Widespread Panic at the Beacon Theatre

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, John "JB" Bell performed as a solo guitarist/vocalist while attending university in Athens, Georgia. In 1981, he began collaborating on songs with fellow students. By 1986, they had become a band, Widespread Panic, playing local bars and fraternity parties. Joining the jam band circuit, Widespread Panic widened its touring circuit regionally and then nationally, drawing larger audiences by word of mouth before achieving radio airplay and charting albums. To date, the band has sold over three million records and four million downloads. The Georgia Music Hall of Fame inducted Widespread Panic in 2008. Widespread Panic's 12th and most recent studio album is 2015's Street Dogs, although the band in 2017 released two albums of archived concerts. Widespread Panic currently consists of Bell, guitarist Jimmy Herring, keyboardist John "JoJo" Hermann, bassist Dave Schools, drummer Duane Trucks, and percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz.

Widespread Panic sold out five consecutive nights at the Beacon Theatre. On opening night, the band's first set was loaded with original songs and the second set was peppered with cover songs reinterpreted in jam band manner. From the first song to the encore, the set blended Southern rock, blues-rock, progressive rock, funk and hard rock, with the musicians liberally extending the songs far beyond their original recording times. Widespread Panic launched into one song and organically floated into another, sometimes returning to the original song for a reprise. There is some truth in saying that if you had heard 20 minutes, you had heard the whole concert; there was a prevalent sameness to the band's music. This statement by itself, however, does not fully capture the integrity with which the band jammed and improvised, creating a performance that could never again be repeated. For jam band aficionados, this was the next best thing to a Phish concert.

Setlist

Set 1:

1. Porch Song
2. Rebirtha
3. Greta (>) Stop-Go (with a rap  snippet of Leonard Cohen's "That Don’t Make It Junk ") (>) Little Lilly
4. Proving Ground (>) Bust It Big (>) Proving Ground reprise
5. Action Man

Set 2:

1. Steven's Cat
2. Walk On (Neil Young cover)
3. Blight (brute. cover)
4. Help Me Somebody (NRBQ cover)
5. Fishwater (>) Drums (band remained on stage) (> ‘Fishwater’ reprise)
6. Pilgrims
7. Pusherman (Curtis Mayfield cover)
8. Conrad

Encore:

1. You Wreck Me (Tom Petty cover)
2. Tall Boy