How was it getting acclimated to Panics music, compared to, say, The Allman Brothers?
I had two weeks to learn the music. [laughs] In that way, it was kind of similar, since I had to learn a lot of music in a short amount of time. With Panic, I mean, I don’t know anyone that can learn 20 years of music in two weeks. I knew the guys, and they were good friends, but I didn’t know every one of their songs. They have so many. Panic’s music covers a lot of stylistic territory, a lot more than some other bands do. The Dead has a tremendous stylistic range, from blues to funk to jazz-oriented stuff, they cover a lot of territory. Panic’s kind of similar to them in that way. So it was a lot of work. It was 10-hour days, sometimes more, for weeks. Even now, I’ll listen to tunes, try to get a feel for them, and make rough charts of the forms of songs. “Free Somehow” was created differently from previous Panic albums. Normally, the material is written before recording. Right. This time, we had a few tunes that had been played live, but had never been on a studio record. Then we ha
