“Thank you good people for giving us a home away from home all these years,” said frontman John Bell before the encore of the group’s 45th sold-out show at , which capped a three-night run for the band.
It was an excellent afternoon and summer evening, though it didn’t start that way. As I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic from the I70 Morrison exit all the way to the box office (the second Red Rocks entrance), I had an almost heretical thought: Has Widespread Panic outgrown Red Rocks? There were, of course, many people wandering around the parking lots looking for a “miracle” ticket, having fun with old friends, etc. It’s unclear whether the traffic jam was the result of all the people without tickets hoping to find one, or some sort of glitch with security and Red Rocks personnel.
Given that Sunday was the only show of the three with the traffic jams, perhaps it can be chalked up to one of those things, especially given how the band played overall all three nights, and the lack of issues on Friday and Saturday.
In the early part of the first set, the band seemed to be contrasting light and dark styles. After the fierce rocker “Flicker,” they turned to the wistful “C. Brown.” Guitarist Jimmy Herring spun a soulful solo, while percussionist Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz tapped out danceable rhythms on his kit.
So it went for most of the first set, with a dark or rocking tune followed by “lighter” tune, until near the end. The theme of this three-night run seemed to be three. On Friday, they played a triple Talking Heads encore. On Saturday, they closed the first set with three (or four, depending on how you look at it), Vic Chestnutt songs.
On Sunday, Panic closed its first set with a troika from The Band, starting with the bouncy “Ophelia” on which Bell sounded eerily like the late Levon Helm, and following with an outstanding “The Shape I’m In” that had fans dancing and singing along on the chorus. Panic closed the first set with “Chest Fever,” with John “JoJo” Hermann doing a very good approximation of Garth Hudson’s swelling organ lines.
The theme of threes wasn’t done however, as Panic opened its second set with three songs by fellow Georgia rockers Bloodkin, starting with “Can’t Get High.” The highlight was the moody “Quarter Tank of Gasoline,” on which bassist Dave Schools dominated with fierce playing.
In reviews of the Friday and Saturday shows, I noted Panic wasn’t really jamming much. Perhaps they were hording their jams for Sunday, as Herring led the band on a long, spacey jam before “Big Wooly Mammoth” that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Grateful Dead show, perhaps no surprise, as Herring has played in a variety of post-Garcia Dead projects.
On “Mammoth,” which has the line “Somebody throw me a fire, so we can burn this city down,” Hermann and the band paused for a few bars before singing the line, seeming to tease the audience, which has over the years taken Hermann’s words to heart and pelted the stage with lighters. Hermann and Schools seemed to be looking at each other with an amused take, and then Hermann sang the line, and the audience responded. Hermann also ripped a fantastic rolling piano solo during the song.
Schools stepped up with an extended bass solo of his own before the set-closing “You Should Be Glad,” on which Herring played one of his fleet-fingered solos. The encore included the tender “May Your Glass Be Filled” and the fiery “Climb to Safety,” which brought yet another Red Rocks Panic run to a close.
SETLIST
Set 1
Flicker, C. Brown, Better Off, Genesis, All Time Low, Crazy, It Ain’t No Use, Ophelia -> The Shape I’m In, Chest Fever
Set 2
Can’t Get High, Quarter Tank of Gasoline, True To My Nature, Tall Boy -> Bust It Big -> Big Wooly Mammoth -> Time Fades Away, Ballad of John and Yoko, Pickin’ Up The Pieces, Surprise Valley, You Should Be Glad, E: May Your Glass Be Filled, Climb to Safety
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is a Denver freelance writer/photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. When not writing and shooting, she plays guitar and violin in Denver band .
is a Boulder-based photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb.
