Photo via Widespread Panic’s Facebook page

Widespread Panic ended their 10-month hiatus last night. The group’s comeback performance took place in front of an intimate audience at Charlotte, NC’s Fillmore as part of Panic’s annual Tunes For Tots charity event. Besides a few shows at the Panic en la Playa festival earlier in the year, Panic has not played an electric show since last New Year’s Eve (they toured as an acoustic outfit on the Wood Tour in January and February). Oddly enough, the band’s final pre-hiatus show at Aspen, CO’s Belly Up and their comeback show were both held in some of the smaller rooms the band has headlined in recent memory.

Perhaps as a nod to their recent sabbatical, Panic opened their set with the reflective “Stop Go.” The song’s lyrics include the appropriate lines “Now I’ve got to stop/And go and stop and go along the way/Was a fool to waste my time/Just searchin’ my mind/ But the more I find/The more I find the time to search/Used to ride on/To get to where I was going in a daze/And now I’ve got to stop/And go and stop and go along the way.” Widespread Panic also nodded to bassist Dave Schools’ recent stint with Mickey Hart Band by covering the Grateful Dead-associated blues classic “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.” The song segued into a jam based around the Dead’s “The Other One,” a song Panic covered in the ‘80s. Panic’s second set climaxed with a segue from “Hatfield” into “Impossible,” Worry” and “Climb To Safety.” The movement theme continued with the encores of “Papa’s Home” and “Travelin’ Light.”

Widespread Panic will perform at Charlotte, NC’s Time Warner Cable Arena this evening.

Here’s a look at last night’s setlist via Panicstream.com

Sunday, December 30, 2012, The Fillmore, Charlotte, NC

Set I: Stop Go > Pleas, Give, Christmas Katie > Good Morning Little Schoolgirl > Other One Jam > Radio Child, Trouble, Pickin’ Up The Pieces, Good People > Use Me > Makes Sense To Me

Set II: Diner > Blackout Blues, St. Louis, Space Wrangler, It Ain’t No Use, Hatfield > Impossible > Worry > Climb To Safety

E: Papa’s Home > Travelin’ Light