Widespread Panic
Widespread Panic is an American rock band from Athens, Georgia. The current lineup includes guitarist/singer John Bell (musician), John Bell, bassist Dave Schools, drummer Duane Trucks, percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz, keyboardist John "JoJo" Hermann, and guitarist Jimmy Herring. The band's original guitarist and sometime songwriter, Michael Houser, died of pancreatic cancer in 2002, and the original drummer, Todd Nance, left in 2016 and died in 2020. The band was formed in Athens in 1986, and is influenced by southern rock, blues rock, progressive rock, funk and hard rock genres. They have been compared to other jam band, jam bands including the Grateful Dead and Phish. Widely renowned for their live performances, they have held the record for number of sold-out performances at Red Rocks Amphitheatre and State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Band history 1981–1995: early years and rise to national attention John Bell (musician), John Bell and Michael Houser met in 1981 in their ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Red Rocks Amphitheatre (also known colloquially as simply Red Rocks) is an open-air amphitheater in the Western United States, western United States near Morrison, Colorado, approximately southwest of Denver. It is owned and operated by the city of Denver. In addition to several other large sandstone formations nearby, the venue is best recognized by its two massive monoliths, named "Ship Rock" and "Creation Rock", as well as the smaller "Stage Rock", which together flank its 9,525 capacity seating area and naturally form the amphitheater. While the venue is primarily known for hosting concerts and music festivals, other events of various types and sizes are held throughout the year. In 1957, the American Institute of Architects selected Red Rocks to be Colorado's entry at the National Gallery of Art for the AIA's Centennial Exhibition. In 1999, after ''Pollstar'' magazine awarded Red Rocks the annual honor of being the best small outdoor venue for the eleventh time, the maga ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jimmy Herring
Jimmy Herring (born January 22, 1962) is an American guitarist, known as the lead guitarist for the band Widespread Panic since 2006. He is a founding member of Aquarium Rescue Unit and Jazz Is Dead and has played with The Allman Brothers Band, Project Z, Derek Trucks Band, Phil Lesh and Friends, and The Dead. Career A native of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Herring is the son of a high school English teacher and a Superior Court judge. The youngest of three brothers, he attended Terry Sanford High School in Fayetteville. Although he played saxophone in the high school band, he became known for his talent on guitar, which he had begun playing at age 13. Herring had a Telecaster guitar with a Stratocaster neck, in the same style as one of his biggest influences, Steve Morse of the Dixie Dregs. After high school he formed the Paradox, a cover band that played mostly jazz fusion and songs by the Dixie Dregs, Al Di Meola, and Chuck Mangione. The band's horn section includ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phish
Phish is an American rock band formed in Burlington, Vermont, in 1983. The band consists of guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman, and keyboardist Page McConnell, all of whom perform vocals, with Anastasio being the primary lead vocalist. The band is known for their musical improvisation and Jam session#Rock, jams during their concert performances and for their devoted fan following. The band was formed by Anastasio, Gordon, Fishman and guitarist Jeff Holdsworth, who were joined by McConnell in 1985. Holdsworth departed the band in 1986, and the lineup has remained stable since. Most of the band's songs are co-written by Anastasio and lyricist Tom Marshall (singer), Tom Marshall. Phish began to perform outside of New England in the late 1980s and experienced a rise in popularity in the mid 1990s. In October 2000, the band began a two-year hiatus that ended in December 2002, but they disbanded again in August 2004. Phish reunited officially in October ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, Folk music, folk, country music, country, bluegrass music, bluegrass, rock and roll, gospel music, gospel, reggae, and world music with psychedelic music, psychedelia, the band is famous for Musical improvisation, improvisation during their Concert, live performances, and for their devoted fan base, known as "Deadhead, Deadheads". According to the musician and writer Lenny Kaye, the music of the Grateful Dead "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." For the range of their influences and the structure of their live performances, the Grateful Dead are considered "the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world". The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area during the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The band's founding members were Jerry Garcia (electric guitar, le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jam Band
A jam band is a musical group whose concerts and live albums substantially feature improvisational "jam session, jamming". Typically, jam bands will play variations of pre-existing songs, extending them to musical improvisation, improvise over vamp (music), chord patterns or rhythmic groove (music), grooves. Jam bands are known for having a very fluid structure, playing long sets of music which often cross genre boundaries, varying their nightly setlists, and Segue (music), segueing from one song into another without a break. The jam-band musical style, spawned from the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s, was a feature of nationally famed groups such as the Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band, whose regular touring schedules continued into the 1990s. The style influenced a new wave of jam bands who toured the United States with jam band-style concerts in the late 1980s and early '90s, such as Phish, Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, The String C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the mid-20th century. It deemphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. It uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, and dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths. Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with a heavy emphasis on the first be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Progressive Rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s. Initially termed " progressive pop", the style emerged from psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop or rock traditions in favour of instrumental and compositional techniques more commonly associated with jazz, folk, or classical music, while retaining the instrumentation typical of rock music. Additional elements contributed to its " progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of " art", and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing. Progressive rock includes a fusion of styles, approaches and genres, and tends to be diverse and eclectic. Progressive rock is often associated with long solos, exte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Southern Rock
Southern rock is a subgenre of rock music and a genre of Americana. It developed in the Southern United States from rock and roll, country and blues, and is focused generally on electric guitars and vocals. History 1950s and 1960s: origins Rock music's origins lie mostly in the music of the American South, and many stars from the first wave of 1950s rock and roll such as Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis hailed from the Deep South. However, the British Invasion and the rise of folk rock and psychedelic rock in the middle 1960s shifted the focus of new rock music away from the rural south and to large cities like Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. In the 1960s, rock musician Lonnie Mack blended black and white roots-music genres within the framework of rock, beginning with the hit song "Memphis" in 1963. Music historian Dick Shurman considers Mack's recordings from that era "a prototyp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John "JoJo" Hermann
John "JoJo" Hermann (born July 18, 1962) is an American singer, musician and songwriter, best known for his involvement in the band Widespread Panic. Early life He was born in New York City and attended Collegiate School, where he was a classmate of actor Billy Wirth''The Dutchman'' (the Collegiate School yearbook), 1975 edition, page 33 and the journalist J. Peder Zane; he and Zane were pitchers on the school's baseball team. He began performing in small clubs while in college, including a ska group, The Terrorists, that included Wayne Kramer, and moved to Oxford, Mississippi after graduation. Hermann began songwriting and performing in 1983. Career Hermann began playing piano in the local band Beanland with George McConnell on guitar appearing on JoJo's Defector, Smiling Assassin. After a friend of the band heard Hermann playing on an old upright piano at the Hoka Club also in Oxford. After extensive touring of the Southeast with Beanland, he then went on to join Athens, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz
Domingo Steven "Sunny" Ortiz (born July 4, 1952) is an American musician best known as the longtime percussionist for Widespread Panic. Life and career Domingo Ortiz was born in 1952 to Victor and Faye Ortiz. He is of Mexican heritage and grew up in Waco, Texas. With his parents' help, he bought his first drum kit as a teenager. He played his first professional gig at the age of 15 in the 1960s at a bar with his Uncle Cruz's band. His parents were initially against the idea of him performing with a rock band but came around to the idea when they learned he would be paid $35 for the performance. Ortiz began his career on a standard drum set, but shifted to bongos, congas, timbales and other percussion instruments as a way to distinguish himself from other drummers in Texas. In 1986 he moved to Athens, Georgia where he met up with the members of the newly formed Widespread Panic. Playing percussion, he performed with them for the first time on October 6, 1986. He continued to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George McConnell
George McConnell is an American singer from Vicksburg, Mississippi. He has played for the bands Widespread Panic, Kudzu Kings, and Beanland. History George McConnell attended the University of Mississippi, where he was in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. In 1985, McConnell co-founded the band Beanland in Oxford, Mississippi with guitarist, Bill McCorry. After some early shuffling, the band's line-up comprised McConnell and McCrory on guitar, John Hermann on keyboards, Ron Lewis on bass, and Harry Peel on drums. The band recorded their self-titled debut album in 1991 and toured extensively around the south and southwest, playing blues-oriented rock as part of the nascent early 1990s Jam band renaissance. McConnell went on to play for several years in the country rock band Kudzu Kings, eventually leaving to devote his time to opening a guitar store in Oxford Square in Oxford, Mississippi. In 2002, following Widespread Panic guitarist Michael Houser's diagnosis of pancr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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T Lavitz
Terry "T" Lavitz (April 16, 1956 – October 7, 2010) was an American keyboardist, composer, and Record producer, producer. He is best known for his work with the Dixie Dregs and Jazz Is Dead (band), Jazz Is Dead. Biography Born on April 16, 1956, Lavitz grew up in New Jersey. He started taking piano lessons at the age of seven and was offered a scholarship at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan where he studied keyboard and saxophone. After high school he attended University of Miami's School of Music. In his senior year at the UM he was asked to join the Dixie Dregs. He accepted the invitation and played his first show in January 1980. ''Dregs of the Earth'', released in 1980, was the first Dregs album he could be heard on. In 1981 he won the 'Best New Talent' category of Keyboard Magazine's Annual Readers Poll. The Dregs broke up in January 1983 and T Lavitz, Rod Morgenstein and Andy West went on tour with former Little Feat guitarist/singer Paul Barrere. ''Extended Play ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |