new favorite all the time. People might be surprised at some of my favorite Panic tunes. If I had to pick one a year ago I might have said “Pilgrims.” But having said that I get a new favorite every week or every month. I really love playing the ballads. I love JB’s ballad “May Your Glass Be Filled.” They did it on Earth to America, so it was done before I came in. It’s a beautiful waltz and it’s got the most gorgeous set of chord changes to it. There’s many more, obviously the old classics. There’s so many of them, you can almost pick an era and go from there.

I really love playing some of the covers too, like “Heaven” by the Talking Heads. I just love ballads. That doesn’t mean I want to play real quiet all night, they might be loud but they’re ballads. Not power ballads from the 80s but ballads that might get loud. “Gradle” is another one, a ballad that gets loud. We don’t play it enough, just a few times a year and I’m going, “Damn, I wish we played this one more.”

As for a favorite show, there were so many good ones on the last run. I remember saying on the first half of the tour: “Wow, this has been a good one” because sometimes if we’ve been off the road for a while, it can take a little bit of time to find our legs together. But that tour seemed to start out right away with us being really together.

I was on a 20 day tour before that so they’re starting to bleed together though. It was really fun playing with Warren when we did the two shows with Gov’t Mule, one in Vegas and one in San Diego. Those were fun. I would definitely say Vegas was good and Reno also was good which is so weird that I said two Nevada gigs with their zero tolerance but those shows seemed to be really good.

Someone wanted to know what music you enjoy that might be surprising to your fans (Ned G).

Wow, that’s hard. I love Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Sun Ra, Sonny Sharrock, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor but I don’t know if that would surprise anybody. I love Chick Corea but maybe that’s obvious. I love Indian music, Ali Akbar Khan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In the gospel world I really love Mahalia Jackson. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the Beatles or Zeppelin or any of the classic rock stuff. I think some of the pop stuff I listen to could surprise some people, though. I like Paul Simon a lot, I like Elton John a lot. Those songs don’t normally get played by any of things I’ve done in recent years.

When Panic did their Tunes For Tots thing, that’s the one night of the year where the band mingles with a lot of audience members. There’s a bunch of food sitting out and the band walks around the room and gets to talk with people, which I really enjoy. It’s funny because this one really sweet couple came up to me. They had gone to see one of my shows apart from Panic and they were struck by the mellowness. They expected it to be a pummeling with the guitar screaming the whole time and they were struck that there were a lot of sensitive ballads in the set. I thought that was funny because as I said, I love ballads. I think the older I get, the more I want to be a singer, not with my voice but with the guitar. To me the most beautiful instrument of all is the human voice.

You change as you grow but the thing that attracted me to music first was Dickey Betts’ guitar solo on “One Way Out” or Carlos Santana on Abraxas or Jimi Hendrix on Axis: Bold As Love. These are the things that made me want to start playing but the older I get, the more I’m struck by singers like Mahalia Jackson and the purity of what they’re doing.

I’ve also always loved Jeff Beck him but what he’s doing right now is probably the most incredible stuff he’s ever done. I never messed with a twang bar on a guitar until I was 47 years old, it was like a year ago. He’s the reason I never touched one and he’s also the reason I started using one. For years I wouldn’t touch them because I told myself, “No, if I start going down that road I’m going to try to be Jeff Beck because there’s nobody that’s the master of the twang bar like him.” So for years I wouldn’t touch one just because of him and then somebody gave Dave Schools a big spindle of DVDs and they were all Jeff Beck bootlegs. Some of them were very recent and I don’t know why it would surprise me but he’s even better now than he was in 1976. He was able to bring a vocal quality to the guitar that only slide players have had in the past.

Of course Derek Trucks is a tremendous influence even though he’s my little brother basically. He might be my little brother but I’ve always looked up to him musically. Even when he was 11 years old, he possessed the ability to kill you with one note. He could always play like a singer and that always struck me. I tried as hard as I could to learn from that and use that in my playing but it wasn’t until I started messing with the twang bar that I was able to get close. I’m still a long way from it but in the past year and a half or so I feel I’ve found the door to some more vocal approaches with the guitar and if I keep playing and keep working at it then maybe in another 10 years I’ll be a little bit better at it (laughs). I just want to add that to the palette that’s already there because it’s just so important. The vibrato of a singer is so different than what other instruments can do but when you hear someone like Derek or Jeff Beck they’re able to sound like a singer when they play and that’s what I’m shooting for.

“Do you or have you done any acoustic bluegrass flatpicking? Even just jamming with buddies?” (Michael S.)

I would say not authentically because I’m not a real bluegrass player. I’m a tremendous fan of guys who really have that like Tony Rice and people of that nature. They’re mindblowingly good. I look at bluegrass as the other side of bebop. The chord structures are not as sophisticated as bebop but it’s hard to play bluegrass. And when you hear these guys just ripping off these lines that are spelling the chord changes as they go by, they’re doing that on an instrument that is not easy to play. I have never been a good acoustic player. I think I could become one if I was on a desert island and didn’t have an electric guitar and all I had was an acoustic and spent the time with the instrument that it deserves but as of right now I consider myself to be not a good acoustic player at all.

Jerry Douglas is someone else I’ve always loved. He’s a ridiculous virtuoso who can play a million notes per second but he also has that thing Derek has where he can bring you to your knees with one note.

Going back to the previous question as well, I saw him with Alison Krauss was when she was playing on a tour with O Brother, Where Art Thou? or maybe it was Cold Mountain. The whole family went to see her. That music just stirs my soul because it’s so pure. It has an essence and purity and all I’ve ever listened for is essence.

We go down there, Carolyn [Jimmy’s wife] and my children and myself and Jerry sees us in the audience. I’ve never met him and I wouldn’t think he would know who I was. But he pointed to the backstage like, “Come around to the door.” So I’m turning around looking at people behind me thinking, “He’s got to be pointing to someone else,” and Carolyn goes, “No, honey, he’s pointing to you.” And I said, “Well let’s go, we’ve got to go back there and meet him.”

So we did and the first thing he said was “What are you doing here?” I guess he knew me from more of a free jazz setting when I played with Bruce [Hampton] or Project Z: crazy, nonsensical, experimenting in the unknown and all that. And I said, “Well Jerry, I love this music,” and he was kind of shocked. Meanwhile, I was kind of shocked that he knew who I was and then we talked about working together in the future. Of course I’ve been too scared to call him but his wife and my wife have been emailing each other and he sent me a copy of his new record and we sent him a copy of our record when it came out. I really wanted to call him to play on that record but I need to write something with him in mind. Then again if I had a group of material and said, “Here Jerry, take your pick of what you’d like to play on,” I’d probably be surprised at what he would pick.

Now Alison Krauss, she can stop time with her voice. She’s one of Carolyn’s favorite singers. She was the one who played Alison for me to the point where I actually got it, where one of the tunes she played for me just froze me. Alison has that same thing Derek has, that one note thing. You know who it is when you hear one note and not only do you know who it is but you’re frozen by it. It’s easy to assault someone with a lot of notes and have them go, “Wow, you can play a lot of notes” or whatever they might say but when you can reach someone and touch them and freeze them with one note then you’re really doing it.

Allan Holdsworth can do it too but nobody can play more notes than him. I like a lot of different things, so when I hear someone who can do that and do other stuff, then I’m really into that.

Seeing her live, all the players in that band are top shelf and the harmonies they do are very sophisticated within that realm of bluegrass harmony. They have that stuff wired so hard, it’s just so freakishly amazing to me that you can get that many people to sing together like that. It kills me.

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