This week Widespread Panic released Wood, a two disc set of performances drawn from 2012’s acoustic tour. Today, we look back 15 years to the group’s first major Relix feature, which followed the release of the group’s album, Bombs & Butterflies.

Athens, Georgia has been the spawning ground for several powerhouse bands. Names like REM and the B-52’s are just two of the homegrown groups to emerge from these rolling hills, but get ready to add another one to the list – Widespread Panic.

With the release of its fifth album, Bombs & Butterflies, on Mercury/Capricorn Records, WSP has forged its mark in the world of jam-based rock. The release, which debuted at number 50 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart, is WSP’s first album since 1994’s Ain’t Life Grand.

Bombs & Butterflies (the title is taken from a line in the song “Rebirtha” ) is a tight, eclectic mix of blues, funk and improvisational rock. “We all did a little shape shifting,” says guitarist John Bell. “We did a long tour with Mercury. We were trying to figure out exactly what our position was in the whole situation and tried to get to know everyone ‘cause it was like a brand new family and that takes a little time [to get used to].”

Since its first gig on February 6, 1986 at the Mad Hatter Ballroom in Athens, the band – whose current lineup features John Bell ( “J.B.” ) on vocals and guitar; John Hermann ( “Jo-Jo” ) on keyboards and vocals; Michael Houser on guitar and vocals; Todd Nance on drums; Domingo Ortiz on percussion and vocals; and Dave Schools on bass and vocals – has toured virtually non-stop. Touring 120 days a year is a breeze for this band that, at one time, was on the road 300 days a year. “We’d come home a week before Christmas, till the week after Christmas and then start working again New Year’s Eve,” says Nance. “[We’d] pick a direction to go from Athens and leave Monday night or Tuesday morning and go all the way to North Carolina and then play our way back by Sunday,” adds Schools. “We’d have Monday off at home and then go towards Alabama.”

Although the band enjoys bringing its music to fans all over the country, life on the road can be tough. “Life is hard during the early touring years of a small band,” says Schools. “You’re sleeping in parking lots and camping and staking cash and doing whatever you can to get to the next show. I can remember not enough people were coming to see us, and the guy was emptying quarters out of the pool table to pay us. We’d play for pizza and beer.” Clearly things have been on the upswing for a while. “[Now] we’ve got so many of the things that we used to wish for. We’re on comfortable tour buses. We play in good venues. We have a good light show. We have the best crew and PA system,” confirms Schools.

Not only did the new studio album have to be worked around the band’s hectic touring schedule, the band had to find time to write new material for it. “We all write the songs,” says Schools, “usually at sound check. Someone has an idea, and it all comes together.”

This album, which includes both original and cover material, confers songwriting credits equally upon all the band members. The funk-filled opening cut, “Radio Child,” is followed by the soulful “Aunt Avis,” with special guest Vic Chesnutt (who also penned the song). Deadheads will especially enjoy the funkadelic sounds of “Rebirtha” and the final track “Greta,” which features Col. Bruce Hampton performing a pesticide ad. The radio friendly, debut single from the album, “Hope In A Hopeless World,” pays homage to gospel/blues legend Pops Staples. WSP’s rendition of this blues classic will be featured on the Detroit Red Wings/CIDR 93.9 The River compilation CD, Hope For Hockeytown II, proceeds from which will benefit the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Detroit.

The diversity of WSP’s sound is not surprising. Individual band members claim influences that run the gamut from the Grateful Dead and Santana to The Who and Black Sabbath. The band chooses to dismiss any similarities, however, between itself and the Grateful Dead and its touring family, including the coining of the term “Spreadheads.” “We have a small fan base that follows us on tour,” said Schools, an admitted Deadhead. “With the decision by the Dead to stop touring, older Heads are checking us out, people who might not have.”

Like the Dead, WSP prefers live albums. “When I got turned on to a new band,” says Schools, “and I went to the record store and saw that they had five or six records, if they had a live one, I’d opt for it ‘cause it’s a more of a greatest hits kind of thing. I may have heard a few songs on the radio, but they’re all scattered over different albums. Here, they are all on a live record – being done live. That’s always what I was attracted to. Plus they always jam on a live record. Double CDs.”

The band says that the recording of live music is becoming more economically feasible with the advent of digital machines that give a clean signal. “We knew there was a market for it,” says Schools, “‘cause I walk into a record store anywhere and see those ‘import’ bootleg CDs and obviously, if people didn’t want to hear that, they wouldn’t pay the exorbitant price for a poor quality recording.”

Like the Grateful Dead, the Black Crowes and other bands, WSP allows taping at its shows, but encourages fans not to purchase bootleg discs. “There’s three reasons not to buy these bootlegs,” says Schools. “First of all, we’re getting ripped off. Secondly, the people who buy them are getting ripped off because they’re paying bucks. They’re paying like $50 for a double CD, which if it was a legit release, would be $19 or $20 and thirdly, the quality’s poor.”

Often, the information contained with the bootleg discs is incorrect. “They don’t even have the right names for the songs,” adds Ortiz. The band says that the people making the money aren’t even fans; they’re not the people in the parking lot. “It’s the same feeling I get when you see a scalper outside the show with two signs,” continues Schools. “One says ‘I need tickets’ and the other says ‘I want tickets’ and they’re firing those bad boys off for more than we intended the show to be worth. The setup wasn’t intended for people to be spending food money to buy a ticket. That kind of irks us.”

Keeping ticket prices down is important to WSP. Like Blues Traveler and several other bands, it has tried to lower costs. Although tickets can still be purchased through Ticketmaster, they can also be obtained at the box office or through mail-order, which cuts out the middle man and extra fees involved.

WSP stresses it is not against tapers or kids who collect taped music, just people who try to make a profit from it and are not really interested in the band or its fans. “They hear that recording is a sort of golden ticket for them,” says Schools. “Like that guy in the Village who’s got that big old tray of bootleg tapes of any artist or band you’d ever want. He takes his little Xerox labels, and he sells them. Luckily, the network is so good that people are always willing to spin tapes for free. [That kind of interest] makes you realize that people want to hear live music. People go to concerts to hear live music. People tape concerts to hear live music. If we could mix them an incredible sounding tape or hopefully, someday, we could do vault releases and Jo-Jo’s Pick’s or whatever.” (Laughter)

The band does not allow soundboard taping because it feels that audience tapes sound better than board tapes. “[Soundboards] don’t capture the show,” continues Schools. “My favorite one is where Weir forgets the words to ‘Sugar Magnolia’ and the crowd at Nassau Coliseum finishes the verse and then gives themselves a hand for doing it. Ten thousand people singing ‘Waits backstage while I sing to you.’ Yeah! Hey, we all sang! You don’t really get that on the board tape. What you’re gonna get is Weir botching the words.”

One of WSP’s favorite live tapes of the band is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina when keyboardist Jo-Jo Hermann went “keyboard surfing.” “He was up on his piano bench playing his piano with his feet, and the crowd was going crazy,” says Schools, “and he fell over, and you hear 3,000 people just go ‘Ohhh…’ And then, slowly, the drink comes up. The drink didn’t spill. And you hear ‘Ahhh…’ You should have heard the sound of him hitting the keyboards. We were doing two-track, and there was plenty of mic stands out there.” Hermann continues, “And then up comes Chan from Blues Traveler who came over to jam with us, and there I am sprawled out on the floor with my keyboards busted in five pieces and the crowd roaring.” Although his ego may have been slightly bruised, Hermann assured us that he was unhurt in the mishap, as the “bourbon broke [his] fall.”

To further fulfill the demand for more live music, Schools says that in the future there will be more live broadcasts where tapers can get a good mix. “We’ve done that a couple of times at Red Rocks where [the radio station] brought their own truck and ran a sub-snake off,” says the bassist. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point where the Dead was in the late ’80s where there was so many people showing up without tickets that they would actually do a radio broadcast that would only go within a mile of the Coliseum so you could sit in your car and tune in the show.”

As flattering as the demand for its live music is, WSP knows that taping can hurt the record industry and the companies involved in the recording and manufacturing of the CDs. The band members agree, though, that most tapers are recording the live music for their own pleasure. “The whole taper mindset is they’re almost against studio stuff, in a way,” says Schools. “What happens is they get so addicted to the live sound that they almost are unwilling to accept the studio sound. It’s too claustrophobic. It’s too set in stone. They’ll go buy it because they want to hear it once or twice, but generally they want that live, raw song. They want to hear the interaction. They want the whole human element, and we’re as real as real can get. Warts and all.”

The commitment of this unit is indisputable. “Most bands go out in support of albums,” says Ortiz, “whereas, we go out in support of each other. Not only are there six of us involved, there’s the families and the office. It’s gotten bigger than just us six guys.” WSP has toured all over the United States and is presently nearing the end of a three-month, coast-to-coast tour. The band then plans to take a break before it embarks on a European tour and perhaps even a tour of Australia. “I don’t think we could be that kind of band that does an 18-month whirlwind world tour and then takes five years off like Pink Floyd,” says Schools. “We’d all go totally nuts.”

Although the band plans to continue its heavy touring schedule, it does not plan to be involved in any large festivals. “We did the first two H.O.R.D.E. tours, but we probably will not do any more,” says Schools. “There’s not enough time to play. It’s tough on fans – a festival setting is great. You get to see all kinds of music all day long but, at the same time, because it’s summer, the bands are starting at 1:30 in the afternoon and by the time the sun starts going down, those people are gone.” Houser agrees adding, “On festivals, an hour or an hour-and-fifteen minutes is pretty much the cap. It takes us two to three hours to do what we feel comfortable with.” “Yeah, it takes a little time to get rolling,” says J.B., “and then you don’t want to put the brakes on.”

Ortiz concedes that “[Some fans] just really wanted to come and hang out and listen to us and then, for whatever reason, they would just split and take off. They’d come back and say, ‘Oh man. I would have stayed longer, but I had commitments’ or ‘I would have really liked to have seen you by yourself.’ And that’s what we do it for. We do it for ourselves, but we also do it for the fans that come out.” “Our fans give us some shit about it,” continues Schools, “‘cause it’s like ‘damn, I drove 300 miles to see you play for three hours, not 45 minutes.’ We get a lot of that kind of feedback, so we can’t really ignore it.”

As for the future, a live album is in the works, and the band is also prepared to do another studio album. “Next year, another album,” says Schools. “For us it’s kind of hard because we’ll always be touring till our arms fall off. I know, for me, it’s just a day-to-day kind of thing. I know that tomorrow I’ll be doing something that will involve Widespread Panic, and I know that when we start our tour and get on the bus [that it will be] our lives for the next three months. For us, our main thing is just to play. It’s tough for us to look at what’s going to be in the future because we don’t even know.”

Whatever the future holds for Widespread Panic, one thing is certain. The band will continue to tour and attract legions of fans. “All we care about is playing music,” says J.B., “and the people who want to hear it.”