Widespread Panic Portsmouth 8/5/2005

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> Hey Y'All,
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> Sorry for the loonnggg delay, but I just finished 14 straight days of 12-17 hour work days. Going on tour is less draining! After driving back from Pittsburgh Wednesday night (Thursday Miorning), I left Nate's house after a 2 hour nap to work in Dayton. I left Dayton to head down to Cincy, so I could fly out to Richmond where Carrington would pick me up after pulling teeth all morning, and we would drive to Portsmouth. On the way to my hotel in Florence(near the Cincy airport), I decided to go to the Argossy Casino in Lawrenceburg, Indiana to "earn" ticket money for the weekend. My intention was to hit the blackjack table, and "Get In, Get Out". I hit a nice run on the $10.00 table and in 12 minutes, I walked out with $70.00. That covered my weekend tickets.
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> After checking in to my hotel, I decided I would be fashionably late and go see the Braves game at Great American Ballpark in Cincy. I have never gone there and always enjoy checking out parks I have never been to. I got there in the 3rd inning and found a ticket out front for $5.00! I walked in and went right to the first base side. I scouted out a couple of empty seats with no trash around them about 15 rows above the dug out, and exercised squatters rights. I stayed there for the entire game, and the Bravos won! Andru jacked one out that night.
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> I got up early and headed over to the airport. In all of my flying the past 15 years, I never drove to this airport to fly out. I have been thru it a hundred times if not more. Very busy and I ended up parking in BFE! I got to the self service kiosk and the message popped up, "See a Delta representative". Not a good sign. My plane was now cancelled and the next plane to Richmond was not until the afternoon. No need to "Panic" yet. I insisted that they now fly me into Norfolk, which I couldn't do before unless I forked over $300.00 more than my Richmond Ticket. I also insisted they fly me out of Norfolk which they gladly did. "Sometimes", things work out for the better! No offense Carrington, but I was a bit skeptical about you driving me back to Richmond at 8:00 am after 2 nights of Panic. I called Carrington to tell him I was all set. I called Charles and Zee to update them. I drove over to the Hawthorne Suites where I was staying with my weekend roomies, Charles and Myndie. I walked over to the venue and purchased a pair for each night as Zee needed a ticket as well. I only bought him one for each night so I told him not to lose his ticket like he did in 10 minutes at the Wiltern! It was hot and humid as can be. It was as sticky as the Cincy show.
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> We headed over to the venue and went in as doors were opening. We set up in the 2nd row of seats above the large pit. The sound was not great the first set. The last thing I heard was Pittsburgh, and Chris had it dialed in there. That is what I had to compare it to. I think Chris got it going by the end of the set though. Dino got to use his full compliment of lightrs tonight after being somewhat limited in Pittsburgh. We had a nice community down front, Charles, Myndie, Zee, Wade, Tito, Brad, Frank S., Jeff, Carrington, Craig, Frank, Dave and Karen, Chris, Jim, Mike and Jen, The Ellingtons and Wells' representing the investment industry, Mark Brut, Joe W., Eric Scott, and Kevin. Many more but it has been 2 weeks. The first set was interesting. Not a solid setlist but some good stuff. I do not care for a Sometimes opener. The Fish2o was nice, Sonny was cookin'! Teh Pleas>1x1 was a very nice combo. I always like hearing Visiting Day. I heard my 2nd Time Zones and kinda liked this one. They lost me as they pulled out the cheese and did Don't Wanna Lose You. This is definately a trip to the restroom for me. The Tractor lifted my spirits as always.
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> The second set was weird but had some great moments. The setlist was unusual IMO. The Thin Air led into Bear's Gone Fishin'. I was not convinced that it was BGF right away. It sounded much different. Sure enough, listen to the show and you will notice what I noticed, while the band was transitioning into BGF, George was palying the opening notes to Good People! Check it out, I am not crazy. Bear's ended with a great jam. I swear I heard a Tie Your Shoes and some Eight Miles High riffs in there. This went into Climb, and ended there, unusual stoppage. George got to do the opening notes of Good People again, this time with everyone! I still prefer Jojo handling the lead vocals on this one. Then, the plot thickened, Sleepy Monkey>Maggot>Chilly>Use Me>Chilly! Very sic. George hit the notes on Maggot nicely. Things chilled down for TPOT, and raged again as they ripped Parsons(sorry Karen)! JB strapped on the acoustic, and I enjoyed the pair for the encore. JB was not sure where he was as he said thank you "Norfolk", see ya tomorrow. Back to the hotel to track the show with Charles for upload. A very late night!
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> Here is how it went down:
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> Widespread Panic
> NTelos Pavilion
> Portsmouth, Virginia
> 8/5/2005
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> 8:17
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> Sometimes> 4:28
> Fishwater> 4:16
> Mini Drums> :56
> Fishwater 4:05
> Pleas > 5:21
> 1 x 1 6:40
> Stop Breakin' Down Blues 8:10
> Visiting Day 6:00
> Time Zones 6:30
> Don't Wanna Lose You> 6:55
> Love Tractor 5:40
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> 9:16 (59:24)
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> 9:57
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> Thin Air> 5:10
> Mini Drums> :40
> Bear's Gone Fishin'> 12:42
> Climb To Safety 6:30
> Good People> 5:58
> Sleepy Monkey > 8:18
> Maggot Brain > 3:59
> Chilly Water > 4:25
> Drum Solo > 6:55
> Use Me> 9:51
> Chilly Water 3:42
> This Part Of Town> 5:32
> Henry Parsons Died
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> 11:21
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> 11:26
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> Trouble> 2:45
> Let It Bleed
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> 11:33
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> Shoepps 4V>KC5>M222>NT222>Sound Device 722>DAP1
> FOB>DFC>KFC>ZFC
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> Hey Rob, Richie Rich, and the Colorado Freaks, Y'All goin' to Aspen? How far is it from Denver?
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> If you haven't signed the petition for the Jerry stamp, here is the link. Personally, I would love to put Jerry on all my outgoing mail! www.petitiononline.com/Garcia/
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> Here is a nice review I saw. Did anyone go?
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> NASHVILLE, Aug. 19 - A lanky man in an antique-style pewter-gray suit and a gaucho hat stood onstage Thursday night at Ryman Auditorium, the hallowed country-music landmark that was the longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry. An old-fashioned painted backdrop was behind him; an old guitar was in his hands.
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> The guitar, he told the audience, had belonged to Hank Williams, who was fired from the Grand Ole Opry in 1952. Neil Young, the man holding the guitar, said he was happy that Williams's guitar was returning to the Ryman stage. And then he sang "This Old Guitar," a quietly touching song from his coming album, "Prairie Wind," that observes, "This old guitar ain't mine to keep/ It's mine to play for a while."
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> Thursday night Mr. Young began a two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium that was a tangle of new and old, of remembrance and reinvention. With him were more than two dozen musicians: a band, backup singers (including his wife, Pegi), a horn section, a string section, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers and Emmylou Harris. They were assembled for what would be the only performances of all the songs on "Prairie Wind" (Reprise), due for release on Sept. 20.
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> The musicians were costumed like old-time country performers, in suits and modest coordinated dresses, but they weren't playing old-time country music. A film crew directed by Jonathan Demme, who made the Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense" as well as "The Silence of the Lambs," was shooting for a documentary scheduled for a February release.
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> A day before the concerts, Mr. Young took a break for an interview between rehearsals that had been running 12 hours a day. "We're doing 10 songs with 20, sometimes 30, musicians on them," he said. "I pick musicians who are in the moment, and when you get guys who are in the moment to try and recreate some other moment, that's a hell of a lot of work to do. They can't even remember what they played."
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> Memory is central to both "Prairie Wind" and Mr. Young's other project, the long-postponed release of music from his archives that is to begin next year. "It's a long road behind me," he sings in "The Painter," which opens the album. "It's a long road ahead."
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> "Prairie Wind" is a collection of plain-spoken songs about family, faith, home, music, the passage of time and the wide-open Canadian landscape where Mr. Young grew up. Like the other albums he has recorded in Nashville - including the best-selling album of his career, "Harvest," from 1972 - it looks toward American roots, and its 10 songs amble from country twang to bluesy harmonica to Memphis soul horns. There's a fond, loose-limbed honky-tonk tribute to Elvis and ballads that straightforwardly offer love and loyalty; the title song, particularly onstage, turned into an incantation as expansive as its chorus: "Prairie wind blowin' through my head."
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> The lyrics are infused with feelings of mortality, and are full of benedictions and farewells. While making the album, Mr. Young, 59, was being treated for a brain aneurysm, a swelling in a blood vessel. He alternated recording sessions in Nashville with surgery and hospitalization in New York City.
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> In March, Mr. Young had experienced blurred vision at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where he performed with the Pretenders. "I saw a lot of doctors real fast," he said. The aneurysm was diagnosed, but he had already made plans to begin recording in Nashville, and he did a week of sessions - finishing the first three songs on the album - before returning to New York for surgery.
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> "The recording studio is one of the few places where I feel completely at home," he said. "I felt like staying in there. I wanted to get whatever I had on my mind into music." He wrote quickly - sometimes completing a song in just 15 or 20 minutes - and placed the songs on the album in the order they were written and recorded, as he had with "Greendale," the rock opera he released in 2003. The songs on "Prairie Wind" don't have a narrative, as "Greendale" did, but they continue to explore Mr. Young's fascination with the changes and continuity of generations.
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> "When you're in your 20's, then you and your world are the biggest thing, and everything revolves around what you're doing," Mr. Young said. "Now I realize I'm a leaf floating along on the water on top of some river. That's where I'm at."
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> The lyrics are filled with reminiscences. "It's about where I'm from and where our family's from and where the world is going," Mr. Young said, "and what it used to be like when my grandfather was a kid, and what they remember and what I remember them telling me about, the things that they saw that no one will ever see again."
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> Like Bruce Springsteen's current album, "Devils & Dust," Mr. Young's new album also ponders religion. The album's most striking song, "No Wonder," is a series of elusive, overlapping narratives and contrasting musical sections, united by the recurring image of a church. And its final song, "When God Made Me," sets a series of questions to a hymnlike melody: "Did He think there was only one way to be close to Him?" Perhaps by coincidence, the studio where "Prairie Wind" was made, Masterlink, was once a church and, during the Civil War, a Confederate morgue. (More recently it was Monument Studios, where Roy Orbison recorded throughout his career.) Ryman Auditorium itself was built in 1892 as a gospel tabernacle.
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> "I feel like our religion and our faith have been hijacked," Mr. Young said. "What is bothering me the most is the misappropriation of religion and faith, the misuse of God and the house of worship. It's one faith with different people trying to express it in different ways. It's all about being the little guy in the big world."
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> The core band on "Prairie Wind" is the same one Mr. Young used on "Harvest Moon" in 1992, and it includes his longtime collaborator, the slide and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith (who was on "Harvest") and the soul songwriter Spooner Oldham on keyboards. Mr. Young has returned to Nashville every so often to make his more reflective, down-home albums. Most of the concert's second half was drawn from those albums, with songs including "Heart of Gold" and "Old Man" from "Harvest," a gorgeously poised version of "Harvest Moon" that included the sound of a man rhythmically pushing a broom, and the title song from the 1978 album "Comes a Time."
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> Mr. Young recorded "Prairie Wind" in an old-fashioned way: playing and singing live with the band in the studio, though strings and backing vocals were added later. "We really made a Nashville Renaissance recording," he said.
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> But the songs rarely sound like other people's Nashville projects, past or present; their homespun tone conceals eccentricities small and large. Onstage at Ryman, musicians came and went in constantly shifting combinations. Even when the songs are slight, they're atmospheric.
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> Mr. Young said he had decided to film the concerts for a simple reason: Mr. Demme asked him. "He called me up and said, 'I've got a year off, I'd like to do something, and are you doing anything?' I said, 'Well yeah, I just made this record called "Prairie Wind." I'll send it to you, see what you think.' "
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> "And then we just came around to the idea, Why don't we just use this music, which was recorded in Nashville in the old way, with real musicians coming in from everywhere, and putting them together live?"
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> Meanwhile, Mr. Young had been working steadily on releasing digital versions of the music in archives that date back more than 40 years. The last time he was on the verge of releasing archival material, he changed his mind when improvements in technology promised higher fidelity and he started a new round of remastering. Mr. Young recently renewed his longtime contract with Reprise Records, which will release the first volume of his archives - covering 1963 to 1973 - as a set of eight DVD's or CD's.
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> The DVD's, with high-resolution audio, also include visuals and annotations; for instance, with material recorded in the 1960's at the Riverboat Coffeehouse, Mr. Young reconstructed images of the club. "You can see everything but me," he said. "I'm like a ghost."
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> The archive project has been as time-consuming as "Prairie Wind" was spontaneous. "When I do finally get it out there, it's going to be a great relief," Mr. Young said. "It's like a huge overcoat that I wear. It's got a lot of pockets in it. Some of them are full of diamonds. Some of them are just full of lead. It's a burden, but it's getting lighter."
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> Going through the archive has let Mr. Young second-guess his memories. "There are some things in it that are just unbelievable, records that I don't know why I never released," he said. "I look at what I released during that period, and I go, 'Wow, what was I thinking?' But life is like that."
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> For the concert's finale Thursday night, Mr. Young returned to the "Harvest Moon" album for "One of These Days," a song about watching friends drift away. But with more than two dozen Nashville musicians surrounding him onstage, he didn't look lonely at all.
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> Late,
> Z-Man
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