Widespread Panic – Up All Night

Widespread Panic are more known as a jam  band who will change tempos and direction when playing live. They remind me of the Allman Brothers Band and The Grateful Dead.

Widespread Panic was formed in the small college town Athens, GA in the mid-1980s. John Bell (guitar, vocals), Michael Houser (guitar) and Dave Schools (bass) all got together with the dream of playing in a rock band, where they experimented with many musicians to find the right fit.

Later on they met Todd Nance (drums), where they officially became a “band” in 1987. Down the road, they would link up with John Jojo Hermann (keyboards) in 1992, and Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz (percussion). Today, Jimmy Herring fills the shoes of the late Mikey Houser on lead guitar, and Duane Trucks, Butch Trucks nephew, has taken reins on the drum kit.

This song was on the Free Somehow album released in 2007.

Up All Night

Well I can’t sleep
I’ve been up all night
Life here in Savanna the day street moan
And that wet smell of sulfur from the cobblestone
I’ve been up all night
Been up all night
And I dream of heaven and I feel like hell
The children in their church clothes Sunday morning bells
And my head is spinning and taking a toll
Been up all night
Been up all night
(Up all night, up all night)
The best thing about New Years is the Christmas lights
Hiding in the day, exposed at night
Sunrise not sunset Georgia sky
I’ve been up all night
We’ve been out all night
I’ve been out all night
Up all night
We’ve been up all night
Been up all night
Been up all night

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

37 thoughts on “Widespread Panic – Up All Night”

  1. I appreciate this music now for its quality, but I think I would have dismissed it back then as sounding too ‘adult contemporary’. The horns, piano and rocking chair tempo. Today it sounds pretty nice and I am much older. 😀

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  3. I thought I knew it from the title but didn’t. Not bad at all, Jim’s right that the horns do sound reminiscent of Chicago a decade earlier. That was some happening and diverse scene there in Athens in the 80s!

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  4. I like the lush sound of it combined with easy-going on the vocals. It lets the music shine through. It’s kind of surprising I never heard of this band. One those that is so good but doesn’t get the airplay it needs?

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  5. Ya know, I love the Dead and the Allmans, so I feel like I should like WSP, but the truth is, I don’t. I’ve seen them a couple times in concert to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they just don’t do it for me. And so many of my friends love em. Eh, is what it is. Thanks for the post anyway 🙂

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  6. I’ve heard of this band but aren’t familiar with them. In general I’m not that into jam bands. I am sucker for horns though so enjoyed this. Remind me a bit of a cross between Southside Johnny and Bruce Hornsby with a southern thing if that doesn’t sound too strange

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  7. The 80’s in Athens saw so many great bands including Widespread Panic, R.E.M. and B-52’s. Good time to be going to school at the University of GA during those years. I wasn’t, but I wish I would’ve been.

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    1. I don’t know much about them…while looking for more college bands I found them and really liked this song…I never thought they were a jam band.

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      2. I just had to break from the Beatles, Stones, and Who for a while…or wildly popular artists…but…if I don’t like it I won’t do it. Personally I enjoyed today’s more than I have most others. This is my favorite draft so far.

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      4. Yes I really like this one….I’m going back and getting to redo songs that I only wrote two sentences about before…Overnight Sensation is in my top 5 ever… When Carmen was great…and then he warbled pop songs.

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      6. Well he did! He was God awful after the Raspberries….No not God Awful but it was pure adult pop…no excitement

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      10. Yea and I will probably come back to where I started after a while…when I get tired of wandering off

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