(Widespread Panic)
One of the most venerable lifers on the jam-band circuit, Panic is the Southern roots alternative to the human peacock that became the Phish experience. Front man John Bell reflects on the scariest thing that can happen on stage: death.
It all comes back to Widespread Panic and my musical hero Colonel Bruce Hampton. The first time we played together was in 1987, when Panic was just starting out, at a little place called The Nick in Birmingham, AL. From the moment they began their set, some of it was noise, and some of it was music, and I walked to the stage like a zombie in Night of the Living Dead. It blew my mind. They were doing all kinds of weird stuff, like playing guitars with egg beaters, and Bruce was doing all kinds of crazy stuff while rocking out on this electric mandolin thing. It looked like a circus act, complete with on stage wrestling. Despite all the craziness, the music was cohesive. It blew my mind so much that I lost contact with how to play that night. I was totally discombobulated, to the point that it felt like I was trying to play during the last half of an acid trip.
It rocked me so much that the following morning, I seriously considered going ahead with Panic. I didn’t think I could ever come close to what I had seen that night with Bruce. That night was a huge teaching moment because I learned to be comfortable with my abilities and not compare them to any outside entity. I don’t know if it was ever Bruce’s intention to teach, but I would always learn something in his presence.
Fast forward thirty years to May 2017, and Bruce celebrating his seventieth birthday with a concert at the Fox in Atlanta. It was the greatest collection of musicians I’ve ever played with, including Tedeschi Trucks Band, Warren Haynes, Jon Fishman, and Peter Buck to name a few. It was Bruce that brought all those people together because you never could have booked a night like that without Bruce. We had most of Panic up there on stage, and Bruce was the most on-his-game that I’d ever seen him. He was just playing on a whole other level. He was really present and killing it.
During the encore, Bruce had a heart attack on stage and passed away about an hour later. I wasn’t at the hospital. I was driving there, just minutes away, when I heard he’d passed. That evening went from watching one of the best things happen to the worst. The weird thing was that it was during the very last song. It was one of Bruce’s favorites, “Turn On Your Love Light,” by the Grateful Dead. There were about thirty of us on stage for the encore, and my line of sight to Bruce was partially blocked when he hit the dirt. Some of the players around him thought he was pulling a Fred Sanford stunt, because he had done that in the past.
There was a slow wave of recognition and understanding that something was seriously wrong. I was standing next to Susan Tedeschi who was singing. I just watched her slowly lower the mic from her lips and her jaw drop. It was a slow motion moment, but it happened really fast. We were all in shock, wide-eyed and teary at the same time. The night before, Bruce called me, and I realized it was a pocket dial. He said, “It was the weirdest damn thing! I just pocket dialed you and a whole bunch of people!” Then he proceeded to rattle off a bunch of names. He was always funny on the phone, calling me at random times on some weird whim or just to say hello. I’ve seen all kinds of great musicians—some that are humble and many that aren’t. Bruce was the most genuine musician I’ve ever met. He was completely unafraid to be who he wanted to be and stand firm in his being.
The curtains closed, and there were 4,500 saying, “What the fuck?” It was my understanding that Bruce flatlined on stage but paramedics revived him. He died about an hour after that at the hospital. I had the opposite experience with our guitarist Michael Houser, who died at age forty from pancreatic cancer. The last shows were actually easier than I bet a lot of people think. I knew he’d been ill for a good, long time, so there was some time to process it. Even with chemo, there wasn’t a great change in his physical appearance. That was another thing that distracted me from the reality of the situation. When we were playing, he was laser-focused and giving it everything he had, up until the last show. The shows really stand out for me as some of our best and not just because they might have been our last. He was soaring during those moments.
Originally, he had planned to not come out on that summer tour. We played Red Rocks and Wyoming, and he was stage four in those altitudes. Those altitudes are hard enough to deal with without cancer! After those gigs, he said, “I think it’s time for me to go home.” He never faltered during that tour. It’s the little moments that I remember best and cherish the most.