Bluest Tape

Get Your Hot Takes! Halloween 2019 Recap What a great three night run in New Orleans! Wow! Excellent performances on all three nights, some BIG surprises, great covers, and killer setlists all around. Obviously, the talk of the run was the tribute to Andy Kaufman on Halloween night that ended in a bizarre piece of performance art to the tune of "Volare" and “Tacos are Cheap.” I hope they book Tony...

“‘Millioke,’ which is Algonquin for “The Good Land” Panic Returns to the Cream City! This weekend, the boys hit the Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for what will likely be another excellent run of three shows. The band has made the Riverside its exclusive Milwaukee home since 2006, but before that, they played all over “The United States of Milwaukee,” from Shank Hall and the Modjeska to...

Back to the Mother Church Ryman 2019 If you are a regular listener to the Pod, you’d swear that we have turned this in a Billy Strings podcast! Lots of Billy Strings talk again this week - we unveil his previously unknown, completely secret REAL last name (dramatic enough for you?) - as Harvey waxes poetic about Billy’s role in the three night acoustic run at the “Mother Church of Country Music,”...

By the Time We Got to Woodstock This week, we take a trip back to the 1969 Aquarian Exposition, aka, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, held in Bethel, NY. Through three days of rain, mud, bad trips, no food, traffic jams, and more mud, nearly a half million young people from all over the US made their way to this legendary festival. One such person was Jeff’s father-in-law, Larry, who hitched his...

"The Music Is Running Itself and They're Just Hanging On" A Conversation with Sam Holt Harvey is joined again by friend of the podcast, Sam Holt. They dig deep into the archives and play some of Sam faves from shows in 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, and 2001. They discuss Sam's upcoming Remembering Mikey event in Atlanta on August 10, 2019 at Terminal West and also his late night shows in Nashville after...

On the Road with Harvey, Jeff, and the DDBB Another Joyous Occasion, Vol. 2 For all your first times or long times out there, we have a landmark first in this episode of the Bluest Tape. Whilst driving up I-75 to the Tedeschi Trucks Band in Cincinnati, Jeff and Harvey actually recorded an episode in the SAME place at the SAME time, this time, in Jeff’s Honda Pilot! Harvey does most of the nuts and...

Unexpected, Graceful, Not Forced Red Rocks 2019 Jeff is still in the fog of newborn parenthood, so we'll give him a pass for not finding time to join us on the podcast this week, but we are lucky enough to call in an ace reliever in the form of Ted Rockwell. Ted attended the most recent Panic three night run at Red Rocks, and as we learn, has attended all of the 60 consecutive WSP sell outs at Red...

Babies Only Care What the People Feel Well, we stay true to our element with some more 1996 heat, this time to celebrate the arrival of the Kollath progeny. “Little Wrangler” Ellison Liron Kollath arrived on Tuesday, June 4, weighing a robust 8lb, 7oz. Mom and baby are doing well and dad is trying to figure out how to go hide at work and not offend anyone. In his short time on Earth, Baby Ellison...

Getting Back to Our Roots: A Return to 1996 Since it had been SO long since we dropped a new episode on you all, we thought it best to go back to our roots and play some serious, super sleeper, spring/summer 1996 heat. We head all the way out west to Tacoma, Washington where we find Panic inhabiting the Temple Theater for a smoking two setter that is oftentimes overlooked because of what comes bef...

Late for the Future Spring 2019 Sometimes we have the best of intentions. Sometimes we record two episodes at once. Sometimes we plan on putting out episodes in back to back weeks. Sometimes life intervenes. Sometimes Jeff forgets to write the liner notes. Sometimes we feel bad about all of this. Here it is, a review of the early and middle part of the Spring 2019 Panic tour. We recorded the show...

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today... Early Spring 1999 All these 20/25/30 year anniversaries are making us feel OLD, ya’ll! It is hard to believe that Panic has been around that long, and even more remarkable that the band is still together and killing it (yes, even we now admit the band is on fire, just needed to ‘recalibrate’ our thinking - we’re late to the party, sue us!). We go back 20 years to t...

84: We Enjoy Ourselves Part 2 of the Panic/Phish Osiris crossover podcast experience. After Harvey wandered aimlessly through an episode of Helping Friendly Podcast with RJ Bee, RJ returned the favor and appears on the Bluest Tape to discuss some memorable Panic moments. After a very un-scientific survey of Panic Twitter, Harvey decided to have RJ listen to: 03 April 1996 - Huntsville, AL - Von Br...

Lagniappe #6: March the 29th In this lagniappe episode, Harvey looks back at some pretty special shows played by the band on March 29th. Please continue to support the podcast by buying one of our swell t-shirts here! Links below go to the whole show stream from Panicstream: 29 March 1992 - Fort Collins, CO - Fort Ram Hatfield > Rock, Mercy > Entering A Black Hole Backwards > Chilly Water Source:...

“We’ll Be Back to Clean It All Up Later:” Traditional Closers, Vol. 2 We close our the closers series with the top five picks in our draft. It was a tough choice at the top of the draft, a true Ryan Leaf v. Peyton Manning kind of decision, but in this case, I suppose there were really no losers and no one ended up in jail for drugs and theft. If that’s the case, then I guess it was nothing like Le...

“We’ll Be Back to Clean It All Up Later:” Traditional Closers, Vol. 1 It certainly took us a while to get back to this theme of traditional openers → traditional closers (are we doing encores, Harvey?) but here we are with volume one of the closers portion of the proceedings. Some excellent selections here (Harvey with three, Jeff with two) that may spark a little debate amongst the Panic fans out...

That Other January Tour Here we are in the midst of another Sit n Ski anniversary, but this time around, we’ll take a pass on the landmark 1996 tour and jump back three years further in the past and look at 1993. Taking two weeks off after an epic NYE at the Georgia Theater, Panic hit the road for a remarkable 41 shows in a little over 50 days, starting in Florida and ending up in New Orleans in e...

Ending of One, Beginning of Another: NYE Run at the Fabulous Fox The New Year’s 2018 run at the Fabulous Fox Theater is in the books. While many of you are probably already looking towards Panic en la Playa in a week-plus, we decided to take a look back at what was a pretty solid three show run. We saw the return of some old favorites, some supreme setlist creativity, and, no surprise here, some d...

Assuming y’all survived Christmas and such, it is now time to look ahead to Panic’s return to the FABULOUS Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA. The band is saddled up and ready to ride for three nights at the legendary old movie house, and the Bluest Tape has your pre-show soundtrack all mapped out. Harvey and Jeff clearly missed each other since they again talk way too long about various topics, but event...

It’s A Wonderful Pod: Puttin’ a Bow on 2018 Bonus Tracks and Deep Cuts Let’s bring good ol’ 2018 to a close in style with a selection of bonus tracks, which in our case means “shows we really dug and never found the chance to play ‘em this year, or they were in an episode that got cut for one reason or another.” In the case of these four selections, we think the wait was WELL worth it. After Harve...

“Settle Down, What Do You Think This Is, a Rock n Roll Show?” Classic Openers, Part 2 Let’s close out the openers show in style, with five burners from days gone by. Harvey kicks things off with his second and third picks, “Send Your Mind” from the great Van Morrison, and a return to the well (so to speak) with a nice “Little Kin” opener from the essential March 1996 show in Johnson City, TN. Jeff...

"I'm Surprised Nothing Got Broke" 14 shows in 14 days, part 2 Ted Rockwell returns for part 2 of our conversation on the 25th anniversary of the October/November 1993 tour. We play some fantastic music, including perhaps the greatest Garrie intro of all time: "Please help me in that respect, Thank You!"; a fantastic stretch of music from the Big Potato State; and a sublime encore from Eugene, Oreg...

“No Fuss, No Muss” 14 shows in 14 days, part 1 We've been away for a few weeks (we wanted to give everyone a chance to get caught up on back episodes and listen to all the recent shows the band has been playing). Harvey and Jeff do a quick update and discuss some first thoughts (and hot takes) on the band's Halloween run in Vegas. Then Harvey is joined by good friend of the pod, Ted Rockwell, to d...

...and you are gonna be happy from now on! Classic Openers, Part 1 This week, we bring you the first of six episodes focusing on classic Panic openers, closers, and encores. Harvey has come up with a complicated mathematical formula that guided us through the fantasy football-like snake draft allowing us to determine what we think are ten of the best classic or traditional (but not THE BEST) Panic...

We Gotta Go, Thank You Very Much! Flip the Bird Encores! No matter the version of Panic, we have ALL been there. A killer setlist, badass playing, and a great post-drums just leaving you wanting more. You even stay standing and clap for the band to come back for the encore - that’s how excited you are. The band comes back, the crowd pops, the energy is high, and...and...and...Nobody’s Loss? Why th...

Fear and Loathing in Nashvegas So, here we are, 71 episodes in and, finally, Harvey and Jeff have seen Panic 3.1. We have complained, we have criticized, we have rationalized, and we have waxed poetic about the distant past, but in this episode, we finally come clean: we cool with Panic 3.1. The last three night run in Nashville was a good one and Harvey has a full recap from the second night and...