The Road to Bonnaroo

GLEN WOOD

In the mid-1970s I bought an electric guitar. A Les Paul, I’d tell people, but it was actually a bargain-priced knockoff. It had a similar profile and feel—even the colorful Sunburst design—and that was enough for me. 
I had absolutely no talent, belaboring the three-chord basics and barely progressing beyond them. Before pursuing guitar, I played drums, and on drums I could mix it up. I wasn’t bad at all. I mistakenly assumed that a desire to play guitar meant that I could will myself into being good at it. I could more easily have willed a car to levitate. 
But I had fun. I got together with friends and jammed, creating the most god-awful noise imaginable. While I repeated the chords of “Satisfaction” and the new hit, “Cat Scratch Fever,” another kid played lead, and my schoolmate Todd kept time on drums. 
After my junior year of high school, a truth was self-evident: Musically, I was a train going nowhere. My epiphany didn’t come via a blinding light, but by my blindingly obvious lack of ability. As a concession to reality, and a favor to those who lived with me, I sold the guitar. 
By 1985 I’d done an about-face. I was fresh out of college and a trainee at the investments firm Dean Witter. It was the preppy ‘80s—The Decade of Greed—and I’d morphed into a genuine Ivy League wannabe. Imagine my shock, my dismay, when I ran into Todd and he informed me that he was starting a band. Questions, like buzzards, circled in my brain. Haven’t you grown out of this? Don’t you realize it’s a pipe dream?
The guy with him, who was part of the ill-conceived plan, reminded me more of Richie Cunningham than a rock star. And as far as drummers went, Todd brought to mind John Belushi, not John Bonham. 
When we said goodbye, my mood hit bottom. I pictured them in a patched-together bus, lugging around their equipment, playing for change in backwater bars. 
Several years later, however, the pipe dream had a name: Widespread Panic. I occasionally read an article about them and bought a couple of their CDs. They weren’t great, but pretty darned good. One day I saw a kid sporting a Panic tee shirt and told him I had a friend in the band. When I said Todd Nance, he looked surprised. “You know him?” I mentioned the CDs and he shook his head. “That’s studio stuff,” he said dismissively. “They’re a live band.” Whatever that was supposed to mean. 
In 2001, they were scheduled to play Chattanooga—Todd’s and my hometown. They passed through once a year, and about every other stop they moved to a larger venue. Now they were at the top: The UTC Arena, where the Elton Johns and Van Halens played. I decided to go. 

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