The Earth Will Swallow You: A Tour Diary By Geoff Hanson
Today marks the 15th anniversary of the Widespread Panic documentary, The Earth Will Swallow You. In honor of the momentous occasion, we are excited to share the exclusive diary of the project from one of the creators, Geoff Hanson. For Geoff and his brother Chris, TEWSY was truly a labor of love. As fans, we are forever grateful for this documentary as it provides a rare glimpse into the band and snapshot in time. For those of you who haven't seen TEWSY or need a copy, it can be purchased here. Check out Geoff's blog for additional videos.
The Earth Will Swallow You: A Tour Diary
By Geoff Hanson
May 21, 2000
I submitted a proposal to Brown Cat for a movie about Widespread Panic. The concept was that my brother Chris and I would follow the band on the summer 2000 tour and make a movie about them. One of the key concepts was that we would get the band together with musicians that had inspired them over their career and film the collaborations. We also proposed that we would shoot the Red Rocks show on June 24, 2000 with a full camera crew and all the bells and whistles.
The timing for such a project was ideal. The band was currently without a label, having just left Capricorn Records. This was important because doing what we proposed would have been very difficult with a record company around because record company executives like to have control over pretty much everything and we needed a lot of freedom to do what we wanted. The band had started their own label called Widespread Records. So we pitched Brown Cat on the idea.
We had met Brown Cat when we licensed "The Take Out" for the film Scrapple that my brother and I made in 1996. When the movie hit video in 1999, some Panic fans started talking about it on Spreadnet and it was the first viral momentum that the film received. Many of our first orders for the movie on the internet were from people with emails like spreadneck@aol.com, and panicfreak@att.net.
Chris and I were huge fans of Panic’s as well as fans of movies about rock n' roll bands. The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense, Gimme Shelter were all movies we loved and we thought Widespread Panic would be an interesting subject for a movie. Why? Because they were the anti-rock stars. They didn't wear fancy outfits on stage, there was very little rock n' roll artifice behind the band. They were about the music and we thought that was interesting.
Oh yeah, and they rocked.
June 20, 2000
We still did not have an answer. We had the film crew lined up and ready to go for the Saturday night shoot at Red Rocks just in case it came together. We also had Taj Mahal ready to come play with the band in Phoenix on June 26 and Jorma Kaukonen lined up for July 4 in San Francisco. We had worked with Taj and Jorma on Scrapple and had a great relationship with both of them. Panic played songs by both artists so it was a great fit.
Chris lived in Boulder at the time so getting him to Denver would not be a problem. I was living in Baton Rouge and was prepared to drop everything and be in Colorado if it all came together. I remember thinking to myself, "This is not going to happen, it is time to give up on it and let it go." Saying you are letting go and actually letting go are two different things, and I recall REALLY letting go of the idea. It was just not going to happen. I kid you not, within 24 hours, we got word from management that the deal was on.
June 22, 2000
The first thing we shot in the summer tour was the band's radio performance at KBCO in Boulder. We showed up with our cameras and a sound guy and shot the radio segment. We met the band for the first time at KBCO. And it was there that I consummated the deal with a handshake with Buck Williams, the band's manager. It was on. We shot some footage the next night of the June 23 show, the tour opener at Red Rocks.
I was a rock n' roll concert shooting rookie and had on a bright orange shirt as I stood behind the band shooting footage Friday night of Chuck Leavell playing with Jojo. Danny, the sound man at the time (and quite an opiniated fellow) undressed me verbally the next day for not wearing black. Memo to self: time to buy some black pants and black shirts for the rest of the tour.
June 23, 2000
We shot the June 24, 2000 Red Rocks show as planned. The band put on an incredible show. I remember that when it was over they felt that they had performed one of the best "Pigeons" they had ever played. That said, they felt they could play better since it was only the second night of the tour and they wanted us to shoot another show with the "big rig" at the end of the tour. The tour closer was at Oak Mountain in Pelham, Alabama the weekend of Aug. 11-13. I have always felt that while the band is from Athens that if you had to call any venue their "home" venue it would be Oak Mountain. The band loved it (they had a great relationship with Tony Ruffino, who booked the venue), and the fans loved it. We began to line it up.
June 25, 2000
This was the day of the famous double rainbow at Red Rocks. The Kudzu Kings opened and played a great show and George joined the band for "Dear Mr. Fantasy." We didn’t shoot anything, just danced with the rest of the freaks at Red Rocks.
June 26, 2000
Chris and I picked up Taj and his manager Carey Williams at the airport in Phoenix and drove them over to the venue. The show was at the Celebrity Theater, a really cool small venue that was in the round.
It was a truly magical day. Upon arriving at the venue, Taj announced that he wanted to cook barbecue for the crew and the band. Taj delivered a lengthy set of ingredients so he could grill fish for 20. While we waited for the supplies to come back from the store, we went into the rehearsal room backstage and shot the band rehearsing with Taj.
One of the most interesting things about the collaborations with other musicians was the dynamics between the guest musicians and Widespread Panic. Taj was pretty much a drill master. He instructed the band on how he wanted them to play the songs -- She Caught the Katy and Crosscut Saw. I remember Mikey being a little uncomfortable with Taj's style, whereas Dave said, "he wrote “She caught the Katy” so I'll play it however he wants us to."
This contrasted greatly with the way the band interacted with Jorma, but more on that later.
We finished rehearsing and Taj set about grilling the fish with the supplies that had come back from the store. (A quick shout out to the band's production crew at the time – road manager Trey Allen and his two colleagues Shaw Garrison and Eric Draper. These guys made it all happen for Chris and me. We would tell Trey what we had planned and he Shaw and Draper facilitated everything. We could not have done the movie without their incredible support.)
The fish was great and the show was fantastic. They opened with “She caught the Katy” (with JB not yet on the stage!) and then played “Crosscut Saw.” The highlight for me was when they brought Taj back on at the end of the night and played a song that Taj made up on the spot called "Early Morning Blues." When Taj handed the vocal off to JB, he took the band into "Me and the Devil Blues" And then Taj finished it off by going back into the song he was improvising. It was amazing to watch, and we had it all on tape. We knew we were onto something.
June 28, 2000
The next stop on the tour was Las Vegas for two shows at the House of Blues. Chris missed the flight to Vegas and missed the first show. It wasn't that big a deal because we couldn't shoot video because the House of Blues doesn't allow anyone to shoot at their venues.
Carrot Top sat in with the band that night. The guys had known him for a long time and after the show we were hanging around talking about Las Vegas and JB mentioned that he wanted to go to the Star Trek Museum and check it out. Carrot Top said he would join him. In addition to musical collaborations, we wanted to spend some time with the guys in the band while they were on the road but off the stage. The Star Trek museum with JB and Carrot Top would be perfect.
Problem was, we didn't have permission to shoot at the Star Trek Museum and there was no time to get clearances. We would have to shoot it on the down low and get permission later. Carrot Top did not show up but Chris and I accompanied JB to the Star Trek museum and did our best attempt to shoot the experience without getting caught.
July 1 -- July 4, 2000
After Vegas, we flew to San Francisco for three shows at the Warfield. The day we arrived, the San Francisco Giants were playing a game at Enron Field (sign of the times). So Yogi, Mikey, Trey, Chris, his fiancée Meghan and I went to see a game together the night before the first show. That was really special as one thing we shared with the band was a mutual love of baseball (after all, it’s all that’s real). Some of the footage Chris shot with his super 8 camera ended up in the movie.
Knowing that we wanted to shoot sequences with all the band members, all the guys were kind enough to let us hang out with them in San Francisco. We went to Chinatown with Mikey and John Keane to shop for kimonos for their respective daughters, to the Golden Gate Bridge with Dave and to the TKE with Todd and his wife Tammy. We also interviewed Merl Saunders while in San Francisco.
But the main course in the city by the bay was the collaboration with Jorma Kaukonen on July 4. And it was one of the most special days of my life. Right off the bat, it was clear that Jorma was completely different from Taj in terms of collaborating with other musicians. Whereas Taj was a bandleader and wanted to play the songs the way he wanted, Jorma took an entirely different approach. He comes from a much more improvisational school of music so he was happy to improv with Panic. This was right up the band's alley and everyone clicked instantly.
We started in a tiny rehearsal room backstage at the Warfield (Mikey had to sit on the ground) where Jorma and the guys rehearsed “Bowlegged Woman” and “Chilly Water.” The Bowlegged rehearsal ended up in the movie. After the rehearsal the band went upstairs and sound checked both songs. It was amazing to see how easily Jorma picked up “Chilly Water,” and cool to see JB teach it to him.
The cherry on the cake of the whole day (and possibly the entire summer) occurred after soundcheck when we got Jorma and JB together in another dressing room to play an acoustic "Genesis,” one of my favorite songs (we used it in Scrapple). JB and Jorma talked about the song as we rolled the tape and their conversation and ensuing performance blew me way. It was a "pinch me" moment as I sat in the corner, a fly on the wall with two of my favorite musicians playing one of my favorite songs.
What I remember most is that the room was so small that I could not fit a tripod into the corner where I was sitting but had to use a mono-pod instead.
A mono-pod is basically a pole that rigs to a camera. The secret to getting a clean shot is to keep the pole steady and keep it from moving. This is easier said than done. My arms were killing me from holding them up to keep the mono pod still, and about 3 minutes into the song I begin thinking, As I was shooting Jorma and JB in a 2 shot and looking at the monitor, "Keep the camera steady, keep the camera steady, if you can keep the camera steady through the whole song you will capture an incredible piece of rock n' roll history."
Fortunately, I kept the camera steady and that shot is the one we used in the movie. Then, the band played the actual show and it was over the top. Many people who were there count it as one of the best shows they ever saw.
After San Francisco, Chris and I flew to our respective homes to rest up and prepare for the rest of the summer. The plan was to meet the band in Alpine Valley for their show with Bob Dylan and Phil and Friends. Panic played several gigs as they made their way from California to Wisconsin. It was during that stretch that Mikey’s longtime guitar tech Wayne Sawyer collapsed and has to leave the tour.
July 15, 2000
When I arrived in Alpine Valley, I ran into Mikey and said, “How’s it going Mikey?” He responded, “We lost Wayne.” Indeed, it was the end of the rock n' roll road for Wayne, who died tragically in 2008 of a syndrome called SADS, leaving behind a beautiful wife and lovely daughter in Shannon and Lily. He was a wonderful guy and is deeply missed.
Alpine Valley was uneventful from a shooting perspective but the show was great. We were not permitted to shoot any footage there. I had tried to get some clearances from Phil Lesh's people but Phil's manager was not very cool and he told me that if any of his people saw us with a video camera that they would take them from us and break them.
July 16, 2000
From Alpine Valley, we traveled to the middle of nowhere Minnesota to a venue called Harmony Park for a two night run. Harmony Park is one of the coolest venues I have ever been to. It was a total camping scene in the middle of nowhere with tons of hippies, i.e. it was awesome. The stage had a really cool psychedelic backdrop that was designed by an artist known only as “Sean the Freak."
We shot some cool fan footage at Harmony Park and we used a piece of "Action Man" for the musical montage of that song that appeared in the movie.
After that stretch, I returned home and prepared to rejoin the band for a swing through the northeast. In addition to shooting the band with their musical heroes (Taj and Jorma), we also wanted to shoot collaborations with the band's contemporaries who had equally influenced them. We went to the band and asked them who should be included and they gave us a list: Danny and Eric from Bloodkin, Jerry Joseph, Colonel Bruce, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Vic Chesnutt and Warren Haynes and Allen Woody from Gov't Mule.
It was in the final leg of the tour that we would concentrate on the collaborations with their contemporaries. First up was Gov't Mule. In trying to arrange a time that would work for both bands, we realized that Mule was going to be in Canada on Saturday July 29 and that Panic was going to be in Vermont on Sunday, July 30. We made plans for Warren and Woody to join us for the Bolton shows.
Unfortunately, there were some complications and the Bolton gig with Mule didn’t work out. Sadly, Woody died less than a month later and we never filmed anything with Gov’t Mule.
July 30, 2000
The tickets were already booked so we went to Bolton anyway and it was there that we shot the sequence with Equipment Manager Garrie Vereen in which he explained how the band chose their set lists. It is one of my favorite sequences in the film. Garrie was a great friend to Chris and me.
Another thing we did in Bolton that stands out to me is that we shot the first set of the show with one camera dedicated soley to close-ups of Mikey's fingers. While none of that footage appeared in the movie, there is a clip that we posted on my tube page (Gsh440) from that night of Mikey's fingers playing “Jack” that is fantastic to watch.
August 1, 2000
After Vermont, we headed to New York City where the band was playing a gig as part of the Central Park Summer Stage Series. We had arranged to have Jerry Joseph meet us in New York to shoot a sequence at the Alice and Wonderland sculpture in Central Park.
That sculpture has always been a very meaningful place for Chris and me, and shooting the “North” sequence there was another highlight of the entire summer. The shots of Mikey in front of the mad hatter statue are some of my favorite images from the movie.
Next up was Merriweather Post and then on to Winston Salem, NC. Merriweather Post was relatively uneventful except we did shoot the interview sequence with Sunny there.
August 4, 2000
In Winston-Salem, we met up with Danny and Eric from Bloodkin and were joined by fiddle player David Blackmon who had played a lot with the band in the mid '90s, most notably as a nightly guest on the infamous sit and ski tour of 1996.
When we arrived at Winston-Salem, we had one of those happy accidents. We knew we wanted the guys to play a song together but it was unclear where we would shoot it. When we arrived at the venue, we discovered that there was a really cool log cabin structure on the grounds of the venue and we were able to shoot "End of the Show" with a real cool front porch vibe.
After Winston-Salem, we took a week off and then met the band in Oak Mountain for the final three night run of the tour (they had a one off gig scheduled for Keystone Colorado a week after Oak Mountain).
August 12, 2000
We brought in the big rig and shot Saturday night at Oak Mountain. It was a great show and eventually was released as a live DVD concert called "Live at Oak Mountain, which eventually went on to become a Gold DVD for the band.
August 19, 2000
At Keystone, we linked up with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and shot their sequence that appears in the movie there. Jerry Joseph was also there and we did an interview with Jerry in which he mentioned the light/dark vibe of Panic's music.
That was the end of the summer tour for Chris and me. We shot several more sequences for the film after the 2000 summer tour. Though we did shoot several sequences after the tour.
September 9, 2000
We recorded a session with Vic and the band in Dave's basement where we shot the guys playing “Blight” (which appeared in the movie) and “Westport Ferry.” We also interviewed Vic and that interview appears in the movie as well.
January 21, 2001
Chris and I went to Athens for a session session with the guys at John Keane's studio where they were recording Don't Tell The Band. This was quite simply an epic day for me personally and we shot some of the best and most critical pieces of the movie that day.
We started with Mikey and JB playing "Driving Song." There is a really cool story about that sequence. The idea behind it is that we wanted to shoot something that symbolized the genesis of the band -- Mikey and JB meeting in 1980 as Freshmen at UGA. That was the true beginning of Widespread Panic, the big bang of the Panic cosmos if you will.
So I approached JB first and explained that concept and he said, “Well for me, it would be Drivin’. That was the first real collaboration between the two of us. But you'll have to ask Mikey." So I went to Mikey and he answered the same question with "Drivin’." So we shot the sequence and to me, it is the soul of the movie.
We also shot the boys re-learning an old instrumental called "The Earth Will Swallow You." Jojo had never even heard the song. The band had only played it about a dozen times in 1990 and then it disappeared from the repertoire. Obviously, we took the name of the song for the title of the movie. The reason for this is that we felt the movie was about a band making music and we wanted to bring the audience into that experience as best we could. And in the end, at it's core Widespread Panic is about making music. People often ask me to sum up the band. My response is that Widespread Panic is a band that plays whatever it wants every time it steps on the stage." Nobody influences what the band plays -- it 's the making of the music that is sacred to them.
The final part of the Athens session was shooting the band playing "My Last Act" with Vic Chesnutt. The band had never heard the song, and as far as I know it may be the only time it was ever played by anybody. Again, I was struck by the musical dexterity of the band in this session. They had never heard the song, Vic taught it to them, and less than a half hour later they recorded it. And they nailed it.
The song itself is a very dark and twisted story about a guy who chops up Black Widow spiders into a cereal bowl and eats them. Vic sang, "My last act on this earth would be to chug a lug the mixture and to hope for the worst." It is a song about killing yourself and soon after Vic tried to suicide but was unsuccessful. Sadly, he eventually succeeded and we lost Vic right around Christmas in 2009.
October 27, 2001
The final sequence we shot for TEWSY was when we shot Jojo performing solo at Tipitina's. This was another great experience as Tipitina's is very dear to my heart and the symbolism of Jojo playing in the musical temple dedicated to the spirit of Professor Longhair was perfect. We also re-interviewed Col. Bruce Hampton in New Orleans as the piece we shot Sunday at Oak Mountain was unusable. I love the Col's comment about intention.
That was the end of principal photography for The Earth Will Swallow You.
We were fortunate enough to team up with New York based editor Davey Frankel to edit all the footage and cut the movie. Davey knew nothing about Widespread Panic and was therefore the perfect counterpart to our perspective -- in that we came in to the project as huge fans of the band.
John Keane edited all the concert pieces and Andy Kris did the rest of the sound. Andy is an incredibly talented sound editor (he did all the sound editing on "The Wire."). Jason Clements designed the art, which I love as doors are a major motif in the movie. The first and last shots in the film are of doors opening and closing, and there are lots more in between. We were hitting on the Aldous Huxley idea of the doors of perception (best represented when Sonny says, “you can leave the door open if you want to” in the studio) so a door opening in space is the perfect image for the movie.
I am very proud of the end product -- The Earth Will Swallow You. A quick note about the title -- we chose TEWSY because that is the name of the song that we filmed them re-learning in John Keane’s studio. That scene really captures the band in the process of making music and at the core it’s the craft that matters most to the band and what draws the fans to them.
Our ultimate goal with TEWSY was to try and cinematically re-create the experience of a Widespread Panic concert. For instance, we used “Drivin'” the way the band does. We started with them playing the first part of the song, departed onto other musical adventures, only to return back to “Drivin’” later in "the show."
At the same time, we wanted the film to give the viewer a sense of the experience of going on tour and following a rock band like Widespread Panic. It’s not just about the shows, there are all kinds of experiences – from going to Chinatown, to catching a baseball game, to just driving down the highway -- that happen on tour. Sometimes you remember things really well, and sometimes it's just a blur.
I like to think we succeeded. At the least, it is a snapshot of Widespread Panic at the turn of the century – the six headed rock n' roll monster that is the best rock band I ever saw.
