Jimmy Herring will return to the road with Widespread Panic, as the group begins an extended celebration of its 25th anniversary. In the following conversation, which draws on questions submitted by Jambands.com readers, Herring talks about his role in Panic, reflects on the music of his heroes and identifies some musicians whose work he appreciates that might surprise some fans.
Back in 2000 and 2001, you toured and recorded with T Lavitz and Richie Hayward in what was first called Justice League and then became known as Endangered Species. Both T and Richie passed away in 2010 and a number of people wanted to hear your thought and memories of them.
Oh man, we just lost T recently, we’re going to miss him so much. We always loved each other but I’d lost touch with him recently. You get busy and you get pulled into different directions and I hadn’t talked to him a lot in the past couple of years but I always loved him and had a blast playing with him, recording with him and Richie too. When we did the Justice League album which was not Justice League but Endangered Species it was a Mike Varney project and his basic way of doing it is you have to write, record and mix in a ten day period. At first I said no because every little thing can take more time than you think it’ll take. But we went ahead and we wrote and recorded and mixed it in a 10 day period. Richie stayed with us a lot of the time. I got to know both of them very well.
T was always one of my heroes because he was in the Dixie Dregs and I can remember when I was 18 or 19 and I’d go see the Dregs literally anytime when they were within a three hour span of where I lived and T was one of the first guys to answer my stupid kid questions. He would sit there and isolate parts of the music for me. I would ask him, “You know that song ‘Chips Ahoy,’ I know what your left hand is doing but what’s your right hand doing?” Or it could be, “That passage in ‘Night Meets Light,’ what is your left hand doing there?” And he would show me and he would break it apart real slow and then play it up to tempo and it gave me a whole new insight into Steve’s [Morse] music and the way that he wrote. The crazy thing is Steve can play all that stuff on piano, it freaks me out. T would tell me, “Yeah, Steve can play this stuff on piano. Now the first time he might make a mistake but if he does, he won’t make it again.” T told me that Steve’s mind is like a computer. Steve was T’s all time hero so for him to get to work with Steve was a dream come true. They both went to the University of Miami although T was a few years behind him. I had been out of touch with T for a while but he was doing what he was doing and I was doing what I was doing.
T and Richie were two heroes who I had really great experiences with and became friends with but there’s always going to be that line. They’re my friends but they’re also my heroes which led me to keep somewhat of a professional distance. Even though they were my dear friends, I looked at them as icons of music.
That’s the thing with Panic, they’re my contemporaries, my peers. I’m the same age as most of them. Dave’s younger and Sunny’s older, but me and JB and Todd an Jojo are all born in the same year. Me and Mikey were born in the same year, we were only a week or two apart.
Which lead to another question. Someone wanted to know how Mike Houser’s style impacted your own playing, if at all.
Absolutely. Profoundly. The most obvious way I can think of it is Mikey had this incredible ability to make a minor blues scale fit any chord, even if it was over a major chord. He might not hit the minor third of the scale but he would play all the other notes in the scale and you could tell he was still thinking out of that scale when he would play. I’ve learned ways of doing that trying to play Panic music and that struck me. I was doing it on Lenny’s [White] tour, playing not Mikey licks per se but I was kind of thinking like Mikey in a couple ways where he found a way to make that minor blues scale fit any chord. It was quite fascinating because if there was a note that didn’t sound right, typically it would be the minor third of the scale against a major chord from the same root and Mikey would just skip that note. He would play lines out of the scale but without that note in it and I think it just evolved naturally with him. Rather than change the scale, he’d just keep the same scale and he would just not play the notes that didn’t fit and it ended up sounding incredible. That would be the most obvious thing.
Here’s a question related to your role in Widespread Panic. “Jimmy, what made you finally quit holding back and start to wail with Panic? The first couple of years you just seemed hesitant to let it rip.” (Aaron S.)
I have to say I still wrestle with that some and sometimes my tendency to play a lot of notes might not always be the right thing at the right time but that’s how I play. I don’t always play like that but I still wrestle with that a lot because Mike didn’t play a lot of notes that often. He could when he felt like it, when the music moved him that way, he played a lot of notes. I’m sure there are people who notice what I’m doing and say, “Hey, that’s not Panic” but the guys in the band they could see me struggling. Not struggling to be a musician but struggling with what’s appropriate, what’s not appropriate. So they came to me and said, “Jimmy, just play like you play. If you play a lot of notes, you play a lot notes. Don’t ever feel like you have to hold back or not be you.”
Even after hearing that it was still hard sometimes. I would be in that spot in my journey where I would be just about to do it, just about to go and I would stop myself and think, “That’s just not appropriate here.” But you can’t think like that, you can’t think at all when you’re improvising or at least you shouldn’t, and they really helped me to let go of that and just play. Playing with them is such a gas. I might play a lot of notes sometimes but it never feels wrong to me when it’s happening. The first couple of years I was trying not to do something inappropriate and I was struggling to learn the tunes too.
Was there a particular turning point or was it more of a process?
It’s still a process. I don’t remember any given moment where I stopped struggling with that type of thing but Dave and I have this ongoing joke where if I play something too stupid and by that I mean a lot of notes, he’ll look at me and hold up five fingers. That means I’m fined 500 dollars (laughs). He’ll go, “Alright, that’s five.” It’s not actually true, it’s kind of a throwback to the James Brown days when he used to fine musicians for something, either playing something inappropriate or missing a cue. He’d go, “I gotcha!” and he actually did fine them.
So there was no time I can recall where I said, “Oh it’s different now.” It’s a process, it’s evolving. We’ve made two records and we’ve played I don’t know how many gigs in the past four years. We’ve lived with each other and those guys are my peers. I’ve known them since ’89, it’s quite a bit different playing with Phil or the Dead or the Allman Brothers where you feel these are your heroes and your mentors and they seem to have an idea where they want you to go with the music. They want you to be free but at the same time, they seem to have an idea of what the sound of the group is and what they’re looking for, so sometimes they can help you by telling what that is.
But with Panic there’s never been any time where any one of them has tried to steer me in a certain direction. Sometimes I’ll ask Dave his opinion and he’ll try to give me a rough outline of the contours of what we’re trying to get across but their thing evolved really naturally with Mike and it became what it became through repeated playing together. So he says, “Don’t worry, the same thing’s going to happen with you. Not the same way but with repeated gigs we’ll find our center together.” You see they look at it like it’s a new band rather than it’s the same band with one member being replaced, because someone like Mike is just not replaceable. And they’re not looking for me to come in and be Mike number two. They don’t want that. They want it to be organic and evolve naturally.
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.
