No MTV for Widespread Panic,
 Just Loads of Worshipful Fans

By GREG JAFFE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

FEB 17, 1999

Peter Smiley, a concierge at the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore., first heard the band Widespread Panic when a friend played a bootleg tape for him several years ago.

Today, the 26-year-old shares a strange intimacy with the group’s growing community of fans. He receives as many as 20 e-mails a day from other Widespread Panic enthusiasts and trades bootleg concert tapes via the Internet. When the band sent out a message recruiting volunteers to promote its Portland concert recently, he responded.

“My girlfriend thinks I’m crazy,” he says. “But I’m just very loyal to those guys because they are so loyal and committed to all of us.”

In its 11 years of existence, Widespread Panic has never had a music video on MTV or an album that cracked the Billboard Top 200. But the six-member band has built an enviable following. During a nationwide tour last year, it pulled in $8.5 million, placing it in the top 40 tours of 1998, ahead of such established acts as Sheryl Crow and the Smashing Pumpkins.

In the South the band’s pull has become legendary. Late last year, it sold out four shows at the 4,700-seat Fox theater in Atlanta in four minutes. “R.E.M. can do that. Elton John can do that. Not many other people,” says Edgar Neiss, the theater’s general manager.

The band’s success illustrates the potential of grass-roots marketing, particularly when it’s linked to the rise of the Internet on college campuses. Widespread’s fans are reminiscent of the legions that followed the Grateful Dead, but the Dead’s following was relatively spontaneous. As Jerry Garcia, the Dead’s lead guitarist, once said, “We didn’t invent Deadheads, they invented themselves.” Widespread Panic, by contrast, is laboring hard to invent its following.

It has made its fans, who are mostly in their 20s and early 30s, part of the band’s everyday life. Earlier this month, fans could zap messages to Widespread in a recording studio and find out what band members ate for lunch via regular updates on the band’s Web site. Fans can even get free bootleg tapes of Widespread concerts by sending in a blank tape and a self-addressed envelope. As many as 100 fans take advantage of the offer every month. At concerts, the band flashes audience pictures taken by fans at earlier shows on a large screen.

‘A Big Family’

At concerts, the band flashes audience pictures taken by fans at earlier shows on a large screen. “It’s like a big family flipping through a photo album,” says Bryan Walters, a 26-year-old MTV production assistant.

The band’s strategy was born of necessity. The six-member group met at the University of Georgia in the early 1980s. After college, they stayed in Athens, which is also the birthplace of R.E.M. and the B-52′s, devoting themselves to the band full-time. Their Southern rock musical style is eclectic, evoking everyone from the Allman Brothers to the Talking Heads.

Unlike R.E.M., which made its name by landing a large record contract, Widespread took to the road, playing small bars, mostly in the South. Some success followed. In the early 1990s the band signed its first record contract with Capricorn Records, based in Atlanta. It also graduated to larger bars and then to small concert halls. But radio stations were often indifferent to the band’s music, and reviews were mixed. “Vacuous,” carped a concert reviewer at Atlanta’s main alternative newspaper after one of the band’s first major shows in Atlanta.

To promote its shows, the band began enlisting fans, first through its newsletter and later through its Web site. Before Widespread Panic played Houston last year, Jody Harrison was one of a dozen fans who spent two days hanging posters. The 27-year-old sales representative for a computer software company hit the four bars where he knew there was a Widespread Panic compact disc in the jukebox, as well as a vegetarian restaurant. He also plastered Rice University, the University of Houston and Houston Community College.

“I was totally in awe that they would ask for my help,” Mr. Harrison says. In exchange for his time, Mr. Harrison, like other fans enlisted to promote the band’s shows, received two tickets and backstage passes. He eventually spent about two hours eating and drinking with the band members, he recalls.

The band has adopted a similar fan-friendly strategy for the Internet. Dave Schools, Widespread’s bassist, happened on a Web site developed by Brian Sofer, a 23-year-old fan from Long Island, and complimented the site in an e-mail. A few months later, he met Mr. Sofer backstage at a concert and asked him to propose a new Web site for the band.

‘Thrill of My Life’

“That was the thrill of my life,” Mr. Sofer says. He had a prized collection of about 45 Widespread concert ticket stubs but had received a “D” in college in the only computer science class he ever took.

Working out of his bare apartment, Mr. Sofer now updates the band’s site almost daily in exchange for a small salary. Within two hours of virtually all of the band’s shows, he has pictures of the performance and a review posted.

So far, fans can’t download the band’s music directly from the Web. And giving away the bootleg tapes is controversial with the band’s agent and record label. “Giving away music has always been a concern of mine and it always will be,” says Phil Walden Jr., head of Capricorn Records. But he concedes, “If we stopped doing it now we’d lose fans. You have to play the hand you’re dealt.”

The band’s management says the increased traffic from the new Web site has helped merchandise sales, which have surged to about $350,000 last year from $100,000 in 1996. Meanwhile, as its popularity has grown, Widespread has steered clear of some opportunities that other bands would jump at.

Last year the Rolling Stones approached Widespread to see if the band was interested in opening for the Stones on their tour. Widespread, concerned that its core audience would be turned off by the relatively short opening sets, said no thanks. “We play about three hours in an evening,” says John Bell, a band member.

Instead, Widespread opted for a different promotion. Eager to get its name out to schools, the band approached the American Library Association about doing a free poster promoting reading similar to those done by R.E.M., Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson and others in recent years.

The association said no thanks. The band wasn’t well enough known. So the band offered to pay for the entire campaign, shelling out about $12,000 to mail out posters to 2,300 libraries around the country. “The people at the Library Association still think we’re a little crazy,” says the band’s agent, Buck Williams.

Now, Widespread has its eye on another goal. The Cleveland market, which the band has targeted in recent years, has been slow to come around. “Cleveland was put on this earth to keep us humble,” says Sam Lanier, who owned a small landscaping company before taking over management of the band in the late 1980s. “That’s our breakthrough market next year.”

Mountain Xpress  – Asheville, NC

Lying in the sun

A static-free guide to giving (and getting) audio books

by Keith W. Norton in Vol. 7 / Iss. 15 on 11/15/2000

Their lyrics cover everything from blue-collar angst to the merits of coconuts.  And their Southern-rock jams have covered this country like peach butter.

Widespread Panic vocalist/guitarist Michael Houser, who was born in Boone, spoke to Xpress from a hotel room in Austin recently, reflecting on his dark days B.P. (before Panic).

“I was a lost soul before Widespread Panic,” he declared, almost reverently. “I didn’t want to go to work in a factory. I felt sick every time I thought of my life in the future. I never really found anything that I could latch on to and say that’s what I wanted to do.”

Facing a series of dreary job interviews after graduation, Houser says he “felt … just lost. I felt that I was a moment away from tragedy, really.”

Then he found John Bell and Dave Schools; the three first performed as Widespread Panic in 1985. The way Houser tells it, it sounds like a religious conversion.

“I lost that [depressed] feeling. I had a purpose. I knew what I was going to do every day, and that was what I needed.”

And, not unlike an improvisational groove, “everything else came from that one instant of insight,” continues Houser. “It was a challenge, and that’s what I wanted.”

Furthermore, “everything good that has happened to me has come out of the band,” he claims (including, more than ten years ago meeting his wife at a Widespread Panic show). Soon after the light dawned for Widespread Panic, they were joined by drummer Todd Nance and percussionist Domingo S. Ortiz. The band’s first disc, the beatific Space Wrangler (Landslide Records) came out in 1988, and was re-released by Capricorn in ’92. Around that time, the band added keyboardist John “Jo Jo” Hermann.

As the group’s lineup grew, so did the numbers of records sold — climbing into the millions.  ”None of us ever wavered. We all had the same moment of clarity that I did — that this is what we wanted. … All of us love what we do,” Houser says proudly.

But the path to enlightenment often requires a little pruning. After its seven-album contract with Capricorn Records expired, the band formed its own Widespread Records — and, in May 2000, released its ninth disc, Another Joyous Occasion, an energetic concert album. This one captures the spirit of the band at its peak, letting you know why “Spreadheads” feel the way they do.

About his own concert experience, Houser says: “It’s fear and excitement and happiness all mixed up.”

Brian Sofer, who designs the band’s Web site, talks about trying to funnel the band’s soul on-line.

“I’ve been a fan for 10 years; that’s how I got the gig. I’m a target audience member. I try to do what I would like and what the fans would like at the same time. … That’s why we’re putting up these big, fat MP3s every week. Instead of some stupid clip, we’d rather have a chunk from a show. People are eating it up.

“We get tremendous traffic and had to shut a few doors [on the Web site] this week to upgrade. You don’t want to put anything up that is not worthy of this band,” he says.

Another worthy experiment for Widespread Panic was working with Christopher and Geoffrey Hanson of the independent film company Sweetwater Productions.

This summer, Sweetwater documented more than 250 hours of footage of Widespread’s latest tour, to be used as part of a feature movie, Scrapple.

“They were very unobtrusive — and yet they were there all the time,” Houser observes, saying he hopes “they’ll present an interpretation of what it’s like to be out [on-stage].”

With plenty to feel good about (including a new deal with a European record company for the band’s next studio album), Widespread Panic is growing. The fans keep coming — and making believers out of others.

Houser is appropriately grateful: “You can’t go out into a room of those fans,” he concludes, “and not want to do your very best.”

http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2000/1115wp.php

http://www.ewirezine.com/riding/flatlandfury/

The Daily Camera

Schmidt: Put this on your Pod

Rocky Mountain Podcast promotes local music

August 19, 2005

If you haven’t heard of podcasting, you will soon. These downloadable digital broadcasts are creating an audio revolution much like MP3 files did a few years back.

Denver singer-songwriter Brian Sofer — who, as webmaster for Widespread Panic, also knows a thing or two about computers — is helping ensure that the Colorado music community takes advantage of this technology. His weekly Rocky Mountain Pod program debuted in July as a free showcase for local bands including Breaking & Entering, Buckskin Stallion and Electric Side Dish.

“Like everybody else in the field, I just started watching the explosion of the podcast phenomenon, and I thought it would be a very easy way to deliver media to people,” Sofer says. “Especially this music scene; it’s so perfect for this.”

Podcasts are essentially radio shows delivered by digital downloads instead of over the airwaves. Users can browse directories of available programs, set up automatic downloads of the podcasts they want to hear, then save them and listen to them anytime. The technique took a major step into the mainstream in June with the launch of Apple’s iTunes 4.9, which supports podcasting.

Sofer says podcasting has the potential to help bands reach much broader audiences than they would through their Web sites alone — and turn listeners on to music they might never have heard otherwise.

“The real value for the end user is they don’t have to go to a Web site and right click and save and download to desktop and blah blah blah,” he says. “They can just basically open up their iTunes, and it’ll be one big file, and it’ll keep it there.

“And for the content provider — the musician — it’s an unbelievable way to deliver media to somebody without them having to do really anything except enter their subscription.”

Visit www.rockymountainpod.com to submit music or sign up to receive the podcast.