No MTV for Widespread Panic,
Just Loads of Worshipful Fans
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Peter Smiley, a concierge at the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore., first heard the band Widespread Panic when a friend played a bootleg tape for him several years ago.
Today, the 26-year-old shares a strange intimacy with the group's growing community of fans. He receives as many as 20 e-mails a day from other Widespread Panic enthusiasts and trades bootleg concert tapes via the Internet. When the band sent out a message recruiting volunteers to promote its Portland concert recently, he responded.
"My girlfriend thinks I'm crazy," he says. "But I'm just very loyal to those guys because they are so loyal and committed to all of us."
In its 11 years of existence, Widespread Panic has never had a music video on MTV or an album that cracked the Billboard Top 200. But the six-member band has built an enviable following. During a nationwide tour last year, it pulled in $8.5 million, placing it in the top 40 tours of 1998, ahead of such established acts as Sheryl Crow and the Smashing Pumpkins.
In the South the band's pull has become legendary. Late last year, it sold out four shows at the 4,700-seat Fox theater in Atlanta in four minutes. "R.E.M. can do that. Elton John can do that. Not many other people," says Edgar Neiss, the theater's general manager.
The band's success illustrates the potential of grass-roots marketing, particularly when it's linked to the rise of the Internet on college campuses. Widespread's fans are reminiscent of the legions that followed the Grateful Dead, but the Dead's following was relatively spontaneous. As Jerry Garcia, the Dead's lead guitarist, once said, "We didn't invent Deadheads, they invented themselves." Widespread Panic, by contrast, is laboring hard to invent its following.
It has made its fans, who are mostly in their 20s and early 30s, part of the band's everyday life. Earlier this month, fans could zap messages to Widespread in a recording studio and find out what band members ate for lunch via regular updates on the band's Web site. Fans can even get free bootleg tapes of Widespread concerts by sending in a blank tape and a self-addressed envelope. As many as 100 fans take advantage of the offer every month. At concerts, the band flashes audience pictures taken by fans at earlier shows on a large screen.
'A Big Family'
At concerts, the band flashes audience pictures taken by fans at earlier shows on a large screen. "It's like a big family flipping through a photo album," says Bryan Walters, a 26-year-old MTV production assistant.
The band's strategy was born of necessity. The six-member group met at the University of Georgia in the early 1980s. After college, they stayed in Athens, which is also the birthplace of R.E.M. and the B-52's, devoting themselves to the band full-time. Their Southern rock musical style is eclectic, evoking everyone from the Allman Brothers to the Talking Heads.
Unlike R.E.M., which made its name by landing a large record contract, Widespread took to the road, playing small bars, mostly in the South. Some success followed. In the early 1990s the band signed its first record contract with Capricorn Records, based in Atlanta. It also graduated to larger bars and then to small concert halls. But radio stations were often indifferent to the band's music, and reviews were mixed. "Vacuous," carped a concert reviewer at Atlanta's main alternative newspaper after one of the band's first major shows in Atlanta.
To promote its shows, the band began enlisting fans, first through its newsletter and later through its Web site. Before Widespread Panic played Houston last year, Jody Harrison was one of a dozen fans who spent two days hanging posters. The 27-year-old sales representative for a computer software company hit the four bars where he knew there was a Widespread Panic compact disc in the jukebox, as well as a vegetarian restaurant. He also plastered Rice University, the University of Houston and Houston Community College.
"I was totally in awe that they would ask for my help," Mr. Harrison says. In exchange for his time, Mr. Harrison, like other fans enlisted to promote the band's shows, received two tickets and backstage passes. He eventually spent about two hours eating and drinking with the band members, he recalls.
The band has adopted a similar fan-friendly strategy for the Internet. Dave Schools, Widespread's bassist, happened on a Web site developed by Brian Sofer, a 25-year-old fan from Long Island, and complimented the site in an e-mail. A few months later, he met Mr. Sofer backstage at a concert and asked him to propose a new Web site for the band.
'Thrill of My Life'
"That was the thrill of my life," Mr. Sofer says. He had a prized collection of about 45 Widespread concert ticket stubs but had received a "D" in college in the only computer science class he ever took
Working out of his bare apartment, Mr. Sofer now updates the band's site almost daily in exchange for a small salary. Within two hours of virtually all of the band's shows, he has pictures of the performance and a review posted.
So far, fans can't download the band's music directly from the Web. And giving away the bootleg tapes is controversial with the band's agent and record label. "Giving away music has always been a concern of mine and it always will be," says Phil Walden Jr., head of Capricorn Records. But he concedes, "If we stopped doing it now we'd lose fans. You have to play the hand you're dealt."
The band's management says the increased traffic from the new Web site has helped merchandise sales, which have surged to about $350,000 last year from $100,000 in 1996. Meanwhile, as its popularity has grown, Widespread has steered clear of some opportunities that other bands would jump at.
Last year the Rolling Stones approached Widespread to see if the band was interested in opening for the Stones on their tour. Widespread, concerned that its core audience would be turned off by the relatively short opening sets, said no thanks. "We play about three hours in an evening," says John Bell, a band member.
Instead, Widespread opted for a different promotion. Eager to get its name out to schools, the band approached the American Library Association about doing a free poster promoting reading similar to those done by R.E.M., Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson and others in recent years.
The association said no thanks. The band wasn't well enough known. So the band offered to pay for the entire campaign, shelling out about $12,000 to mail out posters to 2,300 libraries around the country. "The people at the Library Association still think we're a little crazy," says the band's agent, Buck Williams.
Now, Widespread has its eye on another goal. The Cleveland market, which the band has targeted in recent years, has been slow to come around. "Cleveland was put on this earth to keep us humble," says Sam Lanier, who owned a small landscaping company before taking over management of the band in the late 1980s. "That's our breakthrough market next year."
