Remembrance, Reflection, Resilience: 20 Years After Michael Houser
By Joshua K. Stack
“Honor the dead, but celebrate the living”. John Sutton
This couldn’t be more true.
As I was driving back into the mountains from a week in Atlanta with Widespread Panic at the Fox Theater, I was thinking about the swirl of emotions and expectations rampant in a run of this nature. It was a fairly historic run considering all the years of shows leading up to being in the moment at that haunting - and arguably haunted establishment.
Sometimes our shows include upheaval - personal, professional, love and loss. Add to that mix memories of 30 years of shows in the Fox Theater and all that comes along with it. As I was driving, the phrase “we get out of the shows, what we take into them” flashed across the lush green of the Western North Carolina mountains. We determine whether the musical experience will be a healing salve or a toxic elixir.
But it’s not always that simple.
And as we all settled into the Fox on the 20th anniversary of Michael Houser’s death, expectations were abound of a magnanimous homage to “Panic.” True to their nature, the boys delivered, but not in the way that many hoped or might have expected.
Therein lies the rub: where do we draw the line between the past and the present (the living and the Dead)? As fans, we can sometimes blur the lines between our desired experiences and the band’s own emotional salve or toxic elixir.
Rock n roll is lethal. If you don’t know that, you’ve not been paying close enough attention to the history of Widespread Panic. There are ghosts everywhere with that band - and especially in that room, which haunts me as well after seeing Bruce Hampton side stage on a stretcher with EMTs struggling to conjure that heartbeat which had finally merged into a cosmic vibration, forever leaving a piece in that hallowed hall. (Notes: The Fox was also the site of the last civil war trenches separating General Sherman from the rest of Atlanta during the Civil War, speaking of ghosts and Colonels.)
Honor the dead, and celebrate the living.
It could be argued that the mere act of Widespread Panic continuing to perform from August 2002 until now is a constant nod to all who have passed - from Houser and Nance to Home Team crew like Garrie Vereen and Wayne Sawyer, to Col Bruce, Danny Hutchens, and Vic Chestnutt, and countless other friends and acquaintances.
The more people you know the more people you will lose. As John Bell said in an interview prior to these shows, "We tend to celebrate our time together and our birthdays more so than our final days.” That quote stuck with me.
Credit: @Panicbutton via Instagram
As fans, we feel the music through the lens of our egos. We claim a slight bit of ownership because of our lived experiences - as the stories of the songs intersect with what’s happening in our lives, in glory and sadness. We laugh and we cry and we celebrate and mourn and remember - maybe try to forget, sometimes all in the same show - as was the case for me these 4 days. From a grateful and prolonged “Vacation” embrace with one of my greatest friends that I’ve been sharing Fox Panic shows with since 1996 to a mournful and tearful “Don’t Be Denied” alone on night 4 (I wasn’t alone, I was just blue). We translate our lives through these lenses.
We're being given the gift of this from 6 men, all of whom likely are grappling with their own life experiences of love and loss and everything in between - saying nothing of the massive team production undertaking of putting on shows of this magnitude. It’s an immense amount of work that pours into these moments we make ours, all from human hands and feet, experiencing their own trials and tribulations in the moment. And from this vital human mixture of labor and emotional outlays, we get the music - the art - the exchange.
There’s a fine line between fan accommodation and remaining true to the art and yourself. “Trying” too hard can create a contrived experience. So whatever nuggets we get, it’s best that we are grateful. Being true to your nature can be exhausting…but we’ve gotten used to nothing less from the band Widespread Panic…art isn’t pleasing people; it’s moving them - inspiring them to feel. How is that done? By being sincere about sharing your own feelings…it’s easy to lose that perspective as a fan. And sometimes the lingering question should be, what are you willing to Give? (“this is your favorite charity.”)
We get to take home with us all of these things. There’s no price on shared experiences, memories, or shared emotional moments with friends as close as family. We’ve become accustomed to having decades of this band’s music woven as the soundtrack to these emotional tapestries we drape ourselves in. And that, perhaps more than anything else, is the magnanimous gift we receive. That sincerity and inspiration is the homage to “Panic.” If you were there and your expectations were managed, you surely received it, in spades.
In the end, it’s therapy for all of us - the living, the dead, the fan, and the band. We get to decide how we accept that and articulate that, to ourselves and others. And we’re the lucky ones to be able to say that we’ve had that exchange and hope to find our way in between the extremes, right in the sweet spot, FOB/DFC.
“My name is blue sky
And I’m higher than you’ll ever be
I’m married to my roots here,
Still I feel like I am free…”
