Widespread Panic Free Somehow CD

Widespread Panic: John Bell (vocals, guitar, background vocals); Jimmy Herring (guitars, background vocals); Dave Schools (bass guitar, background vocals); Domingo Ortiz (percussion, background vocals); John Hermann, Todd Nance (background vocals).
Personnel: Jimmy Herring (guitar); Bruce Hoffman (fiddle); Terry Manning (cello, harmonica, valve trombone); Jawara Adams (trumpet, flugelhorn); John Hermann (keyboards); Todd Nance (drums); Brenda Barnett, Sandra Rhodes, Charles Chalmers (background vocals).
Additional personnel: Bruce Hoffman (fiddle); The Compass Point Orchestra (strings, woodwinds); Tino Richardson (saxophone); Charles Chalmers (tenor saxophone); Joel Johanson (baritone saxophone); Rookie Fisher (trumpet); Terry Manning, Brenda Barnett (background vocals); Jawara Adams, Sandra Rhodes.
Audio Mixer: Terry Manning.
Recording information: Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas.
Seventeen albums into their career, pioneering jam band Widespread Panic change things up just slightly on FREE SOMEHOW. The band's first album featuring songs written largely in the studio and not worked out during their legendary marathon tours, FREE SOMEHOW consciously evokes the sound of 1970s hard rock. Produced by Terry Manning, whose credits run from Memphis power pop kings Big Star all the way to Led Zeppelin, and featuring new guitarist Jimmy Herring, who had previously worked with members of the various Grateful Dead offshoots, FREE SOMEHOW is Widespread Panic's most roots-conscious recording. Still, songs like the epic workouts "Her Dance Needs No Body" and "Angels On High" retain the band's loose, exploratory charm.
Seventeen albums into their career, pioneering jam band Widespread Panic change things up just slightly on FREE SOMEHOW. The band's first album featuring songs written largely in the studio and not worked out during their legendary marathon tours, FREE SOMEHOW consciously evokes the sound of 1970s hard rock. Produced by Terry Manning, whose credits run from Memphis power pop kings Big Star all the way to Led Zeppelin, and featuring new guitarist Jimmy Herring, who had previously worked with members of the various Grateful Dead offshoots, FREE SOMEHOW is Widespread Panic's most roots-conscious recording. Still, songs like the epic workouts "Her Dance Needs No Body" and "Angels On High" retain the band's loose, exploratory charm.
Another Widespread Panic album, another attempt to transfer the band's live energy onto tape. Free Somehow isn't Widespread's best studio effort to date, nor does it pack the same punch as the band's ever-popular concerts, where extended solos and long-running jams are more likely to illicit dropping jaws than drowsy, nodding heads. Still, this disc is nothing to sleep through, even if Widespread Panic haven't learned to utilize a studio's amenities as well as Phish or moe. "Boom Boom Boom," "Walk on the Flood," and "Flicker" are fierce tunes, full of enough guitar muscle and saucy strut to make them worthy of repeated listens, although they do sound geared for a live setting. Free Somehow gets intimate, too, most notably with the lilting title track and the steady, elegiac "Dark Day Program." But Widespread Panic don't truly stretch their wings until the album's final stretch, where "Her Dance Needs No Body" takes the listener on an eight-minute stoner's odyssey of rainy-day guitars, horns, sweeping percussion, and orchestrated strings. It's a well-crafted song with movements, interludes, and multiple guitar solos, a cross between the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" and Guns N' Roses' "November Rain." Here, the band truly works with the studio's capabilities, layering the standout track with instruments and adding a thick, crisp slab of reverb to John Bell's vocals. So while Free Somehow can't quite rival the energy of a Widespread show, it still offers something that those concerts cannot, making the album a worthwhile purchase for most dedicated fans. ~ Andrew LeaheyEntertainment Weekly (p.67) - "[T]he breezy funk of 'Angels on High is a peach good enough to eat."
Q (Magazine) (p.141) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "'Boom Boom Boom,' 'Her Dance Needs No Body' and 'Up All Night' are the work of fertile minds."
Harp (magazine) (p.119) - "Frontman John Bell has never sounded better, his trademark tenor growl and howl in full effect."