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WET TROMBONE BLUES: NEVER MISS A SUNDAY SHOW

“Good luck I think you’re gonna need it
When you’re caught out in the storm
I ain’t no detective don’t come begging to me
When it rains on your trombone”

– Daniel Hutchens, “Wet Trombone Blues”

They say never miss a Sunday show. In fact, it’s one of the most adhered to adages and aphorisms in the jamband lexicon, and one that’s become common slang among true believers who go to see their favorite bands on the proverbial day of rest to grab one last little bit of magic— most often after a long weekend spent listening, experiencing, and communing with freaks and fellow travelers on a shared musical journey for those willing to go the distance— on their way out the door. A night known for leaving it all on the table, it’s become a revered institution unto itself, and one that has become secondhand speak for emotionally-charged performances, consistently producing some of the most revered and heartfelt shows from its many modern day practitioners. A venerated church service for the soul after three nights of revelry and abandon, it’s usually reserved as a space for deeper sets and material— sometimes heavy in nature, sometimes ecstatic, and often a mixture of the two— melding the inherent spirituality of the traditional Sabbath with a sense of exhausted elation after a crazy weekend riding the waves of Friday and Saturday night. In the often obsessive world of their fans looking for rare bust-outs or their own personal “white whales” of setlists, Sunday shows have historically been a moment for reflective jubilation meant to bring a summary end to an otherwise wild and wooly party scene. It doesn’t always work out that way of course, as many bands and fans will attest to, but when it does, and the feeling and vibe is just right, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences in rock and roll.

Although the exact origins of the phrase are a little murky, with many contemporary acts laying claim to its usage, historically speaking, it’s most commonly identified with Southern rock band Widespread Panic and their unwieldy caravan of sonic explorers known lovingly as “Spreadheads”— the traveling circus of pilgrims and psychedelic pranksters who religiously follow their music across the country, laying siege to unsuspecting cities for days at a time with throngs of imbibed hippies and hangers-on in search of a little musical transcendence. Updated and adopted countless times over the years by succeeding generations of improv-heavy outfits who thrive on rewarding their most fervent and diehard fans with unique, one-of-a-kind shows, few bands outside of other likeminded acts like the Grateful Dead and Phish have been able to successfully codify it as part of their audience lingo as the jamband juggernaut from Athens, Georgia. Known for legendary three-night runs at places like Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham, Alabama, the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, their Sunday shows have fallen into contemporary music lore as not-to-be-missed experiences among hardcore aficionados, with the group consistently managing to turn the celebrated day into a showcase performance space for both themselves and their fanbase.

Which is one of the many reasons I, and many others, didn’t want to miss their Sunday show at Red Rocks this past summer on June 27th. As part of their first run of concerts back in action after over a year of disease, death and lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the first major rock bands to hold a large concert of any kind at full capacity in the once-hopeful days of declining caseloads and mass vaccinations, it seemed like a great opportunity to finally shake off the collective cobwebs we had all accrued over the preceding months of fear and fatigue from a once-in-a-generation global health crisis. Having experienced a season of loss like no other in recent memory, both private and public, few things sounded as enticing as spending an evening at the natural wonder that is America’s greatest outdoor concert venue with one of America’s greatest rock and roll bands. Guaranteed to be a loaded event given the circumstances leading up to the concert, and the anxiety-inducing thought of being around a large group of strangers for the first time since March 2020— and still unsure how safe it might be to attend with or without vaccines— there was another, even heavier air hanging around both band and audience, due to the recent loss of founding drummer Todd Nance in August of 2020, after several years away from the band, followed by the untimely death of longtime collaborator and friend Daniel Hutchens from the group Bloodkin on May 9, 2021.

Two integral and beloved figures from the band’s earliest days on the Athens music scene, both of whom would help shape the group’s sound and catalog in unique but different ways, the loss of Nance and Hutchens so close together was a one-two gut punch for a band of brothers who had already said early goodbyes to several key friends, mentors and bandmates over the course of the past two decades. Going back to the passing of founding lead guitarist Michael Houser from pancreatic cancer in 2002, followed by singer-songwriter and brute. co-conspirator Vic Chesnutt in 2009, original keyboardist and Dixie Dregs alum T. (Terry) Lavitz in 2010, Southern surrealist and jamband icon Col. Bruce Hampton in 2017, and Neal Casal— guitarist for Panic affiliate Hardworking Americans— in 2019, the band’s extended family had been dealt a series of personal blows in quick succession. Having persevered through so much grief and adversity over the preceding 20 years, with band members being rotated and replaced by a small cast of close confidants, the twin deaths of Nance and Hutchens was yet another stark reminder of the fragility of life for a group already well-versed in personal and professional tragedy.

With that as the dramatic backdrop against which they’d make their triumphant return to the stage— while also solidifying their place in the venue’s vaunted history with a record 63 sold out shows— it wasn’t lost on those heading to Red Rocks for their three-night run in late-June that a certain layer of sadness and existentialism would permeate the proceedings. Having personally opted out of attending the first two shows on Friday and Saturday due to scheduling, as well as an intimate indoor concert at Denver’s Mission Ballroom that preceding Thursday, for fans that arrived for the full weekend, they would be greeted by a collective sense of joy, relief and camaraderie that only a series of Home Team shows can bring after so much time away from the pulpit. Quickly followed by the realization, brought on by a torrent of cloudy and inclement weather, that this would be a family reunion like no other. Enduring a chilly and rain-drenched first night that saw the band pay homage to Nance with the inclusion of one of his signature tunes, the appropriately titled “Down,” the second evening would see yet another round of storms move through the area, although much less severe, making way for a memorable Saturday night filled with classic Panic tunes from across their catalog, alongside choice covers and a nod to singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt, with the inclusion of the brute. song “Blight” in the first set, followed by “Degenerate” as part of a two song encore.

Always one to play to both the space and vibe surrounding their shows, paying homage to peers and influences has long been a hallmark of the Panic experience. Covering a wide array of classic tunes alongside the music of hometown or regional heroes like Chesnutt, Hampton, R.E.M., Allman Brothers, and Drivin’ N’ Cryin’— to name a few— there are few groups whose repertoire is as wide and deep as Widespread Panic’s, offering them both the musical and emotional range— through both their own music and the music of others— to truly capture the essence of an evening. Like the Dead before them, they’ve always made a point of honoring early inspirations, as well as artists and songwriters they thought were deserving of wider recognition among the general public, utilizing both the stage and their albums to highlight the work of others who may not have had an opportunity to have their songs heard by such a loyal and attentive audience, many of whom obsess over the historical lineage of the music that makes their favorite bands tick. 

And nowhere was that made clearer than on Sunday’s matinee show at Red Rocks, where the band would perform a full opening set of Bloodkin tunes in the rain in honor of the passing of Danny Hutchens, showing off both the profound impact he and the band had had on their catalog over the years, as well as the powerful songwriting prowess of one of America’s most criminally under-recognized rock and roll street poets. Having featured several Bloodkin songs on their albums over the years, especially early on— including the hard-hitting, socio-political anthem “Makes Sense to Me” from their eponymous 1991 sophomore LP; the great “Henry Parsons Died” from 1993’s Everyday; and minor breakout radio hit “Can’t Get High” from 1994’s Ain’t Life Grand— Panic has also regularly included other signature tunes from the band’s catalog in their live sets going back to some of their earliest days on the Athens music scene, and continuing through today. Having fostered an almost symbiotic relationship between the two outfits starting back in the mid-to-late-80s, few modern rock and roll bands have come to be so closely associated with each other on both a personal and professional level as Bloodkin and Widespread Panic. 

And nothing brought that message home more than Panic’s opening Sunday set, where the band would run through a ten-song suite of some of Bloodkin’s most beloved tunes, as well as deeper cuts and a brand new track off of their recently released album Black Market Tango, offering up a veritable Danny Hutchens musical highlight reel that showed just how deep the waters and roots actually ran between the two bands. Kicking off the set with the newly intense meta-narrative of “Can’t Get High”— and one of the tracks that would gain Panic some of their first substantial national exposure on both radio and TV— the song’s sobering lyrics about fateful nihilism in the face of heartbreak and despair, and trying to self-medicate, to no avail, with alcohol and drugs, were a poignant entry point into what would be a grand salute to a fallen friend who had struggled with addiction on and off for many years up until his very last days. Coupled with its atmospheric lyrical references to thunder and rain, both of which were in abundance all weekend long, the song— along with the set’s second tune, and one of the very first pieces of music Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter ever wrote together, the even more-on-the-nose “Wet Trombone Blues,” with its wistful weather-related doldrums— would serve as the opening salvo to a uniquely inspired tribute to Hutchens as only his friends in Widespread Panic could deliver.

Following the introductory two song overture, Panic would proceed to weave a symbolic sonic tapestry throughout the rest of the concert’s first half, playing songs from throughout Bloodkin’s catalog that would touch on personal and existential themes that had proven over time to be far more autobiographical in nature than Hutchens’ intensely literary bent may have initially made them out to be. From a pointed and self-referential “Henry Parsons Died,” to the gritty drugged-out darkness of “Quarter Tank of Gasoline,” the anti-fame anthem of “Success Yourself,” and a new, revelatory song called “Trashy,” there was more than enough metaphorical and literal meaning in the air to bring home the many heavy messages hidden in plain sight in the music. And few bands were as well-equipped to handle that heavy load, in terms of both presentation and delivery, than Bloodkin’s fellow Athenians. As a loose collective who had been through so much together over the preceding 30 plus years— from the ups and downs of a life lived in rock and roll, to the negative effects of drug and alcohol addiction, and the sublime highs of connecting with people through art and music— there have been few acts that could stand so tall in such a moment of sorrow and discontent and still bring a sense of joy to those there to witness it. It was a profound moment, and yet one that managed to shine through the gloom, disease and ever-present cloud cover in glorious fashion. Rain be damned.

So just how did this roving group of musical misfits come to have such a strong bond and working relationship to warrant a moving homage on such a grand scale? It’s a long and complicated story, filled with wild intersections of both art and artists, but what follows next is an attempt to place both the bands and their shared history together in a larger context, coupled with interviews, written tributes, pictures, and video footage from those that were a part of it, in an effort to answer a question many of their fans have asked over the years in terms of their shared songs and stories and the overlap between the two: Just who do they belong to exactly anyway?

As it turns out, it’s an inquiry that’s much easier to ask than answer, and just may surprise some people to learn that its bloodline and family tree runs much deeper than most could ever imagine, particularly when it comes to the music and lyricism of Daniel Hutchens and his brother from another mother, guitarist and Bloodkin co-founder Eric Carter. 

From West Virginia and Widespread Panic, to the Velvet Underground and beyond, it’s a story about a place, time, group of people, and a particular communal vibe that would set Southern music on fire while no one— and everyone— was listening, carving a unique set of career paths and crossroads that would resonate deeply for over three decades, through both success and failure, and will surely be celebrated for years to come.

It’s partially the story of Athens, Georgia. But more importantly, it’s the story of Bloodkin. As a band, an idea, an ethos, and an attitude, that would help reshape the landscape of Southern Rock well into the 21st century.

BAPTIZED IN EVERY CREEK IN GEORGIA: THE BIRTH OF BLOODKIN

“Everybody knows his name
They’ve heard about his reputation
They all came to see him buried down in the ground
What you might call a little bit of morbid fascination
What is everybody gonna say?
What is everybody gonna do?
Now that Henry Parsons’ passed away
We got no one to lay our guilt on to”

– Daniel Hutchens, “Henry Parsons Died”

You can’t tell the story of Bloodkin, as both a band and brotherhood, without first telling the story of Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter. Two lifelong friends and fellow muses, Hutchens and Carter’s roots run deeper than the shafts of a West Virginia coal mine, the fateful result of geographical luck and mutual interests that would find them embarked on a shared musical journey starting from their earliest days of teenage rebellion and rock and roll fandom through the end of Hutchens’ life in 2021. Having first met as children in the small town of Ripley, West Virginia in the early-1970s after Carter’s family had recently relocated there, the pair would quickly bond over shared hobbies and, more importantly, shared records, establishing an early array of influences and inspirations that would go on to inform their sound and aesthetic as Bloodkin. Kindred kid spirits with an affinity for both music and trouble, starting from a very young age Hutchens and Carter formed a working relationship and interpersonal dynamic that would ultimately blossom into a professional career and one of the most quietly revered groups in contemporary Southern underground rock lore. Birthed out of cultural isolation in their hometown and a love of art for art’s sake and existential exploration and excess— for better and for worse— the boys of Bloodkin managed to forge one of the most unique and long-lasting partnerships in modern music, combining a DIY attitude with Stones-y swagger and incredible songwriting that regularly tackled the subtle nuances of the human condition, cloaked in Southern imagery, making them one of the best kept secrets out of a long lineage of criminally obscure bands from both Athens and beyond. Card-carrying members of what David Thomas from Cleveland punk band Pere Ubu would dub the “Brotherhood of the Unknown”— a reference to his group’s initial hope of doing nothing more than releasing a handful of great records very few may ever come across or hear in the name of high art, only to be rediscovered later— Hutchens and Carter’s ambitions never truly progressed past that ironically noble aim, while also managing to escape into the world at large through their friends in Widespread Panic. But before they could do that, they would first have to formulate a musical identity, initially in their hometown of Ripley, followed by a stint in the city of Huntington, West Virginia for college, then briefly Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and ultimately Athens. Making home recordings in Hutchens’ basement as teenagers, a working methodology that they would continue well into adulthood, and inspired by both the Beat writers and highly literary artists like Bob Dylan, the die was pretty much cast from the moment they first met each other, creating a template for creativity that would pay dividends far down the road.

ERIC CARTER: I met Danny when I was 7 years old. And he was a little bit older than me and I was kind of the new kid that had just moved to town. I’d just moved to Ripley, West Virginia. And I was introduced to him through a friend of his, and at first Danny was like, “Who’s the new kid? Who’s your new friend?” You know how little kids are. But we ended up becoming so close, like pretty quickly, that the other guy kinda got left out. So we had little things in common. We’re like 7, 8, 9 years old— it’s like comic books or baseball cards, junk food or whatever. And I lived on the same street as him, so our parents got to know each other and his parents were a lot older than mine. Danny was the last child. He was the baby. By the time I met Danny his siblings were already gone, so his parents could have been my grandparents’ age. So there was the usual thing of like— especially since he was right down the street— I could go spend the weekend at his house or he’d come to mine to sleep over. Little kids sleep over things. And I think both of us were into music. I mean, at that age, you’re not thinking about “I’m going to start a band,” but music was a big thing to both of us, like sharing records. That was there pretty quick. And Danny had access to a lot of things, because of the things left behind from his older brother and some siblings. So there was a treasure trove of like old comic books and old records and things like that. And then we get to the age where we’re old enough to like start buying our own records and just finding out what we like, trying to find our voice.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes of Bloodkin’s One Long Hustle box set): Eric Carter and I met when we were elementary school brats living on Klondyke Road in Ripley, West Virginia. We fell into a creative partnership very early on, at first centered around writing and drawing comic books together and “telling stories;” then we got fascinated with music. My older sisters had stacks and stacks of 45s lying around our house— stuff that teen girls of those days were prone to listen to, some of which I found pretty cool. I fell in love with the Beatles. “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” were huge favorites— I could sing them all the way through at age six, and can still remember every word— as well as the whole Revolver LP. The Monkees, too: “Last Train To Clarksville” and “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” were frequent plays….I spent a great portion of my childhood on my bedroom floor, hunched over a little forest green toy record player, entranced by those great sugary pop hooks wafting off the vinyl….I remember for my birthday one year I asked for a Beatles record and my sister gave me Sgt. Pepper’s. At first I saw the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band on the cover and was upset, thought it wasn’t the Beatles…but that record really infected me. Countless hours listening while staring at the lyrics on the back cover, with those great colorful pictures of the band on the fold-out. After awhile my dad’s country collection started sneaking into my playlist, particularly his Johnny Cash records. \\ When I was about 11, Eric’s family moved to Ravenswood, another small town about 15 miles down the interstate from Ripley. Their new house was on Skull Run Road, which Eric and I both thought sounded really cool. He and I stayed in touch and our friendship got stronger, as well as our mutual obsession with music. Eric became the antenna— he seemed to have a nose for the best music, and he would scout it out, discover it, then turn me on to it…first Elton John (for a few years I wanted to be Bernie Taupin, a lyricist who didn’t actually play an instrument)…and then, monumentally, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. When I started listening to their records, that’s when my “fascination” became something a little more serious, a little more irreversible. They kicked down the doors to more discoveries: Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and all the great old blues guys.

ERIC CARTER: I remember one day I came home from school, I think I was 12, and I’d seen one of those little film strips in a music class, and this one was focusing on music from the ’60s. And there was a little segment about Bob Dylan there, and for some reason I just really dug it. And when I got home from school, I ran into the house and asked my mom and said, “Mom, do you have any Bob Die-lon records?” And she said, “It’s Dylan. And I think I do.” And she went to the little attic— she didn’t have a huge record collection, but they had their things— and she pulled out this copy of Bringing It All Back Home. And I took it to my room and put it on and I was just like, man, I gotta call Danny. I gotta call Danny and tell him about this guy. And, like I said, he was a little older, and at that point he was probably starting getting into writing and maybe just learning guitar a little bit. And my first thing was drums, and that probably didn’t come until maybe I was 14. But the Bob Dylan thing when I was 12 years old was huge. And we were already into things before that, like I’d already been listening to the Rolling Stones ‘cause my mom had Hot Rocks on eight track when I was a little kid— I guess that’s where all kids get their music from. Where else they’re going to hear it, you know? My mom had a lot of old Motown, and of course the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But she also had Barbara Streisand’s Greatest Hits and Barry Manilow and Seals and Croft. There was some Elvis thrown in there and my dad had some of the country stuff I came to appreciate more later. So, all that stuff gets embedded in you so early, and you get through the phase where you’re trying to sound like Bob Dylan. It’s like, let’s try to write lyrics like Blonde on Blonde. You’re trying to play guitar like somebody and that’s how you learn. And hopefully you keep doing that enough, and the goal is to develop your own thing. But there were no bands where we grew up. It was a really small town kind of in the country. We were never going to get a band together here or anything like that, but what we did was we spent a lot of time in each other’s bedrooms just playing, playing with our little tape recorders. Danny was a lot more into that. I think at his house there was a lot more leeway to do stuff like that, ‘cause he was kinda a mama’s boy, and there was more room and there was a basement there, so he can make a lot more noise. And his mom was very forgiving of us, just like staying up until four in the morning and just doing our thing. We didn’t really do that so much at my house.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): At around age 13, I started strumming my dad’s old Kraftsman guitar, and Eric started thrashing around on a drum kit owned by his neighbor, Johnny Lynch, who played in a country cover band called “Johnny Lynch and the Lynch Mob.” Mr. Lynch had a big rec room/storage space, a building separate from his house out in the yard, where he kept his drum kit and a big old-fashioned record player/radio cabinet that was like a big end table or something. Eric and I held our first “band practices” in that little space, and before long Eric switched over from drums to guitar as his main instrument. He had been a good drummer, capable of a nice John Bonham impersonation.

Having found common ground in the sounds and sanctity of each others’ homes and record collections over the course of junior high and high school, despite having begun their first forays into their own music creation by practicing together and recording work tapes— inspired in part by the musings of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy— it wasn’t until after leaving Ripley in the early-1980s to briefly go to college in Huntington that the focus of their lives would really start to take shape in any meaningful way. Having followed each other there to attend Marshall University, it was in Huntington that they would not only form their first proper band, prophetically named The Wreck, but also get a taste of freedom away from their small hometown that would later blossom in Athens. As the place where they would find what Hutchens would call the “perfect setting for our shady little rock n roll fantasy to start coming to life,” although they were initially enamored of what the university town had to offer, it would prove less appealing when it came to actually getting their music heard outside of a small group of likeminded musicians, friends and audiences who would form their sphere of influence away from school and their occasional studying. But it was also a place where some of their biggest and newest musical influences would first start to make themselves known as their listening habits matured, picking up on bands from the classic New York City punk scene, as well as progenitors like the Velvet Underground, and even newer contemporary acts like R.E.M. and the Replacements, as points of inquiry and departure who would go on to inform Hutchens’ own songwriting through their combination of symbolist poetry, noir-ish realism, street attitude, and blasts of manic three-chord energy. It was a heady brew, and a coming of age/rite of passage, and one that would ultimately see the twin flames get their first real taste of a life in music— as well as professional disappointment— while honing their craft, but also— along with a small coterie of friends— want to make their way out of Huntington and towards another small Southern city 433 miles away that was quickly making a name for itself as the new mecca for underground rock and roll in America. As a town that would put a premium on original music in ways that Huntington did not, despite its own massive share of bar bands, Athens was an ideal landing place where they would not just grow, but thrive, immediately making a splash on the local scene and making connections with other artists and musicians who would continue to be a part of their lives and orbit for decades to come. Chief among them being another young band of upstarts known as Widespread Panic, as well as musician/producer David Barbe from the band Bar-B-Q Killers, and later Mercyland and the Bob Mould-fronted power trio Sugar. All of whom would go on to help shape and remake Southern Rock for a new generation away from the towering shadows of “classic” bands of the genre like the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Marshall Tucker Band, among others, while also counting them among their many inspirations in a post-punk and post-new wave world. It was also where Hutchens and Carter would first introduce the band and rotating cast of characters known as Bloodkin to the world after leaving The Wreck behind in West Virginia. Doing a brief stopover in Myrtle Beach to live with Carter’s mom while they figured out their next move, they would eventually arrive in the Classic City in the summer of 1986 and immediately start scoping out the local music scene.

ERIC CARTER: You know, that Southern thing is kind of funny. I mean, me and Danny, we’ve lived in Georgia since 1986. And every time we moved, we moved further south. But I’m always like, technically we grew up in West Virginia, so there’s a different kind of— I don’t know how to describe West Virginia— but it’s a different vibe and it’s not quite the south, but it’s definitely got some of those elements, and it’s not the north. It’s just this weird place in the middle. It’s a different kind of vibe and I still can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. I can feel it, but I can’t explain it.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): Huntington was not generally receptive to new music— it was a college town and a crossroads through which many creative types passed, but it was also somehow very conservative— you pretty much had to play in a top 40 cover band to get any regular gigs. However, several local bands started up something called “Original Live Music” night at a club called the Monarch Cafe. The idea was that every Wednesday night, three or four bands would split the bill, playing about 45 minutes apiece, and the rule was that no cover songs were allowed. Original Live Music started to create a little buzz, drawing about 200 people to the club each Wednesday night (which was unheard of for Huntington), and even receiving a few write-ups in the local newspapers. As I remember, the main bands involved were: The Wreck, Ethical Committee, Street Urchin, and New Toys (from Ashland, Kentucky). \\ It all seemed promising. Several of the bands chipped in to rent a very cool rehearsal space downtown on 4th Avenue, up on the second floor of some building in the business district. Enormous windows up at the front of the space, overlooking the traffic on the main drag right below. A fairly nice P.A. and recording set-up. A few “record company weasel” types even came sniffing around; I remember one guy from some major label coming up to the rehearsal space and lecturing all of us about “professionalism” and “appearances”: what clothes to wear onstage, how to cut hair, etc. We all stood around swigging beer and laughing at him.

ERIC CARTER: And you don’t know this [at the time]— people from the outside can see this— but when you’re the one in it, you don’t really think of it like this, but it’s another hindsight thing. It’s like people since then have said, “Man, when you and Danny showed up, it was like you were fully formed. You already had all these songs.” And it’s like “who are these new kids,” you know? So we kind of got into what little original music scene there was and we kind of fell in with some of that crew, and we got our first little band there. And this one place that we used to hang out at, there were a bunch of different original bands. So we all kind of came to this club and said, “How about you give us one night a week and we can all do a little set of just our stuff.” ‘Cause the only thing around there were like cover bands— like heavy metal cover bands or pop covers. So they actually let us do that. And I remember the first time we played, me and Daniel were so excited because this is all we wanted to do is just find a place to be able to play our own songs and have a little band. And I remember me and Daniel were so excited after the first time, and this other guy, this jaded old Huntington musician, he was like, “You guys don’t know shit yet, man. You don’t know what you’re getting into.” And he was probably like 25 at the time. He said, “I’ve been to New York City. You don’t know what the fuck this is.” And it’s like, man, we just want to fucking play our shit dude, lighten up. But Huntington was kind of downbeat economically and things like that. And a lot of the people that we met were a little older and had already been there or else that’s where they were from. So a lot of those people started moving. And that little thing that was burning, that little ember, it kind of cooled off. We’d already heard about Athens a little bit. There was another buddy of mine that lived in Huntington, and he was a huge R.E.M. fan, and he was looking for a place to move and Athens was something that kept coming up. So, it’s like, let’s give it a shot. At that time, that’s when the college music radio thing was kind of taking off. That was becoming a thing, I guess, the format. So you were starting to hear more of that kind of music, shit you weren’t gonna hear on the radio until you go to the left of the dial, as the song goes. So Athens just happened to be the one. There’s probably several other college towns that were probably just like that, that probably had the same kind of thing brewing, but this is the one where we ended up.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): We wound up in Athens mainly by chance— we’d heard about the music scene just like everyone else in America, and we thought we’d move there and give it a try. We never thought we’d wind up staying twenty-plus years. But Athens delivered on all the things Huntington hadn’t, and then some. To this day, there’s not a better place in the world to start up a rock and roll band. I’m not sure exactly what makes it such a great place for music— I don’t think anyone’s ever really been sure. That’s part of the magic; you can’t put your finger on it. \\ One thing that helped was that rent in Athens was extremely cheap back in the ‘80s. You could work a part-time day job and pay the rent, feed yourself, and still have money left over, and have all this precious time to spend on your band, your songs, your canvases, whatever you were into— for Eric and me it was Heaven. And more than anything else, by the time we hit Athens there were venues that booked original music— several of them. In earlier days that wasn’t the case— bands like the B-52s started off playing house parties because there weren’t really live stages in town— but that had definitely changed by the time we got here. There were decent stages with decent P.A. systems all over town, and tons of excellent bands taking advantage of those stages. Hell, sometimes the bands even got paid.

ERIC CARTER: When me and Danny first got here in the summer of 1986, it was like in July. And back in those days, in the summertime, it was really a ghost town. It was very quiet. Which was probably good because that gave us time to get settled a little bit, find a little place, and start going around, to eventually meeting people. I think all that stuff probably happened pretty fast. We met a bunch of people that were from this whole crew that had all come up from Savannah. It was like Britt [West] and Samantha Woods, and that was the Perforated Squares, which later became White Buffalo. Danny and I had moved into this little duplex and on the other side of us was Alberto Salazarte’s brother. And Alberto used to play with Perforated Squares. And Alberto’s brother called [Alberto] and said, “Man, you got to come over here. There’s these two guys that just moved in and all they do is fucking play guitars.” It’s like, you gotta come over and meet them. So, start meeting people like that and sort of getting into a little scene, and basically Britt West became our bass player and he didn’t even play bass, but he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll play with you guys.” And Alberto started playing drums for us. So we were basically already sharing a band. They already had their band house, like where they practiced and stuff, so that was our first little group of people. And then we started meeting people on the fringes of that, like their whole little gang. I’m not sure exactly when Widespread Panic got going or when they started doing their Monday nights at the Uptown [Lounge], like for a dollar. And I saw a lot of those because that was one of the only places I could drink and just go out and meet people. I could drink there and it was pretty casual in those days. When we first got here the 40 Watt was on Broad Street and the Uptown I think was on Washington Street. And those were really, as far as I knew, like the only two places going for that kind of original sort of stuff. I think there were some other little things happening, like maybe more college bars, kind of frat bars or whatever. But at that time, those two were kind of the thing for original kind of stuff. I remember the first show that me and Danny went to here in town— I think it was at the 40 Watt on Broad Street— and I believe it was Dreams So Real opening for Porn Orchard. Which, if you know those bands, is a really odd billing, but I think then it was just like, they probably all knew each other. It was like, “Hey, can we open for you guys? And next time you can open for us.” That kind of thing. And the bars closed earlier in those days, like they closed at midnight. So that’s why there was a lot more house parties and things like that back in those days. I guess some bands had probably gotten into the frat circuit. I think Panic did a lot of that. And I think they made some pretty— by the standards of that time— good money doing that kind of stuff. We never quite got into the frat circuit. Well, we did some over the years, but that wasn’t a regular thing. I think a lot of bands, if they could just get a couple of gigs like that it’s like, “we can get a bunch of new equipment now,” you know, shit like that.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): The first show Eric and I attended in Athens was at the old 40 Watt in what I think was its third incarnation, on Broad Street: Porn Orchard opening for Dreams So Real (in retrospect an unusual pairing). The first few years in town we saw all these bands on little local stages: R.E.M. (one of their first “unannounced” shows), Mercyland, Bar-B-Q Killers, White Trash, Kilkenny Cats, Flat Duo Jets, Crack, Billy James, Todd McBride (who went on to form Dashboard Saviors with two more Huntington exports, Mike Gibson and John Crist), Vic Chesnutt, Widespread Panic, etc. It was a blast. It was an education. Attending all those shows those first few years was my coming of age as a songwriter. Hearing all that wildly creative, exciting, brilliantly beautiful and brilliantly ugly music cracked my skull wide open, let all the colors pour in and mix around and form a few new colors and then start pouring back out…for a while it was truly hard for me to keep up with myself, I was filling so many notebooks with new songs and poems. \\ The first official Bloodkin show was sometime in the fall of 1986 at the Uptown Lounge. I’d taken the band name from a short story by William Goyen called The Faces Of Blood Kindred. Eric and I finally came to an agreement on the name at an overnight party over on West Lake Drive. On bass and drums were Britt West and Alberto Salazarte, respectively, who also played in Perforated Squares, and about six months later would go on to form the funk rock outfit White Buffalo. But for a while they helped us out. Those earliest Bloodkin shows, to be honest, were more an excuse for a party than anything else. We always had tons of fun, and with Britt and Alberto’s funk-ish sensibilities we always had lots of dancers.

Having started to dip their toes into the local scene upon their arrival, with a particular affinity shown for the crowds and bands at the Uptown Lounge, it wasn’t too long before Hutchens and Carter would begin to widen their circle of friends and acquaintances to include an entourage of fellow musicians, some of whom, including the members of Widespread Panic, as well as musician/producer David Barbe, would become lifelong collaborators both on the road and in the studio. Yet despite being newly-minted interlopers on a scene that could be somewhat territorial, especially when it came to out-of-towners, the duo quickly established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, in terms of both chops and attitude, highlighting their unique familial bond from childhood that would soon start to pay dividends when it came to their newly emerging songcraft. Equally inspired by the lyricism, musicianship and debauchery of the Replacements and the Stones, and landing somewhere in between, their earliest entries into the Bloodkin catalog were at turns raucous, smart, soulful, bluesy and punk-as-fuck, with a harder edge to them than would make itself known later in their career as they progressed as a band, yet still distanced from the current crop of art rock emanating from places like the 40 Watt. But for those just meeting them in the Athens scene, they were hard to miss, let alone forget— as both people and a band— with a reputation for hard partying and fledgling rock star attitude that often preceded them.

DAVE SCHOOLS (from Widespread Panic): I can’t put a year on it, but I can put a place on it. And the place was a sort of rehearsal bin that we all rented. It was in a big complex of buildings just off of downtown— you could see the back of the art school at UGA. There was a huge bar called Buckhead Beach— I don’t even remember if it was still going, but the sign was still there. And there was a bunch of lofts and bins, and we had a rehearsal bin and we shared it with a band called White Buffalo. And we did a lot of gigs with White Buffalo, and at some point, Danny and Eric showed up, and they became part of our crew and they began sharing that space with us. There were a lot of shows going down at the Uptown Lounge at that time, which was sort of the little off-to-the-side competition with the 40 Watt, as far as like national nightclubs or local nightclubs that hosted national acts. The Uptown had a lot of local acts, but I can remember Black Flag coming there and playing a couple of nights, Camper Van Beethoven. It was a really cool place. We played a lot of gigs and I worked there. And so in the course of working there, I saw— I don’t know if it was the first Bloodkin show there, or the first one I saw, I don’t think it matters— but it was unbelievable. It was just like preaching straight out from the rock and roll gospel. And those guys showed up in town from wherever they came from in West Virginia, literally looking like the love children of Keith Richards and Steven Tyler. Like Aerosmith and the Stones blew through town and left a little remnant of their DNA and they came striding down to Athens, Georgia as Danny Hutchens and Eric Carter. And you know, like us, it was an anomaly from what was happening in the town at the time. This is the mid-80s and Athens was so hip. It was so hip that when I arrived there in the fall of 1983 to go to college, they had already discounted R.E.M. as having sold out in 1983. So you have these bands, like the Bar-B-Q Killers and a lot of like really artistic noise-icians, really. So here’s Widespread Panic playing a lot of covers and slowly learning to write their original songs, and White Buffalo with Samantha Woods singing, playing a lot of like soul and funk. And then here comes Danny, and here comes Eric, and it’s just like they came slicing through the scene.

DAVID BARBE (producer/musician; Bar-B-Q Killers, Mercyland, Sugar): Danny and Eric moved to town in July of 86. And when they arrived in Athens, I think I was in Amarillo, Texas for about a week, as Eric told me recently, when they moved. And I was like, “oh yeah, I remember that week.” I was in Texas and I was just driving around the country, distributing cassettes out of the back of my truck with my girlfriend and did it for about six weeks until I ran out of money in Minneapolis. We just made like a big circle and got from Athens to San Diego, down in Mexico, up to Seattle and across to Minneapolis. And it was like, okay, we have to go to Athens now, we’re broke. But we would sleep in the truck and stuff. But I got back, and later that summer I went to a show at the Uptown Lounge, and might have even played it. It could have been a Mercyland show. But after the show, I went to a party that’s at this house, and didn’t meet them, but I heard about them. And there was this girl, Kim, and then this guy, Tim— Kim and Tim, who had just moved from West Virginia with Danny and Eric. And Kim and Tim were an item. But those were the two people I met, and they’re talking about how they want their friends to come back so I can meet them, because their friends are great songwriters and a great band. Now, I’m also 22, and I fancy myself to be a great songwriter in a great rock and roll band. And I’m from Athens, and I just played this show. And you know how dudes that age are, we’re all that way— Danny and Eric were that way. And just like the attitude that they had, you know, people were like “who do these guys think they are?,” because they just owned the place when they came in. But so Kim and Tim are telling me about these guys, and what’s their whole thing. And I was like, “well, cool, I’d like to meet them,” because I would. It was like, cool, more people moving to Athens making music. But it was the kind of the early period of people coming to Athens just to make music. The rest of us had all come to Athens to go to college and realized, oh fuck, you can be in a band here, this is cool. So suddenly it’s like, ooh— this is different, this is weird. But she was telling me— they both were like— “these guys are like Mick and Keith.” Now, I am every bit the Rolling Stones fan that Eric and Danny are. I love all the same shit those guys do. And so when somebody tells you that some other dudes are that, it’s just like, “yeah, and my son, when he plays basketball, he is like Michael Jordan.” And it’s like, okay, “she looks just like a young Elizabeth Taylor except much more beautiful.” It’s like, okay….sure. I’m getting a beer. And so they were really talked up, but I came away from that evening, like not necessarily doubting Thomas, like I need to stick my fingers in the wounds of these two guys and see if they actually are any good or not, but I was aware that their friends took what they did very seriously. So I remember that more than I remember actually meeting them the first time.

Both Barbe and Schools would go on to become lifelong friends with the Bloodkin boys after meeting them, but even more importantly, would each in their own way and capacity help to further Hutchens and Carter’s musical careers, with Barbe eventually taking the role of their most trusted producer and studio confidante— helping churn out multiple albums for both Bloodkin and Hutchens’ solo work— and Schools, with the help of his bandmates, helping to elevate some of their earliest songs into staples of Widespread Panic’s setlists and albums, as well as getting them their first record deal. As a band that was still formulating their own style and sound, for the Panic crew, Bloodkin would prove to be not just brothers-in-arms, but an incredible source of inspiration that would carry over for decades to come, helping to inform their own songwriting, with Hutchens’ vast collection of poetry notebooks and song sketches catching the eyes and ears of the group very early on and eventually translating into some of their most covered, and beloved, tunes. But beyond that, Bloodkin would also go on to become a part of a wider ecosystem of bands that would not just perform alongside Panic at shows, but also hold late-night after-parties at venues around the Southeast, hearkening back to some of their earliest encounters when both outfits would play house party shows in Athens after bars closed down at midnight or as part of weekend gatherings for both students and locals. Part of an Athens tradition that stretched back to the genesis of the B-52s in the late-1970s, and the many off-campus parties that would eventually give birth to the new crop of post-punk and college rock bands of the 1980s, it was during some of those initial late-night soirées that the bond between Bloodkin and Panic would be solidified in ways neither could have possibly imagined.

DAVE SCHOOLS: Well, proximity is a big deal. It’s a small town. It was inexpensive to live there, especially back in the eighties. All these big houses that weren’t sorority or fraternity houses, these big old Southern homes. Now they’re all like real estate agencies and lawyers’ offices and stuff. But back then they were sort of in disrepair, but it was a great opportunity for like an entire band to be able to live in a big house, and everybody could have their own room, and everybody could rehearse. And so there was a big house party scene, especially on Saturdays. Because for the longest time alcohol sales and bars shut down at midnight on Saturday because it wasn’t Saturday anymore. It was the Lord’s day, Sunday. You had all these bands living in these houses, and a place to set up their gear and play, and generally neighbors that didn’t give a shit about noise. And so you had this house party scene. And you can talk to Fred Schneider or Cindy Wilson about it from the B-52s. They’d tell you the same thing. It was like “party at the Rum Jungle house tonight,” or “party at the Pylon house,” or party at some old warehouse, like Stitchcraft. Or Widespread Panic played every Monday at the Uptown— “party at the Widespread Panic house,” until the city councilman that lived down the street got pissed off and called the cops. So that’s one thing.

ERIC CARTER: It’s interesting, back in the early days, they were kind of getting their thing going and trying to find their own voice too. Trying to find their way. At the time, they all lived here, so we all saw each other all the time— this is still in the 80s. We had our first band house on Elizabeth Street, probably in like ’87. And then the next one, it was probably ’88 or ’89, we moved to this place on North Avenue and we had one of our own little weekend backyard parties there. And I think by this point we were getting to know them fairly well, and by this time they were getting pretty popular, they were trending upwards. And we asked them if they wanted to play in our backyard: “We’re going to play, you guys want to come over? We’ve got the PA,” and blah, blah, blah. And they said, “sure.” I don’t think some of their management was too happy about it at the time, ‘cause I think when you’ve got another gig, you don’t want to cross up gigs or whatever. But to us, it was just like, “hey man, you want to come over to our house and fucking play?” I think that was a pretty big moment. Like, they were hanging out in our world, and hanging out in the house. And, I don’t know if it was JB or Todd, or somebody that was hanging out, like went into Danny’s room, and was like, “Holy shit, look at all these fucking notebooks of lyrics!” Just getting to know each other like that. And there might’ve been a period where I would see JB a lot or maybe he happened to go to this particular bar at this particular time. And it’s like, let’s make it a thing. I had a little period with Dave Schools like that. And they were just around a lot more. So they started getting us to open some shows for them here and there.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): The North Avenue overnight parties became a semi-regular event, and one weekend we had a big “bonfire” gathering in the back yard with several bands playing, including Widespread Panic— much to the dismay of their manager, Sam Lanier— because they were actually starting to hit it and make real money. This was the very last time they played a house party for free. I remember sitting on the back porch, about five feet to the left of Todd Nance— and I’d seen these guys playing several times before, Monday nights at the Uptown, but this time I really paid attention and I GOT IT. Watching Todd play those drums right beside me, I realized that he was easily as great as any of the rock n roll “greats,” like Charlie Watts or Levon Helm. This was the night Eric and I cemented our friendship with all the Panic guys. Mikey Houser was hanging out in my bedroom, looking through my notebooks, and asking me to sing some of my songs for him. I was hoarse from being up for days on end without sleep— but Mikey still seemed to like the songs. Then Todd came in, too, digging through my notebooks while I sat there stoned on my bare mattress on my bare floor— and I thought to myself, “These guys are okay— they’re as crazy as me and Eric.” It was the beginning of a long friendship. 

BAR TABS BUILT FOR DREAMERS: ATHENS, GA OUTSIDE/IN

“The barstools built for dreamers
We’ll fit fine and find
All the world’s dreams have died
But tonight they’re only taking thirsty people
Who’ve been pullin’ on their drinks
From a glass that lies a bar length wide”

– Widespread Panic, “Barstools and Dreamers”

As a small town filled with big dreamers hoping to catch the next wave of local media attention that had made national names out of acts like R.E.M. and the B-52s in the earlier half of the decade, it wasn’t just a robust music scene built around house parties and shows at the 40 Watt and Uptown Lounge that Hutchens and Carter had stumbled into. In fact, they soon found themselves at the center of another great longstanding Athens tradition, based around a strong professional community of both established and burgeoning artists from across multiple disciplines, who made a point of helping one another and passing along good will and support in what was a multifaceted, yet insular, scene in a predominantly mainstream Southern city ruled by college football and fraternity parties. Always on the lookout for fellow freaks and musicians who were pushing the scene forward in new and unexpected ways, among the cognoscenti in town, Bloodkin would find not just a welcome home, but a network of like-minded individuals and bands who would help keep the creative torch alive for each other in the Classic City. Following a code of conduct and overall vibe that would receive national recognition in the down-home 1987 documentary Athens, GA: Inside/Out— with its friendly snapshots of indie-Americana come to life in north Georgia— there was always a collective sensibility at work in Athens that seemed to prize cooperation and a sense of camaraderie over all else. Of course, as with any other music scene around the world, there were cliques, and friendly (and not so friendly) competitions between bands vying for the public’s attention and a shot at the big time, but for the most part, a general atmosphere of good will and mutual appreciation reigned supreme, even among artists that the public at large may have considered to be at polar ends of the sonic spectrum, in terms of music, presentation, and fanbase. In the end, they were all dipping into the same communal well anyways, and as with any true Southerners at heart, a helping hand and spirit of congenial hospitality were looked upon far more favorably than any bullshit rock star attitudes or petty backstabbing, as you would more than likely run into any perceived foes on a far more regular and uncomfortable basis than in a larger city like Atlanta or Nashville. Lifting each other up as a sign of solidarity, playing in each others bands and on records, hosting shows together, and just hanging around town— and built around deep and long-lasting friendships— it was an ethos that would go on to benefit the worlds of Bloodkin and Widespread Panic in profound ways, and become something of a hallmark of their professional careers together. Challenging each other to write better and better music, and cheering one another along the way, it was an inspiring creative atmosphere to be a part of as a young band trying to make their mark.

DAVID BARBE: Well, that all goes back to R.E.M. You know, R.E.M. was so generous with their knowledge and opportunity, and providing opportunity for others— literally with other bands [offering] their excess bass strings and drumsticks and things— that they just set the tone of how to do your business as a rock band. And they begat the same type of practices that are carried out to this day by Widespread Panic and Drive-By Truckers. And certainly was a big influence on me. And so you see those bands who continue to pay that forward. And then as a result, the next group of people, it’s kind of the same way, because they see that here that’s how we do it. It’s like the music scene in Athens really isn’t a competitive thing. It’s a collaborative thing. And that’s what makes it so different than a lot of other places I’ve spent time, is that in other places it’s like, you winning means I’m losing. And really, that’s just not how it is. Just because you win doesn’t mean I lose. I mean, we can both be successful at something, right? Last time I checked. But music scenes, it’s so territorial, and just not cool. And Athens, it’s never been like that here. Frankly, everybody’s pretty cool. And Panic and the spirit between Panic and Bloodkin exemplifies that for sure.

DAVE SCHOOLS: And the other thing is, and I’ll tell you, David Barbe knows exactly what the hell he’s talking about, because I just wrote a forward for a friend of mine who’s putting a book together about flyers of Athens from like 1967 to 2004. And I’ve told this story before. I’ve told it when I delivered a commencement address for Barbe’s MBUS program, I’ve written about it, and I’ll tell it one more time, and I’ll always tell it— because it speaks not only of Dave Barbe, but how representative he is of the spirit we’re talking about in Athens, Georgia. I was a freshman, I came down from Richmond, Virginia, I threw my shit into my dorm room, and my roommate walked in and immediately saw my flat of Grateful Dead cassette bootleg tapes and soured on me immediately. So I was like, “well, this has got off to a great start.” And I had made some friends across the hall, but I was walking out into the Reed Quad, just sort of wandering around aimlessly, going, “what have I done with this whole college thing?” (Laughs) And this shirtless, almost like afro’d guy, with a little plastic Chiclets necklace, just comes up to me and thrusts his hand out and says, “Hi, my name’s Dave, what’s yours?” And I said, “Well, my name is Dave too.” And he says, “I’m Dave Barbe, I play bass.” And I’m like, “I’m Dave Schools, I play bass.” And we’ve known each other— he introduced me to Arthur Johnson and Laura Carter and David Judd in the Bar-B-Q Killers, and Harry Joyner— and the list goes on. But it is that spirit inherent in somebody thrusting their hand out and taking the initiative to bring an outsider in. Now, Athens might be the toughest town to move to as a band, ‘cause we don’t like that. You don’t come here as a band because Athens is where you make it— with the exception that proves the rule being Patterson and Cooley [of Drive-By Truckers], obviously. But most people got together because they were a bunch of friends and they just wanted to hang out and play music. And so by virtue of it being a small town, people played in all kinds of different bands. You know, this band could be made up of members of three other bands, and it still works that way to this day. And you have these collectives like Elephant 6, and those guys and all of their bands, and that sort of collective thing was what was happening with Widespread Panic and Bloodkin and White Buffalo.

DANNY HUTCHENS: Like I said, for example— the Panic guys, us, Vic. A lot of different bands that we’re just buddies with, you know, like not even necessarily just music, just like hanging out, drinking a beer or whatever. In those days, Athens was an even smaller town, you know? There were a couple places to play. We all went there, we all saw each other at the Uptown Lounge, and at the 40 Watt we all saw each other. It was like going to school. Because if you went to the Uptown Lounge five nights a week, you’d see a lot of the same people there in the crowd, this kind of rotating who was on stage. This included Panic, and sometimes R.E.M. would come in, and sometimes Vic Chesnutt. This was world-class songwriting. This was not fucking around. And to me, I just moved here and it was exactly what I was looking for, because Eric Carter and I had lived in Huntington, West Virginia, where at the time, if you wanted the gig, you had to be in a cover band. They didn’t want to hear any original music. And when we moved to Athens, you were expected to not only write your own stuff, but it better be pretty fucking good. I mean, it was the bar. The bar was very high, even just among, you know, the hundred of us or fifty or however many people were at at the bar each night. Like, “Man, Vic Chesnutt played here last night. R.E.M. play here.” It was real. And then to me that was just kind of daunting for a minute, but then it was like, this is great. It was an education, and it was just so creative, and it was so mutually supportive. It was such a great music community. I can’t overstate it. Having been in other cities since then, little bits of time here and there— I’ve been in Nashville or New York or whatever— it just always seemed to be much more competitive, kind of cutthroat. And Athens, and I think it’s got to still be this way— I mean, I probably don’t have the same perspective because I’m older and I have kids and I don’t go out every night— but I know, if somebody’s amp blows up, people call me and vice versa, you know? I’ll be there. And that’s just how it is. There’s healthy competition amongst everybody to be a better songwriter, but there’s sort of a more friendly, familial vibe, even within the cliques. It’s more like a friendly competition. Like, “Oh man, did you hear that? That’s Vic’s new song. Did you hear that shit?” Really cheering each other on. I mean, for real. But, of course you wanted to show up, and wanted to say, “Hey, this is what I have.”

And it was that same spirit of camaraderie that would eventually lead Panic to cover not just songs from the Bloodkin catalog, but also collaborate with other local musicians like Vic Chesnutt in the group brute., as well as pay homage to early Athens influences like Love Tractor, who the band would name one of their most beloved songs after on their second self-titled album from 1991, affectionately known as Mom’s Kitchen. Their first release on the newly-rebooted Capricorn Records, it was also the same album that Bloodkin, and Danny Hutchens as a songwriter, would make their recording debut on with the inclusion of the now-canonical tune “Makes Sense to Me,” three full years before the world at large would ever get to hear the band itself on a proper album.

But perhaps one of the greatest, and most memorable, expressions of the communal Athens vibe would start even earlier than that in 1990 in what would become a multi-year event billed as Bar Tab, in which members of the Athens music community would come together in support of one another— and usually a charitable cause— but also as a way to pay wayward bar tabs in need of settling amongst the participants. Lasting from 1990 to 1995, with other permutations taking place periodically since then, the Bar Tab shows were a chance for friends and musical peers to hang out, play with each other, debut new songs and projects, and generally just jam with each other and have a good time. A hallmark of the early days of both Bloodkin and Widespread Panic when they were just starting to make their way in the music business and gain new audiences, they were a great example of what made, and has continued to make, Athens such a unique part of Georgia music history, as well as that of America as a whole. Loose, fun, and with plenty of libations to go around for everyone, they are shows that have now fallen into local lore as one of the high watermarks— even if misunderstood by some fans— of what makes Athens tick.

As Widespread Panic’s John Bell once recalled in 2012 during a later iteration of the event put together in honor of founding guitarist Michael Houser’s passing in 2002, the point was always to “Get all the musicians— like all the new wavers, and all the art musicians, even the crazy ones— and to get us all together on one stage and have a concert together. Get to know one another. So, it was Mikey’s idea to birth something like this. It was called Bar Tab. And basically there were two things he wanted to be accomplished. Well, three things: make some music. Two: dispel any mystery between all the different genres that were happening in Athens at the time. And so, enough people came through the door to pay for our bar tab. So, this is another installment of Mikey’s vision.”

ERIC CARTER: The one thing I remember about [Bar Tab], and I’m probably going to get some of this wrong, but I think the idea stemmed from a conversation with me and Mikey. Or maybe he kind of had the vague idea for some kind of like mishmash of bands, and came up with that name, so it’s not like “Widespread Panic featuring members of Bloodkin.” We gotta come up with something else. And we’ll just do some covers, and it was a very loose idea initially. And I can’t remember how many of them we did— several of them— and I think the first one went pretty well. And we started building them around, it was either like a medical bill situation or a legal situation. We always kind of turned them into some sort of benefit. And then at some point, it started getting to like, anytime we’re going to say we’re announcing a Bar Tab show— and this might’ve come from Mikey, I’m not a hundred percent sure— it’s like, “Oh, Widespread Panic is gonna play!,” and it just got too much for that place. It was becoming too much of a thing. It’s like, “Oh, it’s a secret Widespread Panic show!” If I’m correct in my hazy memory, I think that’s kind of why it sort of came to a stop, you know? And at that point they were probably going to be out of town more, or some of them may have started to drift to other areas, like moving to other areas. It wasn’t like we were all hanging out together all at the same time. Like, go out to a bar and say, “Oh look, there’s Widespread Panic and Bloodkin sitting at the bar having drinks.” You know? Those things were a lot of fun.

DAVE SCHOOLS: Well, the genesis was a bunch of people getting together because they owed a bunch of money to the bar. I mean, you could ask what’s in a name…(laughs)…but generally it’s Occam’s razor on something like this. Bar Tab started off like “let’s have a party and be able to pay our tab.” But then obviously it got bigger and bigger and it moved into charitable works. You know, I think the die was cast when we did one and we came out and played a new record that we had just made. But then we blew it the next year. This was one of my favorites— I remember our manager, Sam Lanier, had this article from The Red & Black pinned up on the bulletin board in his office— [when] the next year we sold out the Georgia Theatre for a Bar Tab show and it wound up being the brute. record. Like we came out and we didn’t do some Widespread Panic record that was yet to be released— a bunch of new songs. We did this collaborative recording with Vic Chesnutt. And the crowd was just flummoxed. They were stymied. And the article from The Red & Black, it had this little graphic thumbs down kind of thing, and a picture of like JB and Vic on stage, and it just said “Widespread Disappointment.” Of course later the brute. record comes out, and to this day it’s probably still very misunderstood. But I think people have gotten this collaborative thing. But that also speaks to the collaborative spirit, from my side of the coin. And I love terms like ‘collaborative spirit.’ I use it all the time.

DANNY HUTCHENS: You know in those days— Todd Nance and I always talk[ed] about this— the crowds, the fans, it was kind of clique-ish. We always talk[ed] about how Vic Chesnutt was a 40 Watt guy and Panic was a Georgia Theatre band, you know? And those crowds— like the big story about that was, eventually— that Panic and Vic did brute. And leading up to that, we did these Bar Tab shows at the Theatre, which were like all of us, and it was a benefit or a series of benefits. And we all played together, and there were like some bad reviews because it wasn’t a Panic show. Like, “they didn’t play any Widespread Panic!” Stuff like that, which really pissed them off. But there were just people that kind of didn’t get it.

A chronic problem among the public at large when it came to the inner workings of not just the Athens music scene in general, but also the inner workings of Widespread Panic and their extended family and friends, the misunderstanding of just how interconnected all of it is— and always has been— has been a major hurdle that is in some ways still being overcome today. A large network in a small town of artists and artisans bound by music, creativity, and their willingness to support each other and their various projects, in many ways the Bar Tab shows were emblematic of the ethos that has always made the Classic City one of the most revered music towns in all of the country. As a place where people are encouraged by one another to follow their muse, spread their aesthetic wings and take flight, and know that there will always be at least someone in the audience to care about what it is that you’re doing— even if it’s just fellow musicians— and maybe even help it grow and flourish. But more than that, it’s also representative of a spirit of regional hospitality that can largely only be found in the heart of the Deep South, and one that would help define the next several decades of the careers of both Bloodkin and Widespread Panic, as well as David Barbe and newer acts that came to town like the Drive-By Truckers. All of whom would be interconnected and help each other in ways that could only happen in Athens.

LIFER: ON TOUR WITH MOE TUCKER

“I was playing this joint before they were born
I ain’t no civilian ain’t no greenhorn
We stay open from dusk til dawn
I’ll be here singing long after they’re gone”

– Daniel Hutchens, “Lifer”

In a town where connections and community were of paramount importance and a guiding principle that has led to not just mutual appreciation and support, but also unexpected collaborations and affiliations, it should come as no surprise that the creative world of Danny Hutchens and Bloodkin extended well beyond Widespread Panic, feral house parties, and venues like the Uptown Lounge and Georgia Theatre. In fact, it would eventually extend all the way into the life and career of one of the most revered and influential groups in all of modern music with the Velvet Underground through the same word of mouth that led people like David Barbe to seek out Hutchens and Carter after first getting wind of their arrival in town back in the mid-1980s. Having earned a reputation around town as a great songwriter and guitar player, at the same time that Bloodkin’s star was beginning to rise with that of Widespread Panic throughout the late-80s and early-90s— although at a decidedly different pace, with Panic quickly jumping out front in terms of popularity due to their persistent touring on both the bar and Southern college fraternity circuit, before graduating to bigger venues— Hutchens would soon find himself in the rarefied company of drummer Moe Tucker, who was in the process of relaunching her solo career with a new band. Having been recommended to Tucker through her daughter Kerry, who lived in Athens and was friends with Hutchens, in a very short span of time he would go from auditioning at her home in Douglas, Georgia, to hopping on a train to New York City with her to play with a band he had never met or rehearsed with before in front of a packed crowd of some of the Big Apple’s most famous rock cognoscenti. Having essentially jumped the line from being a relatively unknown entity from a small Southern college rock scene, to playing with a founding member of the Velvets, Hutchens would not just stick the landing and become a beloved touring member of her group throughout the early-to- mid-1990s, he would eventually wind up as a guitar tech on the Velvets’ 1993 reunion tour, overseeing sold out concerts all over Europe and hanging out with the likes of Lou Reed, John Cale, and another member he would grow extremely close to through his time in Moe’s solo band and with the Velvets, Sterling Morrison.

But that would come a little later. First, he had to prove himself in the crucible of the downtown New York art rock scene by being thrown off the deep end during one of the most taxing gigs he would ever play as a professional musician. It would also be his introduction into working with a coterie of underground rock musicians whose pedigrees would reach back into the earliest days of the New York City punk explosion at CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City, in the form of veteran guitarist Sonny Vincent from Testors, as well as a nexus of newer indie rock bands like Half Japanese, through drummer John Sluggett, and acts like the B.A.L.L. and Violent Femmes. All of whom were a far cry from the rootsier sonic world of Widespread Panic, yet also very much related in terms of the larger independent rock scenes developing all over the country throughout the 1980s, and playing music that Hutchens was very much a fan of going back to his admiration of people like Patti Smith and the Ramones. Unknowingly connecting disparate sounds and scenes from across the United States, Hutchens would ultimately make his mark on all of them along the way, and all thanks to Moe Tucker taking a chance on a hungry young upstart from West Virginia who was looking for opportunities to spread his wings and prove himself among some of rock’s heaviest and influential hitters. The beginning of a journey that would take him around the world long before he ever really toured with Bloodkin, it was an experience that would shape his ideas and attitude toward art, fame and the music business in deep and profound ways.

DANNY HUTCHENS: Moe had started playing music again before I met her. After the Velvet Underground she had had stopped playing music. She was working at a Walmart in Douglas, Georgia. She started playing music again and made a record before I met her [1989’s Life In Exile After Abdication, which featured contributions from members of the Velvet Underground, Half Japanese, and Sonic Youth], but she had this show coming up in New York City that somehow she had booked. It was kind of like a big New York City deal, Lou Reed was coming and all this stuff, and she didn’t have a band. She was auditioning people to put a band together for this one show [*]. And so I guess she kind of gave her daughter the mission of like scouting out musicians in Athens, Georgia, you know? And I knew her— I knew Kerry— and she recommended me. And I went down to Douglas and tried out and I got the gig and I actually played guitar for that show. \\ Man, looking back, it was like this big deal, New York City kind of— you know, the kind of shit that I’m like, how did I wind up here? It was a big deal. Everybody was there— like the New York arts and music community was there. This was like Moe’s coming out party. And it was just a blower to tell you the truth. That show, I have such vague memories of it. I just remember busting my ass to all the songs just not to let her down. I don’t even remember everybody to tell you the truth. Like, I practiced with Moe down here, and we went to New York. It was just crazy. We rode the train to New York and back, and I remember talking to Moe on the way back— you know, this was when she was starting to actually think about playing music full-time or professionally again— and we hit it off, is what it comes down to. I mean, just as people, you know? I really liked her. She was just a very nice woman. And I respected her music. I really liked it. The Velvets, but also the stuff she was getting into as a solo artist. [*- Tucker had actually been touring for several years with a band, and had released several albums, EPs and singles as well going back to the early-1980s, but was recruiting new members to play on upcoming tours and releases.]

SONNY VINCENT (from Moe Tucker Band/Testors): It was a really cool show. I had been playing with Moe for a while, so I didn’t have the same kind of like sink or swim feeling that Daniel had. But, it was great because there were people from the Factory there, and Legs McNeil was there, and it was really like a lot of celebrities and a lot of friends. Some people I’d met before. When I was a kid I did spend some time in Andy Warhol’s Factory and met some people, so it was really kind of a cool thing for Moe and for us. And I guess it was terrifying for Daniel. Probably would have been good to build up to something like that instead of jumping right in. \\ I remember that before Daniel we had different people that just didn’t work out— Moe didn’t like them. Oftentimes her young daughter, who I guess was still in high school, was recruiting musicians from the local area and saying, “Hey mom, you know you should check this guy out,” and then she would and we’d bring them on tour, and it would be some kind of catastrophe ‘cause Moe didn’t like them. So this one was kind of like bingo— like great. So when Danny showed up we were all happy. He was personable, he was nice looking and was polite, and just a really easy going guy that we felt we could be crammed in a van [with] driving all day. 

JOHN SLUGGETT (from Moe Tucker Band/Half Japanese): We were looking for a bass player and Moe’s daughter, Kerry, she knew everybody in town. And she said, “Well, I got someone who plays the bass.” So we tried this guy out and his name was Danny. And Danny did an okay job on the bass, and he’s an alright guy, but I guess he was just a little rough around the edges. But Moe wasn’t totally sold on the guy. And we did a tour, a European tour, and had a good time and it wasn’t a disaster. But so we tried someone else, and she moved over to the guitar chair, and that sort of didn’t work for a tour. So Carrie said, “Well, I know another guy named Danny,” and we’re like, “Oh no, not another Danny.” And it was Danny Hutchens. I was drumming and he was drafted to play the bass. And he could play bass— Danny’s quite a good musician— and Danny got in the band and sounded really good. Danny was just kind of a well-spoken, soft-spoken, gentlemanly guy. He would seem, on the surface of things, to stay out of trouble. So he’s making himself “Good Danny,” ‘cause we had “Good Danny” and “Bad Danny.” So he was “Good Danny,” and that’s when I got to know Danny, touring with him. And sure enough, he was just a considerate person, a good man, and was very respectful. Just the kind of guy that’s real cool and very nice, [and] a lot of fun to hang with.

DANNY HUTCHENS: You know, at the same time she started playing music again she actually started writing songs. She had not really been a songwriter, but I just thought she had some really interesting perspective on it. Like she had a song called “Spam” [correctly titled “Spam Again”] about buying Spam to feed her kids: working class, single mom songs. You know, things about real life. And I just thought it was really interesting and cool. And I liked her and we hit it off. And so she asked me if I wanted to be part of this band she was getting together. She was going to tour Europe. And this all seems great to me. So as we put it together, what we figured out was, the best contribution I could really make was playing bass for her, because she had also recruited this guy, Sonny Vincent, who was a pretty accomplished, like, punk guitarist who had his roots in New York City in the seventies. And then the thing that sealed the deal was she got Sterling Morrison on board. So it was like, yeah, I’ll play bass. Like, let me just step back here and I’ll play bass. And she had done a previous tour of Europe before I met her. Maybe a couple actually, and she’d had a few bass players before that. And what I realized was, and the reason she got rid of them, was they were too good. She was very specific and very hardcore about how she wanted the music. Like, in other words, if she wanted four down strokes, that’s what she wanted. She didn’t want somebody slapping the bass or improvising for the guitars. And these guys, like I heard tapes, and I also wound up talking to the drummer who had played with that previous incarnation, and that was the deal. They just couldn’t play the way she wanted them to. And so I was not really a bass player and I was like, “I can handle that.” I can play as simply as you want me to. If you literally want a note, and then eight seconds on another note, no problem. And that was often what she wanted: very minimal, very broken down, and just very specific. Like I said, like upstrokes, down strokes— she had a very specific idea of what she wanted. No nonsense, no noodling around, no jamming, none of that shit. And it was a discipline— to play simply and to play sparse, and play sometimes slow, or sometimes really fast. Just what her vision was, what she wanted. And so I was able and willing to do that. And so we wound up with the band that backed her up for a number of years there in the 90s. Like four or five years with me on bass. John Sluggett was the drummer,  Sonny Vincent on guitar, and Sterling Morrison on guitar. And it was in essence— just in my view, anyway— like a cool little punk band. And it was, like I said, kind of a discipline. And I still to this day love that kind of music. And it’s kinda my roots, you know, that combined that with very, in a sense, minimal songwriting. Like in the sense of like, maybe even Hank Williams or something, you know? It’s like a two and a half minute song, but it’s a whole story. Very minimal, but everything is in there.

JOHN SLUGGETT: I think Danny and me learning from Moe, I mean, we were all very deferential. You know, you get in a band with someone from the Velvet Underground you want to be as respectful as possible.

SONNY VINCENT: [Sterling] liked Daniel a lot. He was very kind to Daniel, and like I said, Daniel fit right in with us. They were not acting entitled or anything to us.

DANNY HUTCHENS: In Europe in particular, the Velvet Underground were, and are, regarded as artists, not pop stars. You know, none of that. They were taken very seriously. And so, like when I would do tours with Moe for example, we’d go over there, they’d treat us like rock stars. And it would just be so far over my head in terms of my experience. And we did a few tours in the states with Moe— it was just like, fifty people at the 40 Watt in Athens. I mean, it was okay. It was fine by my standards. It was just an eye opener for me in so many ways and the differences in how American music is perceived in Europe. You know how all the old jazz guys would go over there? We played a place called Jazz House, which I think was in Hamburg, Germany, if I’m not mistaken, the famous old jazz club. They had pictures on the wall of everyone who had played there, which was like every great American jazz musician. Everybody. It was just stunning to me now, like we’re this little punk band playing there, but there it’s received as an art form. I mean, rock and roll and American jazz and blues, it’s kind of respected as an art form, elevated beyond just playing clubs. You’re performing something that they believe is high art. Not just sort of art, but like a high art thing. I mean, that was always Lou Reed’s thing. When you read interviews with him about being a songwriter and about rock and roll, it was trying to treat it like any other art form, like being a novelist. You know, he said, if I had written novels that the subjects were the things I wrote the songs about, nobody would have been as shocked. But to put these things like drug addiction or sadomasochism or murder, or all this shit that he read about in a rock and roll song, at the time that was kind of unheard of. But his philosophy was: this is an art. Like anything else you can make, you can take it as high as you want to. You can write about anything. And he did, In my opinion. He helped it become recognized as more of an adult art form, as opposed to when he was growing up— and he loved it— but a lot of people perceived rock and roll as teenage stuff, you know? Just kind of like a fad right now, especially in the early days. Then obviously there are a lot of different people involved with growing it up in different ways, but that was his actual philosophy. Like, this is what I want to do, is to make this, to use this as an adult, fully-fledged art form.

Jumping on tour with Moe in the early-90s, Hutchens would not only get his first taste of life on the road and world travel with her solo band, he would also record three albums with her, starting with 1991’s I Spent A Week There The Other Night, followed by the 1992 live album Oh No, They’re Recording This Show, and 1994’s Dogs Under Stress. Combining Moe’s love of early R&B and rock influences like Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones, with her working class, salt-of-the-earth lyrics, and minimalist punk attitude, Hutchens would add both bass and guitar to the proceedings in the studio, along with some backing vocals, becoming an integral member of her ensemble throughout the mid-90s. Learning the ropes of the hard scrabble independent music business alongside so many veteran performers, all of whom had earned their stripes the hard way driven by nothing more than sheer determination and passion for their craft, it would prove to be a pivotal moment in Daniel’s life and career that would provide a world class education in terms of both artistic integrity and the ins and outs of making a living doing what you love, while also maintaining a healthy disdain for the music industry as a whole. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share the stage with two of his idols, as well as be introduced to a who’s who of underground rock at the time, Hutchens would also be given another incredibly rare chance to live a rock and roll fantasy most people his age would kill for, by being asked to hit the road with the reunited Velvet Underground for their 1993 European reunion tour as Sterling Morrison’s personal guitar tech.

Having gotten close with Morrison while playing and recording alongside him in Moe’s solo band, Hutchens would be taken under the wing of the soft-spoken, maverick guitar player and given a front row seat to a historical series of concerts that would see the Velvets perform in front of the largest and most enthusiastic audiences of their career, as well as open up dates for U2 on their groundbreaking Zoo TV Tour. An eye-opening experience that would give Hutchens a taste of the proverbial “big time”— one that he would document in a detailed personal tour journal he had initially started while on the road with Moe— the tour would end up being the band’s onstage swan song together, culminating in a concert film and album recorded live over three nights in Paris, France— released in the fall of that year as Live MCMXCIII— that would see the band at the height of their collective, if aged, powers. With an extraordinary vantage point behind the stage every night as the band wowed crowds across the continent with their trademark mix of chugging rock and roll rhythms, modernist, street-wise lyrics, and avant-garde sensibilities, and a front row seat to conversations and hangs with the band itself all over Europe’s most beautiful cities, it would prove to be a momentous and influential event in Hutchens’ life that would leave a lasting impression he would carry with him as both a person and artist going forward.

DAVE SCHOOLS: He was the tech on that Velvet Underground reunion tour. He came back from that with stories.

ERIC CARTER: He loved doing all that. He loved Moe to death. And I got to meet her a little bit at various times. And Danny loved all that stuff with them. He got to do the tech thing for awhile when the Velvet Underground did the reunion thing. And then he was always in Moe Tucker’s little band that she had going for awhile. And Danny told me this a million times, it’s like, “I wish you could’ve met Sterling. Cause you guys would’ve fucking gotten along famously.” He always spoke very highly of Sterling Morrison. And all of them. He loved the whole thing.

DANNY HUTCHENS: It was a great tour. I mean, it wasn’t like some kind of nostalgia thing. They kicked ass. It rocked. I mean, it was great. And the crowds were just overwhelmed. It’s one of the best crowd reactions I’ve ever seen. There was— somebody calculated this— like at every single U2 show, the Velvet Underground played to more people than saw them in their entire original career. I mean, in relative terms, they were not originally successful at all. They got onto a major label through the graces of Andy Warhol, but in major label terms, the records were failures. They just didn’t really succeed in relevant terms. But you know, the famous quote that I see attributed to all kinds of different people about “not many people bought those records, but every single person who bought them started their own band”— which is an exaggeration, I’m sure— but there’s truth to it. I mean, they became what they are now. They became hugely influential later on. \\ It was definitely “holy shit.” And the thing about it was, this was these people getting back together after many years. There was a lot of stress and tension between them, and for me for sure. I just felt like if I tune my guitar with my band and it’s out, and it’s not really in tune, you know, who cares? But if I hand Sterling Morrison a guitar and it’s not in tune, man, I just don’t want to live (laughs). It was very stressful. They were going to be recording— you know, making a film and a live record— and this was hanging over all our heads. So there were aspects of it that were just not fun, but then when they actually played, they were great. There were some rough spots at first, you know, like most tours, as they went along. And by the time we got to the recordings in Paris, they were just firing on all cylinders. It rocks. It was great. And the crowds were just…you know, Moe Tucker’s a very— once again— simple drummer. But there’s something about how she plays drums, that the crowd would just move like one animal. Like all those heads bobbing up and down like I’ve rarely seen. They all were great. Just truthfully— Moe Tucker, she killed it. Sterling— I will never forget his lead breaks on “White Light/White Heat” and the song “Rock and Roll.” When he hit, man, he would just fucking destroy. And it was just amazing. It was great to watch and the crowds were just so into it. So ecstatic, just screaming through the whole thing, just so happy. \\ This was right when Bloodkin was about to make our first record. Like, as soon as I got home, we got on that. I was very anxious to get back home and the tour kept extending. They kept adding dates— like adding weeks. I was like, goddamnit. But, also at the same time— same thing I said before— when they played those three nights in Paris, man, I’ll never forget it. It was transcendent. And it was when they hit it— because that’s what it was all leading up to was recording and filming. And everybody in that crew, like Lou Reed— a very professional crew and the film crews and the lighting and everything— those guys were all over me. Like, “this has to be right,” making it more tense than it was. And when we got to those three shows, every night those guys, they were all coming up to me like, “That was amazing! That was great!” Everybody was just like floating. They nailed it. It was great. And so yeah, it was that, and I mean the U2 show— a lot of the shows were kind of like, man, I’m so glad that I’m here. You know? How did I get here? And also some of the scenes, like hanging out with Sterling in some of these cities and just getting to be a part of the tour vibe overall and going out and exploring, being there in Paris or wherever. It was pretty amazing. Once again, I love those people. I mean, this was an opportunity and an education for me, but it was like, they also became pretty dear friends of mine. 

Much like Danny and Eric, in an eerie similarity, Moe and Sterling had been childhood friends who would go on to chase rock and roll dreams together throughout their adult lives, while also being relegated to the history books as important and influential artists who never quite made it commercially, and whose legend often outweighed any financial reward for their work. A striking parallel that was not lost on Hutchens, in many ways it was one of the things that he admired most about both them and their music and would set up a template in his own mind about how to conduct yourself as an artist. Putting a premium on creative integrity above all else, no matter what the cost, it would prove to be a life lesson that both spurred Hutchens’ development as a songwriter and musician, and, in many ways, held him back at the same time. Wanting to pursue art for art’s sake, with an eye on creating songs and music that would stand the test of time and put him in league with his heroes, the impact his years spent alongside Moe and Sterling would have on the trajectory of his career can’t really be overstated on both a personal and professional level. Two lifers who believed in the transformative power of art and music, yet refused to be beholden to the personal and financial imperatives of the fickle and often cutthroat business side of their chosen field, they stood as towering influences on Hutchens’ growth as a young artist, and would lay the groundwork for the brilliant yet frustrating career path he would ultimately follow with both Bloodkin and as a solo performer.

DANNY HUTCHENS: They [Moe and Sterling] loved each other dearly. They were like childhood friends before they ever played music, before the Velvet Underground— any of that stuff. And when he died later [on August 13, 1995] , Moe called me up that day just crying her eyes out, and she was just— she was destroyed. But they loved each other. And it was just really interesting and really cool. I absorbed musical stuff from them for sure, which I kind of described— the real simple, minimal approach to music. But I think the thing that I really learned from them was their approach to the music business. Which was basically just like do it yourself, avoiding the bullshit. They both had deep suspicions or skepticism about the music business. And Sterling would always say, “You know, I don’t have to play”— like when something was…it’d be some kind of bullshit going on. He would always say something like, “I don’t have to play music. That’s an option I’ve exercised before.” You know, he went to Texas and became a professor and a tugboat captain and all the other stuff. He quit the music. They both did. And it was just really, really interesting to me to see all that. \\ I saw them like mentors, teachers, and elder statesmen, or whatever term you want to put on it. I had such respect for them, but I also got to actually like them as people. I think especially playing with Moe for those years, and Sterling— I think I appreciated that at the time, even— I think I kind of understood, it’s like, man, these guys are veterans. They’ve made some of the great records ever recorded, but they’re just people and this is how they do it. Just kind of watching them and observing how they dealt with just everyday things— the club owners, promotors, and all that stuff. It was definitely enlightening. Just some of the conversations I would have with them about the music business. And I remember, I think it was Moe said something to me like, “In the music business you can only be as successful to the extent you’re willing to get screwed.” And she’s right.

SUCCESS YOURSELF: LIFE IN THE MINOR LEAGUES

“There’s no risk and there’s no pain
Just teaching you the rules of the game
Bend over and earn your pay
You’re gonna be a star someday”

– Daniel Hutchens, “Success Yourself”

The early-to-mid-90s for Daniel Hutchens and Bloodkin were a very special time in terms of artistic and professional growth as a band. While Hutchens was out learning the ropes of the music business from his time spent touring and recording with Moe Tucker and the Velvet Underground, he would also be gathering an impressive array of songs culled from reams and reams of notebooks and lyrical sketches he would cobble together over long nights spent with his guitar and a Tascam 4-track lent to him by John Bell from Widespread Panic, who had taken a particular interest in helping Daniel get his songs recorded. With his bandmate Eric Carter fleshing out arrangements and accompaniment to accent the deeply existential portraits and character studies Hutchens could conjure on any given evening, and living with each other on and off in scruffy apartments and houses all over Athens, they would take their working methodology first established back in Ripley, and then later in Huntington, and put together an impressive body of material, some of which would not see the light of day until years later. Trading off musical ideas, along with various substances, the two transplants would also assemble a rotating cast of local players to help round out their musical vision both in the studio and on the road, some of whom would come in and out of the fold over the course of their long career.

Progressing rapidly as a formidable live entity and songwriting unit, Hutchens and Carter would start to make real inroads in the local Athens music community and around the Southeast, seemingly on a concurrent trajectory with their friends in Widespread Panic, who were taking off as a professional touring act playing bigger and bigger venues after graduating from the confines of the Uptown Lounge and Georgia Theatre, eventually to larger clubs and amphitheaters across the United States. Known for their lengthy two set concerts that were heavy on extended improvisation and covers of classic rock songs, Panic was able to tap into the burgeoning “jamband” scene that started to coalesce around the ever-growing hippie contingent birthed and fostered by acts like the Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers starting in the late-1960s, adding to it a dedicated coterie of college age followers they had attracted by playing university towns around the country alongside newer simpatico acts like Phish, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. And although Bloodkin would play to some of the very same venues and audiences that Panic would, often criss-crossing each other as part of late night after-party bills in the same city or with Bloodkin opening for them, the band would never quite break through the proverbial glass ceiling of fandom and wider recognition that their fellow Athenians would, eventually falling into the shadow of their longtime friends despite being revered as matchless peers by members of Panic’s entourage and other similar acts.

Having been lumped in together as part of a new wave of “Southern rock” that would also include other Georgia-based acts like Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ and the Black Crowes, whereas Panic would quickly jump from an indie label with the release of their 1988 debut Space Wrangler on Landslide Records, to the legendary Capricorn Records imprint out of Macon— garnering them a multi-album record deal, an ever-bigger media profile, and more robust touring capabilities— Bloodkin would find themselves lagging slightly behind in terms of getting their music out to a wider audience, having to wait until 1994 to release their debut long player, several crucial years after initially making waves on the local music scene in Athens. Fueled by artistic hunger, yet stubborn, the members of Bloodkin could be their own worst enemies when it came to pursuing their rock and roll fantasy, supplementing their obsessive need for quality content and songcraft with a lackadaisical and often obstinate approach to the business side of getting things done to help further their career. A double-edged sword that would play out repeatedly over the ensuing years, despite having gained a reputation as some of the most talented young players in the Southeast, they often couldn’t get out of their own way long enough to take their art and music to the next level, coupled with an aversion to prolonged touring. Known for a hard-partying lifestyle to match that of some of their biggest musical heroes— again, the Stones and Replacements in particular come to mind— despite their own personal proclivities, both Hutchens and Carter cared deeply about the quality of music they were making and wanted to produce a body of work that would rival, in their own small and unique way, that of their influences. Happy being a cult band whose impact far outweighed their commercial appeal, their version of success— and not selling out to pressure from record labels or the public at large— would eventually lead them to being in the same league with some of the other great underground rock and literary heroes they mimicked and adored, earning them the respect of their peers from Widespread Panic, to singer/songwriter Jerry Joseph, and newer acts like the Drive-By Truckers. Rooted firmly in rock and roll, but with a wide swath of stylistic flairs that incorporated blues, country, and folk into their developing sound, despite never breaking into the mainstream, even after a brief flirtation with Capricorn in 1992, their integrity as artists remained fully intact.

DAVID BARBE: Bloodkin, to Athens, it’s the melting pot of the community. The jamband people like Bloodkin, the punk rock scene people like Bloodkin, the bar fly scene like Bloodkin, the Americana people like Bloodkin. Because it’s great songs that speak to people. And Danny and Eric— you know, there’s so many different versions of Bloodkin. There’s the version that “well, there’s this drummer and this bass player or whatever.” There’s a totally other version of Bloodkin that Danny and Eric and I used to talk about, and Eric and I still do, that’s me and Danny and Eric. Just like a different kind of co-conspirator mentality. But at the end of the day, let’s face it: Mick and Keith are the Rolling Stones, and it ain’t the Beatles without John and Paul as a combined thing. And Danny and Eric are Bloodkin. And it’s just like, those two guys are— the way that they connect with people.— that’s really the impact. The other thing is that, because their crowd is what I think more bands would probably really be happy with, which is a cross section of different kinds of scenes, that I don’t think they ever got the credit they deserved from being here other than existing for a long time. You know, after a while, if you do something long enough, you get respected veteran status and people go from, “oh, I don’t give a shit about that” to “well, they’ve been here so long.” They’re a war horse of the scene, and/or they’re a veteran player on the team or whatever. But really, I think that, all the little individual pockets of the music scene, I don’t think that because they were ever something that you could call this or that or the other thing, is that I think that they really, frankly, are widely respected. The reaction to Danny’s passing was very moving. But yeah, they had an impact by being connected with a wider swath of the community. But also the people who did connect with it, connected with it on a very deep and personal level with those songs.

ERIC CARTER: On several levels our career has been very sporadic, like behavior-wise, organization-wise and all that. But the thing that we got right, was always like, we got these good songs and we can play them. Some of the other stuff we fuck up, but we got this. We never had to deal with any kind of record company where we were getting any kind of press or it’s like, “if you did this you would sell more units.” ‘Cause we were small time. We do our own thing.

DANNY HUTCHENS: You know, like my band Bloodkin, when we started we didn’t have a song that was over three minutes long. It was like the Ramones. But then we were also into things like Bob Dylan, Neil Young. And that kind of thing started creeping in a little bit to where, these kind of wandering blues songs that had a lot of lyrics with a literary bent. And those guys, all the people I’ve mentioned— Patti Smith and Jim Carroll, and then Lou Reed— tying a back-end to their subjects. These guys were literary people and they were almost more— well, Patti Smith and Jim Carroll were literally writers who kind of stumbled into playing music— and they were referencing and talking about in interviews, and writing about sometimes, like the French symbolist poets: Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and people like that. Who are still my influences in writing. I mean, outside of maybe, you know, Dylan and a few others, those people were as influential on me as anything, those writers. And that’s kind of where I discovered that tie-in between that kind of literature and music, was through the Velvet Underground and all that stuff, you know? So that’s how I stumbled into that.

ERIC CARTER: That’s one of those things, it started at such a young age. We’ve had a lot of people ask us over the years “who writes the music and who writes the lyrics?” Or, “how did you write this?” There’s no particular formula to it. Danny would write a lot of things on his own, but they weren’t finished until I came in and did my thing. We were so in tune with each other that, I felt like I knew here’s the guitar part that it needs or a melody line to make this more than just strumming G, C and D. Like, what can I add that makes this different? Or like, where’s the hook for this, where’s the catch? \\ And he just wrote and wrote and wrote. He was very prolific with the words. And he had a lot of music too. And I think up until the mid-90s, we pretty much always lived together, or if not, like we were in contact with each other all the time. We used to live at this place on Grady Avenue— it was me and Danny and James Calemines, three men in a two bedroom place. One of those where our bedrooms are next to each other. So, if I’m in my room like watching the Braves on stolen cable or whatever, I’m dicking around a guitar, Danny’s in his room, writing feverishly away. And I might be playing some riff, and then he might come out a week later and is like “check out this song that I got.” And I’ll be like, that music sounds familiar, but I can’t say that’s what I was playing last week. So, as far as who wrote what in those days, things could get a little blurry because we’re floating around this little apartment. So both of us are going to pick things up. We just always had that, and it was very lucky. When I’m writing by myself, I’m not near as prolific. I gotta have the band to bounce things off of. I’m not that prolific with lyrics. I can write them, but I can get very lazy and not very focused on it. That’s my problem.

PATTERSON HOOD: If you saw them live— ‘cause there was a slacker side to them— and if you saw them live, you would often see more or less the same 20 songs played if you saw them a hundred times. So, many of their best songs probably got played two or three times live and then they moved on and put all the focus live on the more Stonesy—sounding songs. And that kind of, to me, mislabeled them. Of course, the thing that happened a lot in the nineties was the whole Black Crowes thing. And, you know, Bloodkin predated Black Crowes. And the Robinson brothers are brothers, but, you know, probably less so musically than Danny and Eric. ‘Cause Danny and Eric didn’t spend all that time fighting trying to kill each other, they actually continued making music even when they didn’t get along, which I’m sure at times they didn’t. But they never let it interfere with the music. And, you know, the Black Crowes had some good songs, a handful of really good songs, but I mean, nothing in the league with the 50 best Danny Hutchens songs. I mean, it at least 50, maybe 100 best. He was so prolific and there were so many great songs and, you know, I can’t really even think of many songs that weren’t at least very good. I mean, their lesser songs were very good songs. And so to me, they were criminally overlooked, at the same time they didn’t necessarily do themselves a lot of favors in that department too, you know? And as any great Replacements fan is going to be, that’s sadly part of that story.

JERRY JOSEPH (singer/songwriter; Little Women/The Jackmormons; from the tribute “Thoughts on Danny Hutchens”): I met Danny in ‘92. Capricorn Records flew him to Portland for us to write songs together. He got off the plane like Jesus. He wasn’t just handsome, he was other worldly gorgeous, and even at that age exuded whatever the fuck lead singers are supposed to exude. He rented some dive-ass motel room (now the Doug Fir) to write. We sat down with our guitars. I said, “what’ve you got?” He said, “I’ve got a bag of black beauties, what’ve you got?” I said, “a bunch of balloons of black tar.” We seemed to hit it off immediately, and we wrote some pretty good songs. \\ Capricorn was slated to sign four acts—Panic, Colonel Bruce, Bloodkin, and myself. At the eleventh hour (and fifty-nine minutes), they passed on Danny and me. We both spent the rest of our friendship trying to say it wasn’t a big deal… really. I understood not signing me to a newly rebooted Southern label, but I never understood not signing Bloodkin. They would have had hits right out of the gate… and would’ve handed the Crowes their ass. \\ Our mutual friend John Bell started a label for Danny and me, and we ended up in Alabama with producer Johnny Sandlin. Somewhere in that swamp there’s some pretty good recordings. From then on, Danny and I crossed paths during some interesting times of our lives. We’d always say to each other, “how’s the greatest unknown American songwriter thing working out?” Sometimes it was actually funny. I remember a conversation with Vic Chesnutt, Danny, and me about how we didn’t think of ourselves as jamband guys. But, at least for me and Danny (and somewhat for Vic), it was Panic literally paying our rent. And how fucking blessed we were for their friendship.

DAVE SCHOOLS: I don’t have any insight into how he viewed it, but as far as my opinion why they are underappreciated, at the time would have been they didn’t go out and tour enough. From my point of view in the mid-to-late-90s, was that Bloodkin was making excellent music, but I don’t know why they couldn’t get it together to tour it. It could have been jobs. It could have been some guy’s family. Could have been a really unreliable rhythm section that maybe wasn’t available, or it could have been Danny’s need to hole up and be able to examine and live, and come up with these characters that he writes about. I can’t speak to how much experience he had in sort of getting the classic knife in the back from a major label or a spec deal. But he definitely had a deal where he and Jerry Joseph were writing songs for Phil Walden. A bunch of collaborative stuff. And, you know, John Bell funded one of the records, but ultimately they wouldn’t tour to support it. And that was the model at the time. And it certainly was the model that Widespread Panic relied on. No one gave a fuck about us except for Phil Walden. Certainly Michael Rothschild at Landslide Records did. But really, they couldn’t understand why they couldn’t sell records, as many tickets as we could sell. But it was because we took it to the road and it’s hard, you know? And I think that maybe Danny saw some of that, and maybe there was a little bit of “every opportunity I’ve had with like a quote-unquote ‘major label’ or a publishing deal just wound up not really happening.” It might’ve resulted in great songs and great art, but I don’t necessarily know that it improved his lot in life. And I also can’t speak to his opinion about what improving his lot in life entailed.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): [In 1993] we got a call from Johnny Sandlin, famed producer of the Allman Brothers, Eddie Hinton, and so many more. He and John Bell were starting an independent record label called Back Door Records. J.B. was financing the label, and Johnny was producing, and they were releasing two CDs: one by Bloodkin and one by Jerry Joseph. Panic’s label at that time, Capricorn Records, was headed by the famed Phil Walden, who had managed Otis Redding and discovered the Allman Brothers. Phil Walden had talked to me about signing some kind of publishing deal but it never materialized…one time he told a group of people, including Dave Schools, that I was the “Mark Twain of rock n roll,” a comparison I’m still not fully sure I grasp, but one I couldn’t help appreciate. J.B. was coming to our aid again! The Panic boys were our biggest supporters all through those early years. We became one of their pet projects, along with Jerry Joseph and his band at the time, Little Women. Panic even wound up writing a song called “Little Kin,” named after the two bands, so I’ve been told.

Having hooked up with Sandlin in Decatur, AL, and backed financially by Bell, who was eager to help the band get their first record out, in 1993 Bloodkin made their first official foray into the studio to try and capture some of the magic they had been cooking up on stage and at home going back to their earliest days in Athens. Having already established a working relationship with the Panic crew based off of mutual respect and the inclusion of two Bloodkin songs on Panic’s second and third studio albums, the sessions would be a proving ground for the young band as they felt their way through the songs and recording process, ultimately producing 1994’s excellent, if under-appreciated, Good Luck Charm. A powerful and cohesive collection of some of Hutchens’ and Carter’s best material, the album included several more early iconic Bloodkin tunes that Panic would cover over the coming years, with “Quarter Tank of Gasoline,” “Success Yourself,” and “End of the Show” all making their debut on tape, as well as “Can’t Get High,” which Panic would record for their own 1994 album Ain’t Life Grand. At turns rocking, bluesy and delicate, with attitude to spare— and a slick production that was on par for the era— the album would also feature musical contributions from all of the members of Widespread Panic, as well as members of Muscle Shoals’ famed Swampers gang in the form of bassist David Hood and drummer Roger Hawkins.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): In the fall of 1993 we headed to Johnny Sandlin’s home studio in Decatur, Alabama, to begin work on what would become Good Luck Charm, our “official” debut. Working with Johnny was like going to school— a musical education that can’t be bought or sold or learned in a classroom. Johnny is a truly gentle and creative man, a sweetheart, and a top notch producer. We worked on the record in fits and starts, and finally completed it in the summer of ’94. The Panic guys drove over to Decatur to play on “Success Yourself” and “End of the Show;” the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (Roger Hawkins and David Hood, whose son is Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers) played on “Leave It All Alone.” It was an exciting time. 

PATTERSON HOOD: I first heard of [Bloodkin] before I moved to Athens because I became friends with Dave Schools. And I met Dave when I was living in Memphis, working at the New Daisy [Theatre] and Widespread played there and he and I hit it off. And then when Widespread made the Everyday album in Muscle Shoals at Muscle Shoals Sound, I ended up driving up and hanging out up in the Shoals for several days while they were there, kind of hanging out at the studio with them and watched ‘em cut a little bit of the record and all that. And one day there, they were playing a tape in the control room of Danny and Jerry Joseph. Like some songs they had demoed together for, I don’t know if it was supposed to be one project, or if it was originally gonna be two projects. Whatever it was, they both demoed some songs together, ‘cause they had just become friends and were mutual fans, and I was just blown away by every bit of it. I thought Jerry’s songs were great. Danny’s songs were great. Of course, I didn’t know who was who yet, or anything like that. And then, probably over the next year or so after that Bloodkin made that first record with Johnny Sandlin and Jerry Joseph made the Love & Happiness record with Johnny Sandlin too. And my dad played on both of those records a little bit, and Earl Hicks— who became one of the members of the Drive-by Truckers and produced three of our albums— was Johnny’s assistant engineer at that time. And so I heard a lot about those records while they were being made— kind of rough versions. So, by the time I moved to Athens, they were both on my radar. And Dave Schools introduced me to Danny and Eric probably within the first couple of weeks of me moving there. And I loved their songwriting. And when I started working at the High Hat, Bloodkin was working on what became Creeperweed. And I really liked that phase of the band. Like way more than probably what they were doing with Good Luck Charm. When they were doing Creeperweed, I thought they had found something and was really, really into what they were doing. And I did sound for— God, I can’t count, man– how many Bloodkin shows were at the High Hat. They played there very regularly because they were one of Tony’s very favorite bands. And so he put them in there all the time and I became quite friendly with them.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): In 1995 we made Creeperweed, which wound up being one of my favorite recording experiences. I knew two things going in: One, I wanted to make a record that was more spontaneous and less “polished” than Good Luck Charm; as valuable an experience as working with Johnny Sandlin had been, Good Luck Charm is very much Johnny’s vision of Bloodkin, and now I wanted to create something a little closer to the band’s original heart. Two, I wanted the record to be made entirely with “acoustic” instruments. I use the quotes because some of the acoustic instruments were variously equipped with electronic pick-ups and plugged into amplifiers, or otherwise affected during the recording process. But I wanted the flavor of those basic instruments: acoustic guitars, dobro, acoustic bass (not upright, but just Chris Barrineau’s hollow-body acoustic bass guitar), drums, harmonica, fiddle. The only “electric” instrument we used was John Keane’s pedal steel. I heard this record in my head before we ever made it; of all our records this one was definitely my baby. It was no easy task to convince Eric not to play any electric guitar an an entire record. \\ There’s just some spirit, or whatever you’d call it, that rattles around on Creeperweed. It was a high watermark of some sort, and definitely the pinnacle of [bassist] Chris Barrineau’s collaboration with Bloodkin.

Releasing Creeperweed in September of 1996 on their own Pretty Mean Records label, which had a decidedly more paired down, roots-oriented sound than their previous effort, despite being another solid batch of songs, the band still remained largely off of people’s radars outside of their hometown and the greater Southeast, with a few regional outposts of fandom around the country. Featuring yet more contributions from their shared world with Widespread Panic, including producer/musician John Keane, fiddle player David Blackmon, and drummer Todd Nance, who regularly sat in with Bloodkin during that time period when he wasn’t out on tour with his own band, the album would be yet another reminder of just how closely the two entities worked together both onstage and off. Unfortunately, it was also during that same era that real problems started to arise both within Bloodkin and those around them when it came to issues with drugs and alcohol. Living out a rock and roll lifestyle that would cripple people with lesser constitutions and stamina, things would take a darker and darker turn as the decade wore on, losing several close friends along the way to addiction, while also battling their own inner demons when it came to notoriously excessive consumption. A plague that would continue on and off again for the rest of the band’s career, and in some ways, ultimately cost Hutchens his life, despite the perpetual turmoil it would cause, the band still managed to churn out raucous performances on the live circuit, often in the orbit of Panic shows, while also squeezing out one more record before the dawn of the new millennium in the form of 1999’s Out of State Plates. Their first time working on a proper release with longtime friend David Barbe as producer at his Chase Park Transduction studio in Athens, who would go on to work with both the band and Hutchens throughout the rest of their career (along with the Drive-By Truckers), the album would yet again see the Venn diagram of Bloodkin and Widespread Panic’s shared journey come together through musical accompaniment provided by Todd Nance, Jojo Hermann, and Michael Houser on several key tracks. Two of which, “Wet Trombone Blues” and “Who Do You Belong To?,” would also go on to become staples of Panic’s own live shows. Featuring backing vocals from Moe Tucker on the song “Lifer”— itself a loving and frank appraisal of the commitment to life lived in a road-worn rock and roll band, which Hutchens had first learned about by her side— the album would also feature graphic design work by Michael Lachowski from arch Athens art-punks, Pylon. Reflective of the wider collaborative ethos of the Classic City’s many musical arms, despite being another strong group effort, the record would largely languish in obscurity despite local interest and a return to a more electric sound reminiscent of their live concerts.

ERIC CARTER: The first record that we did with David Barbe was Out of State Plates and he became like another member of the band. When we met him, he had his own band in Mercyland, which were kind of a trashy, more punk-pop kind of band. And then David Barbe started getting into the John Keane school. He worked with him for a while, just trying to learn engineering and producing. And eventually he got his own studio. And he does all the Truckers stuff, and he’s been doing all of our stuff since whatever year Out of State Plates came out. He’s been the guy since then.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): Out of State Plates was the beginning of our partnership with David Barbe (who was gaining steam as a producer, having apprenticed with John Keane. David played in Mercyland, one of my favorites when I first got to Athens). We brought him on board to produce, recording at his then-brand-new studio in Athens, Chase Park Transduction, and he quickly became a full-fledged member of the team. He has since produced every serious studio project I’ve done, Bloodkin and solo. He plays a variety of instruments on most tracks, and contributes all sorts of miscellaneous creative input— suggestions, arrangements, reassurances, psychological counseling, etc.

PATTERSON HOOD: One weekend they took me down to Savannah with them. They had a show down there and their bass player had just left the band. And so I learned a bunch of their songs on bass and was going to go down and open for them solo and then play bass with them. And they, I think, ended up firing me as their bass player before I ever actually— I don’t think I actually played bass on a single song (laughs). But we had a great time! And I thought I was somewhat of a partier, but by the time I got back to Athens, I think I slept for like three days basically. I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t think I got this in me. These guys, this is a different level.” But we stayed friends, and I probably somewhere have a cassette of like demos for what became Out of State Plates. Because they went in and Earl Hicks and I recorded them basically doing pre-production like on Sundays at the High Hat when it was closed,. We’d go in and set up and record them doing songs from that record. So I have like really early versions of “Jazz Funeral” and some of those great songs, and a version of “Life in the Minor Leagues” that I still think could be a hit single. I mean, I was like, the Bloodkin version of that, I still don’t know why that didn’t end up on the record because it’s really should have been on the album. I mean, when you think of like the great songs through the years that have been written using baseball as an analogy for something else or whatever. I mean, I can’t think of a single one as good as that. Fogerty’s “Centerfield” isn’t even worthy of carrying the water bottle for “Life in the Minor Leagues,” as far as being the perfect analogy for bands at that level too. It’s a perfectly drawn song, and it’s a song that I imagine Danny considered a bit of a toss off. I mean, it didn’t make the Bloodkin record. He put it on a solo record [2003’s Lesser], a lesser version of it on the solo record and it still holds up. And I’m not a huge baseball guy. I mean, I love baseball, but I’m not a sports guy. I don’t know if there’s any sports analogies in any of my songs. But I’m in awe of that as a piece of writing. But I mean, there’s so many.

Having self-released both Creeperweed and Out of State Plates to little fanfare, while Bloodkin continued to struggle to get their music out to the masses via their own means and sporadic live shows, over the course of the mid-to-late-90s, the guys in Widespread Panic were busy amassing legions of new converts through steady touring that would see them on the road for weeks at a time playing to massive sold-out crowds across the country. Leaning into the touring life in a way that Hutchens and Carter couldn’t or wouldn’t do, they would become one of the best-selling live bands of the era, regularly playing three night stands in select venues across the United States that would see thousands of “Spreadheads”— as their adoring fans were now called, in a nod to their psychedelic forefathers in the Grateful Dead— overtake parking lots and hotel rooms near their concerts, much to the chagrin of local authorities. Culminating their star power into what would become the largest record release party ever, an outdoor show on the streets of their hometown of Athens on April 18, 1998 for the double live album Light Fuse, Get Away, that would see a reported 100,000 fans filter into the city to celebrate their favorite band, the concert would serve as a stark reminder of just how far the band had come from their earliest days playing fraternity parties and dingy clubs back in the late-80s. Always ones to honor their own hometown heroes and influences, the show would offer tributes to people like Love Tractor and Vic Chesnutt, along with their brothers in Bloodkin with a requisite cover of “Henry Parsons Died,” all of which stood as a nod of their own debts to them as artists and inspirations, but also the gulf between their own success and that of those they were honoring.

Continuing to record and release records through the early-2000s, along with two solo Hutchens albums, and sporadically playing out live together, following Out of State Plates, the personal lives of both Hutchens and Carter started to take a turn for the worst, with lifestyle choices and addictions taking more and more of a toll on their minds and bodies, as well as those in their inner circle. Following the overdose death of their manager Zac Weil in April of 2000 after a three night run of Panic shows in Athens, things began to slowly spiral out of control, with alcoholism and drugs overtaking Carter’s life and faculties and Hutchens leaning heavier into whatever illicit substances he could get his hands on. Still capable of onstage brilliance, but hampered by their deteriorating states, despite putting out a slew of good releases, including the excellent The Bloodkin Community Gospel Rehab LP in 2001, 2002’s Ravin’ Beauties (which was recorded in the basement of Dave Schools’ home in Athens), and 2005’s Last Night Out— all of which contained outstanding moments despite the band barely hanging on together outside of the music— things were quickly coming unraveled when it came to keeping the Bloodkin train on the tracks in a meaningful and sustained way. Suffering health issues and mounting personal debt, along with an arrest for Hutchens and rehab for Carter— all aided by unchecked appetites and still plagued by music industry neglect outside of their hometown— the band would reach a collective nadir that would have led most comparable acts to finally hang it up for good.

But that was never the Bloodkin way. In fact, it was always under extreme adversity that they managed to shine the most, repeatedly defying odds and choosing to slug away against any headwind that ever blew their way in a manner that probably shocked anyone that ever cencountered their tornadic path. And although they left a wide swath of inspired destruction in their wake, like the indestructible rock and roll zealots they were at the time, they always managed to come back from the edge of disaster to ride again in glorious fashion, beating anyone who ever bet against them in the game of life. Emerging like a phoenix out of the ashes of personal and professional failure, they would go on to release another album of new material in 2009 with Baby, They Told Us We Would Rise Again, which would receive praise from the likes of Rolling Stone’s David Fricke, once again proving their naysayers wrong when it came to their presumed lifespan, showing that although they had been badly beaten and bruised, they were never a band to give up quite so easily. Having had the time of their lives playing out every tired trope from the Keith Richards rock and roll handbook, and living to tell the tale, Bloodkin continued to show over and over again, that come hell or high water, they were going to continue to follow their dreams wherever they might take them, warts and all. Putting out the career-spanning box set One Long Hustle in 2013, an incredible 5-CD compendium of previously unreleased recordings dating back to their earliest 4-track efforts in 1987, and littered with collaborations from their closest co-conspirators and confidants from Widespread Panic and David Barbe, to just about every iteration of Bloodkin throughout their entire drawn-out saga, the collection would serve as a powerful reminder of just how deep their creative well truly ran, even if few had ever heard it. Funded by friends and put out on Atlanta’s Terminus Records, One Long Hustle would stand as a vibrant tribute and window into the lives of two lifelong friends who were hellbent on making rock and roll history together, in their own way and on their own time, and the people who made it possible along the way, showcasing Hutchens’ vast songbook and the fiery and tasteful guitar work of Carter in all of its ragged glory. But even then it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

And although Carter would eventually get sober in 2008, in a remarkable turnaround following years living on the teetering edge of alcoholism and addiction, unfortunately for Hutchens, he would continue to struggle with substance abuse issues that would repeatedly come back to haunt him. Having suffered a hemorrhagic stroke in 2016 following the release of his newest solo album, the appropriately titled The Beautiful Vicious Cycle of Life, which was produced by Dave Schools and engineered and mixed by David Barbe at Chase Park Transduction, Hutchens would struggle to regain his motor skills for months after, leading to him having to slowly relearn his way around the guitar. An ominous event that would foreshadow his eventual death in 2021, although he survived, it was a tough reminder of the damage done from years of hard partying and not taking care of himself while chasing his muse. But even then, that wasn’t the end to his story. Having valiantly fought back to regain mastery of his hands and the ability to play guitar, he would once again prove himself to be a man seemingly beyond eradication. That is, until he wasn’t. But that final chapter was yet to be written.

DAVE SCHOOLS: It was really— from my point of view— it’s “let’s just have some fun,” you know? We can talk about artistry and craftsmanship and living a life. All that stuff is really fun to talk about, and it’s true. But it’s also too important to remember that no matter how dark or meaningful, or like just incredibly nice, the art may be, we still had fun doing it. You know, Danny had fun. Danny wrote about all these dark things and serious things, and these super long tone poems that are just descriptions of these people and what they’re going through— sometimes from the first person, sometimes not— but Danny was a fun guy. He was sweet. He was great to be around. People loved Danny. Women wanted to fix Danny, women wanted to help Danny, women wanted to love him, and men wanted to love him. He was just lovable and fun. And anyone will tell you that. Was he cracked? Yes. Was he damaged? Of course. Did he have problems? Sure. We all do. I think that’s why so many of us have to make art. It’s still the one thing that frees us for a little while from these things from our past or whatever that run us.

PATTERSON HOOD (from the tribute “Thoughts on Danny Hutchens”): Danny’s songwriting could be dark and powerful but he always had a pop sensibility as well as a poetic flair that set it apart in ways basic yet profound. He wrote songs steeped in southern literary traditions but they also often sounded like hit records that somehow forgot to sell the millions of copies that they honestly deserved. \\ Bloodkin made a bunch of albums. All of them are good, most are significantly better than good but their fourth album, The Bloodkin Community Gospel Rehab is a flat-out masterpiece. Truly one of the best albums to ever come out of Athens, Georgia or anywhere else. Written and recorded in the wake of the untimely passing of their friend and manager as well as a reckoning of their own more self-destructive inclinations, the album has dark undercurrents that spring to the surface in sometimes surprising but always provocative and absorbing ways. It also has some of the most beautiful and poignant playing and singing of any of their albums. It is never overcome by its ever-present darkness and even two decades later it still rewards each new listen with some new twist. \\ Danny never lived to see the level of acclaim and commercial success that his talent seemed destined for, but he never seemed to let that slow him down or affect how he proceeded. He knew that he and Eric had the goods and knew that they were building a legacy of songs, performances and memories. They made albums that truly were as great as most of the people they grew up looking up to and when listened to a continuous whole adds up to a stunning catalog of music that rewards a deeper look and closer listen to really show its array of subtlety and craft that goes way beyond the meat and potatoes rock and roll that it seems on the surface. Danny was well enough aware of the history of our beloved art form to know that the best often don’t get their due during their lifetimes. He and Eric proceeded to build a musical legacy that would stand tall long after all of us have faded away.

ERIC MARTINEZ (guitarist; Bloodkin/Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons): I’ll be honest, it’s just extremely hard to make it. And you know, they are perfect examples of— it’s just really hard. You can be the best songwriters on the planet and if things don’t align for you it’s not gonna happen. And whether it’s self-induced or just outside forces— it’s probably a little of both in some cases— it just doesn’t happen for everybody. I also play with Jerry Joseph, and same deal. He’s right up there with them, in my opinion, and could have Top 40 hit after Top 40 hit, but the stars never aligned. There’s a lot of great Athens songwriters in that same boat. You know, Vic Chesnutt— he probably got the most stardom out of everybody….all those guys. He had a whole sect of fans that he tapped into. But again, it just doesn’t happen, you know?

JERRY JOSEPH (from the tribute “Thoughts on Danny Hutchens”): When asked by some hipster musicians why in the world I don’t teach my kids music, my reply was, “cause if you’re good at it, it will kill you.” Danny is perhaps a perfect case in point. In my mind, there’s a small handful of people I would call America’s best songwriters. I’m lucky enough to be friends with a couple—Patterson Hood, Willy Vlautin, and Danny, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of them. His songs hit me harder than the Springsteen’s and Earle’s and people I look up to. I’d spend some insane amount of time on a record with Dave Schools or anyone and Danny would release some four-track song and we’d be like holy fuck. When you define yourself by something, in my case my music, and you know deep down your friend is better at it… it’s a weird thing. You’re excited to be close to greatness, and you’re inches from swallowing a barrel.

END OF THE SHOW: BLACK MARKET TANGO

“Everybody’s waiting to find the last drink
The last word to say
The last place to go
The end of the show”

– Daniel Hutchens, “End of the Show”

Following Hutchens’ stroke in 2016, it was a bit unclear what the path forward, if any, there would be for Bloodkin. Struggling to get back his fingering, and having not released a proper group album since Baby, They Told Us We Would Rise Again, the group would find themselves at yet another professional crossroads. Yet in typical Bloodkin fashion, and spurred on by family and friends who knew there was more music to be made, following a period of downtime recuperating from his medical issues, Hutchens would once again reconvene with Carter in 2019 to see how much juice they had left in them. Prodded by David Barbe, who was eager to knock out another album with them in the studio, Bloodkin would rear their collective head one last time to produce what may be their finest album to date. A sprawling double LP entitled Black Market Tango, and featuring a cast of characters that would encompass several lifetimes of the band, including members of Widespread Panic, Drive-By Truckers, Moe Tucker’s other daughter Kate as part of the HEAP Horns section on two tracks, and a core group of players who make up the Bloodkin family universe, despite being mostly finished by the end of the year, the album’s release would unfortunately get delayed by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having to figure out how to navigate tying up loose ends while being sequestered at home and unable to gather to coordinate finishing touches and marketing, the record would languish on the shelves until April 16, 2021, when it finally made its way out into the world courtesy of Jerry Joseph’s Cosmo Sex School Records.

Featuring some of Hutchens and Carter’s best songs of their career, with standout tracks like “Transistor Radio,” “Speed Freak Highway,” “Man in Trouble,” and “One Way Ride” all offering up classic Bloodkin rock and roll grit, it would also include an epic fan favorite— previously issued on the One Long Hustle box set— with the sidelong suite known as “God’s Bar,” as well as another new tune called “Trashy” that would take on significantly deeper meaning for the band in the months ahead. Highlighting all of the elements that always made the group one of the most formidable songwriting teams in modern music, it was a welcome return to form after so many years away from recording, showing that they still had it as a band despite a decade between their last proper record. With plans for touring and press to launch yet another chapter in their long and storied career, tragically, the album would ultimately serve as their swan song with Hutchens in the band, after having suffered a fatal stroke on May 9th, just weeks after the LP finally saw the light of day. An ironic and poignant twist in what had already been a career filled with personal calamity, in many ways, it was a fitting end to Hutchens’ time on the planet, going out on a high note as only he could. Which is not to diminish his loss in any way, other than to say it was yet another example of Bloodkin’s never-ending struggle to finally get their due, only to have it pulled out from underneath them at the worst possible moment when everything seemed to be lining up just right to take the next step forward. Joining a long list of creative geniuses who died too soon, yet would leave behind a profound artistic legacy, with Black Market Tango Hutchens would exit the world of music at the top of his creative game, with one last towering artistic statement to serve as his tombstone.

ERIC CARTER: When Danny first approached me about the record— cause it always involves money, you know?— and we hadn’t done anything for a long time and we’d kind of fallen into a rhythm of just playing shows and things like that. And that’s part of my income and that’s kind of one of my jobs. So, the state that we were in, mainly financially and things like that, and the way we were operating together between me and him, I wasn’t really thinking about another album cause it’s like, I don’t know if he’s ready. Playing live shows is different than we’re going into a studio and electronically create something brand new. And I was like, man, I don’t know. Frankly, I didn’t know if we had it. I mean, I know we could still go play shows, but I wasn’t sure what me and Danny had. Cause we hadn’t operated like that in so long, just hanging out. ‘Cause this, it’s me and him. When it comes to putting together a new album, that’s where it starts. And he came to me in I guess 2019, you know, he puts the idea to me. He said, “Listen, there’s Carison Stokes and another friend of hers that want to back it.” It starts with the money. And Danny gave me his whole spiel, his song and dance. And I listened to him, and I remember saying like, “okay, this is all well and good, but I have no interest in backing up a Danny Hutchens solo album and calling it Bloodkin. It’s going to be me and you.” So what we had to do, and we hadn’t done this in years, because we’ve known each other so long that there’s a lot of muscle memory, it’s just kind of instincts with each other. You sorta take certain things for granted. It’s like, listen, we need to get together with our notebooks and our devices. ‘Cause it wasn’t like we stopped writing, but it was just writing together, you know? So, I know Danny— I know you’ve got tons of lyrics, you’ve got notebooks all over the place, and I know you got a lot of scraps of music, and I got a lot of scraps music. So we need to get together and sit down in a room with guitars and a band and see what we have. And we actually did that at my last apartment, my little studio cave that I lived in for 14 years or whatever. And we laid everything out and it was actually fun. You know, we probably sat there for like three or four hours, which for us is a long time, and we basically got to a point where looking at everything, I was like, I think we have something that we can work with. It’s like putting together a puzzle. And the reason it’s a double album is because one of the guys backing this, he has this thing about the song “God’s Bar.” He loves that song, and it was on the box set, but that was such a limited thing that a lot of people didn’t really hear it. He was like, that’s my only condition is that song has to be on the record. And I was like, well, that’s fine. So, we went back to our trusted producer, David Barbe, who’s— when it comes to doing that kind of stuff— he’s like another member of the band. He just knows us, and he knows how we operate and we know how he operates, and that’s always been a good thing with him in the studio.

DAVID BARBE: It’s just a real personal thing working with them. We had a real thing— like our thing making records together was as good of a thing as you can have. You know, it’s like I made records with Bloodkin, just like I’ve made records with the Truckers for, I guess, 20 plus years now. Three times longer than the Beatles made them with George Martin, twice as long as Eddie Kramer made them with Zeppelin— three times as long or something, I don’t know. But the point is that, me and Bloodkin, they recorded at Chase Park the first summer I had the studio [in 1997], and then, I had just finished the other record, and it was about to come out last spring [in 2021]. So that’s almost twenty-five years of us, counting live recordings that were done in ‘96. Yeah, fuck, 25 years of us working together. And I’ll tell you how I really felt. I felt bad about it after Danny died. I realized that deep down inside, part of the way that I felt was cheated, was shortchanged. That I had something that I love that I can’t describe to other people who aren’t in the middle of it taken away from me and it wasn’t taken away because somebody said, “Hey man, we’ve loved working with you, but we want to make a record with so-and-so.” Now that happens to everybody. It’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to make a record with so-and-so.” But instead to know that it’s like, okay, when we got ready to make Black Market Tango we had another one of our sit-downs. But the point of all that is, is that when Black Market Tango was going to come out, you know, we talk about it, because it had been so long since they made a record. And Eric was so, so important in this record. I mean, Danny out front, certainly writing all lyrics, and the music has either/or— there’s always a combination of the two of them. Unless there’s a song that Eric sings, it’s pretty rare one of them just wrote the song. But Eric was really clear with Danny about, “Okay, I’m into making a Bloodkin record, but I’m not going to be on a Danny Hutchens solo record.” That is, you’re not going to come in with some songs that I learned with everybody else. We’re going to write songs together like we used to. And so that’s what they did. And Eric forced the issue with that. And by this time, you know, Danny was definitely a little bit of a mess, you know, just like life-wise. But Eric really pushed it and they got the band practicing, and the five of them came in, and my thing was like, I love the stripped down lineup for the band of Danny, Eric, [John] Neff, and Jon Mills. Because Danny’s guitar is more like a function of the drums. It’s like the midway point between Danny’s voice and the drums. And Danny and Aaron Phillips, like the lockup of those two guys, it’s just— it’s enviable. It’s Page and Bonham. It’s Keith and Charlie. But Danny and Aaron had that. So I love the stripped down thing. ‘Cause it was like, I was also a pretty outspoken about the fact that as great as the guests are, all that shit’s secondary. And that includes me. And we get other people to play on it when you have an idea of something that you think you want to do, but if the part isn’t something that makes the record better then fuck it, it’s getting cut off and I’m going to be the one that cuts it off. And you can tell the world that I’m an asshole if you want to, I don’t care. But it’s like Miles Davis and Beyonce don’t make decisions about art based on hurting somebody’s feelings. So we went in and very purposely. And the other thing we talked about is, I was like, at this point of your careers, you hadn’t made a Bloodkin record in 10 years. You’ve played some shows, but a lot of times the shows had just evolved into Danny finding the path of least resistance.

ERIC CARTER: I mean, David was better in the studio. Everybody was better at their things. When you first go in, you’re not really sure. Like when you first lay down basic tracks and things like that, what’s the vibe of this record? What’s the mood? I was like, man, it’ll come to you. It’ll start taking shape. So you can’t totally map it out, like this is exactly what it’s going to be, I know exactly what this record is going to be like. It kind of takes shape as you’re getting into it, and it starts kind of taking on its own identity and its own mood. And I’m just very happy with it. I think it’s all the perfect examples of how he and I worked together so well. Just the way the songs were put together. It’s like the best of my things combined with the best of his things. A lot of the things that I had, I might not address them by myself. It was like, oh, I got these cool riffs, I got these loose ideas. You know, I never really worried about lyrics so much because he’s got that covered. And especially in the older days, it’s like, we have a lot of the same ideas and thoughts about these things, but he’s already gotten it written out, so that’s his job, and I’ll put the music together. Or even if I didn’t write the music, I put my thing on that. I would give it the feel that I wanted it to have. We had done that so long together, when it came down to like going into a studio and that kind of thing, that was my thing. That was just a natural fit because I’d never had another band before, and he hadn’t really either. It was always Bloodkin. It was me and Danny and the people that were playing with us.

DAVID BARBE: We came in the studio like really purposefully. And also truthfully, I told them, I was like, you hadn’t made a record in a long time. You’ve got a cool group of people that want to get behind putting this record out. Don’t fuck this up. This could be your last. You need to make it like it might be the last record you ever made. You guys are in your fifties and you’ve gotten a whole life out of doing this. And 10 years after making a record, you’ve got somebody who wants to put a Bloodkin record out. And god knows I want to make one. And so Eric, of course, was 100% on board with this, and Danny. They realized like, you’re right. I was like, this is a great opportunity. They’re going to put this thing out, they’re going to promote it, they’re going to market it. And we talked about ways we can promote it, because at the time it’s like in the middle of COVID, we don’t know what the fuck is going to happen. I was like, we could play a show in the parking lot of the studio, that’s like a drive-in thing 10 people can come to and stream it. We’ll figure out a creative way to do it. We’re going to find ways to do this shit. And we would talk about publicists and all this kind of stuff and getting things going. And then the people putting it out were great. Carison was who’d taken over managing them and was managing the project to on the label side, and was really earnestly putting as genuine and caring of an effort into quality work as a human being could put into anything. She was another heroic figure in pushing this record through. She was great, so it’s all going to happen, it’s like, “oh my god, here you are.” Because there’s other times where they had cool people put up money to put records out, and then it’s just like no tour or the label falls apart or somebody quit the band or whatever. And it’s like, this is a great chance. Let’s fucking do it. Like more and more people— your old fans hang on and you’re getting new fans and Panic’s doing good, and this is like a perfect time. And so it was, and we made this record and I love that record. I love those  songs. I love those performances. And the people that came in and played on it— Annie Leeth doing the strings and Ansley Stewart singing were so perfect. They were just great. And Jay Gonzalez playing keyboards. I mean, it was just amazing. And then we get the thing out and it’s like right at the moment of truth of like, now finally you can go on tour to promote a record that’s actually going to help you out here with all these people behind us. And you know, it happened. Danny died. Like right then. And one thing about the version of Bloodkin that is Danny and Eric is me, is relentless unabashed, dark humor. We can all just say whatever. So with that as our framework, Eric and I, when Danny died, not that day or anything, but like shortly after, we’d been hanging out a bunch and we’re both like— and he said it to me and I just acknowledged the truth of it— he’s like, “You know, this is like the most Bloodkin thing of all time.” I know it is. Danny found a way when— it’s just like the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail— we’ve got everything perfectly arranged, and then somebody hands Wiley Coyote a stick of TNT and it’s all gone. And that’s the funny way look at it, but it’s emotionally extremely difficult, because I love that music and I love doing it with them, and me and Eric will be making more music together, I’m sure. My professional work with them is that I love the songs, I’m proud of the records, and I love the people.

ERIC CARTER: I’m glad it came out when it did now. It was basically done in 2019, but it kind of sat for a while, and because everybody was frozen in time, nothing was happening. And when somebody passes like that, I think it makes you look at somebody’s last work a lot differently. It was like, “Ooh, there’s so many signs and things in here now.” You’re not thinking of that when you said “we better do this now, because you’re going to be dead in a year,” it wasn’t like that. I’ve had so many people tell me after Danny passed that, “Man that really sucks. You did this great record and then he passed away.” And I almost, not laughed, but I was like if you know the Bloodkin story, I mean this makes perfect sense, you know? That’s kind of our story. That’s right in our wheelhouse. But what would have really sucked is if we hadn’t done it yet, because you don’t know when the last record is going to be. We’re not big time or anything, but we still have this fairly new record. I know in terms of like new cycles, it’s old news now, but I still want people to hear it. And hopefully, one thing I’d really like is, maybe somebody who’s never heard us before they could hear this and go, “Wow, what is this?” Well, check out all their other stuff. They got a whole fucking catalog of shit you might dig. I’d like to become a kind of a weird cult band. A bigger cult band than we are now. At this stage of my life, and being able to look back on this body of work, I was like, it’s never too late to go back and discover something. Even after the fact for a lot of people. We probably talked about this before, it’s like certain writers have probably been kind of discovered after they were gone. I mean, there’s so much music out there. There’s definitely things that I’ve heard that I didn’t hear about the person until after they were dead. And then it’s like the spider web thing, like when I was a kid listening to music, you know, my mom would be like, “Why do you want to read these books about these people? I mean, I know it’s a cool song, but why do you have to read about this, read about them and everything.” It’s not because I want to find out what they listened to. I want to find out where they got this from, you know, and that’s just an ongoing thing. And that’s one of the cool things about music or any of those kind of things. It just continues in one form or another, you know?

A fitting coda for both Hutchens and Carter’s friendship and creative career together, although most people would presume that Black Market Tango might very well represent the end of the show for Bloodkin as a band, true to their nature, the group, with Carter now fully at the helm, have decided to persevere as they always have, reconfiguring and reconstituting themselves in new ways and with new members. Wanting to honor not just Hutchens’ legacy, but that of everyone involved over the years, the band plans to continue on, playing so many of the great songs from their vast catalog, along with material from the new album. Now featuring a lineup consisting of veteran members of the group like John Neff on pedal steel, and Aaron Phillips on drums, along with longtime friends Betsy Franck, Tori Pater and Spanky Mcluer filling out vocals and guitars— and affiliates like Eric Martinez filling in where and when necessary— the Bloodkin story is not over. Always finding a way to fight another day, like the survivors they are and much like their brothers in Widespread Panic after losing so many of their core members throughout the decades, they’ve made a commitment to the music that was born out of their hometown of Athens over 40 years ago, and one they plan to see through until the very last moment they can, whenever that might be.

MAKES SENSE TO ME: WHO DO YOU BELONG TO?

“Who do you belong to?
I’m sure it’s not yourself
Who do you sing love songs to
‘Cause you sing ’em all day long
But that’s not your voice
Not as far as I can tell”

– Daniel Hutchens, “Who Do You Belong To?”

In a life that was often overshadowed by that of his more successful peers, with Widespread Panic being chief among them, having both made his songs famous while many of their fans may have mistakenly thought they were their own, it’s easy to think of Hutchens’ story and career as a tragic and cautionary tale of someone having flown a little too close to the sun while also not getting his just rewards when it came to the wider respect he so richly deserved as an artist. Having had to watch from the sidelines— and really in the midst of it all— as his friends and colleagues from Athens made ever-bigger professional strides, and in some ways piggybacked on the brilliance of his own creativity (and vice-versa), one could easily draw the conclusion that he was somehow robbed of notoriety his songwriting prowess allowed others. But that in itself would be a mistake that undervalued just how deeply the level of mutual respect and admiration ran between the Bloodkin and Panic camps over the years.

Having cut their teeth in parallel yet radically different ways that would see their fortunes diverge while simultaneously benefitting one another, the bond between the two bands is one that stands as one of the most unique stories in rock and roll, highlighting the even more unique scene from which they came. Forged out of a lust for life, art and music— and a shared belief in the power of song to speak to the human experience— what makes their twin journeys so inspiring is the fact that they ever shared it at all. In a business that can breed competitive rivalries and petty jealousies born out of resentment over one group’s perceived success and achievements, what has always stood out about their knotted entwinement was the fact that they recognized in each other a spirit that had little to do with mainstream popularity. And even though Panic would go on to see vastly more financial reward and fandom among their chosen jamband community, in many ways their story is more about perseverance on the road than actual acclaim, as they too have never quite gotten their due in music critic circles or in terms of album sales. Two underdogs who cared more about music lived in the moment than radio airplay or music videos, both shared a similar attitude towards the the pursuit of fame that often haunts more nakedly ambitious artists. Which is one of the reasons they always got along so royally, and truly admired one another, and made Panic want to shine a light on their bar band brethren from Athens.

Having long recognized that Hutchens and Carter were the “real deal” when it came to a life lived inside rock and roll, and that Hutchens himself was a true songwriting talent who deserved wider acclaim, Panic’s appropriation of their songs was never about pandering to their lesser known friends as an act of professional pity or mercy. In fact, far from it. Rather, it was honoring someone— and a badass band who could hold their own against them on any good night— who they knew to be some of the most naturally gifted musicians of their era, and whose body of work would stand the test of time long after they’re gone. But more than that, as anyone from Widespread Panic will tell you, even though they may have popularized some of Bloodkin’s more well-known tunes, and even given themselves their highest ranking single on the Billboard AOR charts with “Can’t Get High” (coming in at #27 in 1995), and a subsequent coveted spot on late-night TV with Conan O’Brien that would see them beamed into the homes of people all over America, what they took from their relationship with Danny Hutchens and Bloodkin went beyond just mere camaraderie. In fact, they learned just as much from them about proper songwriting and diving into heady lyrical territory, as Bloodkin did about what it takes to build a loyal audience by playing with intention to the crowds that came to see them. And just as important in the life and career of Hutchens as Moe Tucker, Sterling Morrison and the Velvet Underground were, so was his relationship with Widespread Panic. Two sides to the same coin, and mirrors that would reflect back on each other through the lens of Hutchens’ own creativity, both groups of people would prove to be of monumental influence when it came to shaping his outlook on music, albeit in much different ways.

DANNY HUTCHENS: Both of those things were equally important to me. Like the Panic thing, people heard our stuff through them. Nobody heard us through the Velvet Underground, or not a lot of people. But as far as me learning— because the personal thing with Panic initially was we were musicians who were feeding off each other— they were one of the bands in Athens at the beginning. And they really liked our songwriting and they had told me that that influenced them. And I think in retrospect, their chemistry— we were never a jamband, so to speak, but man, we started loosening up and our songs got longer. Like, we could see that kind of trance, just extending the songs a little bit. And I think there was mutual influence. So all that stuff to me, the first thing was that it was, especially at that age, you’re absorbing all this stuff from other musicians that you admire, you know? It’s like you learn it. And so all that was very important to me. And the Velvet Underground. And people that I’d never met, just listening to records.

ERIC CARTER: Like when we met and started hanging out with each other and stuff, we were all pretty young and they were developing their band, but maybe hadn’t gotten to the songwriting part yet. And me and Danny had the songs, but we were working on getting a band together. So, they probably, maybe unconsciously for me but, they might’ve helped us in that area. You know? Me and Danny never really had bands until we got to Georgia.

DAVE SCHOOLS: You’re assuming that we knew anything about songwriting. We just knew that we were making our own thing in Widespread Panic. Like traditional quote-unquote “songwriting craft”? You know, I’m going to tell you that Danny was the first one of those guys that we ever encountered, as like a peer and a friend and a drinking buddy. But that’s why I think he became so important. He turned us on to that craft, you know? He was a total inspiration. I mean, he was a bad ass, he was a sweetheart, he was a poet. He was a character that was as real as day. But the important thing is that he was a sweetheart and he was a good friend. But yeah, I would be tempted to say that Widespread Panic learned the vast majority of like— and I wouldn’t say learn— but we were really lucky to be in the orbit with people like Danny and Jerry Joseph and Vic Chesnutt. When it comes to like that craft— that inalienable thing that, I don’t think you can learn it. I think you can have a gift, and you can hone it and work it, and collaborate and get it better— the gift of songwriting. So when someone like Danny comes around and just throws a song like “Makes Sense to Me” at you, where it is just so empiricized, and so like right on the nose, that it’s almost daring. It’s almost like “I dare you to call me a poet, check this shit out.” And he does it without opining from his narrator’s point of view. Because he is a narrator. He’s simply describing people he’s spoken to, you know, characters. It’s just fucking annoying that these same issues are still around 40 years later. Or 30 years later. It’s like, come on! You know, I would definitely say that it’s a pretty woke song without pussyfooting around the issues. You know? He didn’t care because he put himself as a songwriter in a position of being a reliable narrator. In most cases…(laughs). I mean, some of the character studies, they’re unreliable on purpose. That’s a songwriting device. But for something like that— especially in that day and age, the Gulf War era as it were— it was the tail end of the daddy Bush era. And it was just like, god, enough. After 12 years of this whole Reagan-Bush thing, it’s just…you’re starting to see the results of it. And here we are— this is just a sidebar about great songwriting— but here we are 30 years later, and when JB sings those words, I’m still like, well, right. We’re soaking in it, you know? We’re soaking in that moment that Danny’s describing.

As one of the all-time great socially conscious songs of the past 60 years, in league with the likes of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” or Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” like so many other of his tunes, “Makes Sense to Me” stands as a towering tribute to Hutchens’ uncanny ability to dig deep into complicated issues and human predicaments without casting judgment or being morally didactic, leaving room for listeners to make their own assumptions about what is right and wrong in the singer’s eyes. A compact meta-narrative in three movements about hypocrisy and social injustice, that simultaneously tackles homelessness, child abuse, and racial inequality all in one fell swoop— and the use of righteous violence to rectify historic wrongs— the song’s utilization of graphic imagery to depict some of the most profound ailments of modern America will go down as one of his greatest artistic achievements. Which is one of the reasons why his gifting it to the members of Widespread Panic to record on their sophomore LP, as a song he would never properly record or release on his own, will always be one of the most powerful reminders of their longstanding support for each other from the very beginning, and their own individual selflessness, even if often misunderstood by the public at large.

But “Makes Sense to Me” was just the beginning. Following the success of “Henry Parsons Died” and “Can’t Get High,” throughout the rest of their career through today, Panic would continue to cover Bloodkin’s songs in concert, many of which would be included on live albums like 2004’s Über Cobra, 2005’s Live at Myrtle Beach, and 2010’s Live in the Classic City II (which featured cameos by Danny and Eric on “Success Yourself” and “End of the Show” alongside John Keane and R.E.M.’s Mike Mills), as well as several live DVDs like 2001’s Live at Oak Mountain and 2012’s Live at The Tabernacle. Maintaining a staunch dedication to shining a light on their fellow Athenians, as well as other people from their long collaborative career like Jerry Joseph and Vic Chesnutt, Panic would prove over and over again just how great their respect, and debt, was to those who helped them learn to be better musicians and songwriters. Providing vehicles for their own expression through a collective songbook that is still under-appreciated by many, including their own fans, their repeated commitment to highlighting the work of those around them stands as a testament to not just their generosity of spirit, but also the spirit of their hometown that launched them on their musical journey so many years ago.

DAVE SCHOOLS: “Henry Parsons Died” was on Everyday, our third record. Which, I was just like, “can we please do this song?” It’s just so bad ass. So bad ass. And of course, once Todd and I locked into that groove, our producer Johnny Sandlin on those first two Capricorn records, he was like, “Well, this one is a winner. Let’s just knock it out.” So by the time “Can’t Get High” came out and got some attention, it was the third Bloodkin song that we put into the oeuvre, as it were, and all of those still get regular play because they’re so strong.

ERIC MARTINEZ (Bloodkin/Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons): Thank God you got folks like Widespread Panic, and bands like that started playing them ‘cause, I’ll be honest, I probably would’ve never heard of them. You know, I grew up in Maryland, a lifetime away from Athens, Georgia. And it wasn’t until I just happened upon Widespread Panic and asked my buddy about a song, and he was like, “Oh, that’s this band called Bloodkin.” I happened on the album Everyday in 1995 or something like that. And my buddy had gone to school in Georgia and he’s like, “I see you have a Widespread Panic CD.” He’s like, “What’s your favorite song?” And I was like, this one called “Henry Parsons.” And he’s like, “Oh, well that’s a Bloodkin song.”

ERIC CARTER: It’s been a very cool thing. I mean, they’ve definitely gotten us to some places that we wouldn’t have ordinarily been able to go. Now, the flip side of that is that there might be a lot of people that might go to listen to us and go, “They don’t sound like Widespread Panic at all.” And we were all buddies back in those days. We weren’t thinking about it like this great, huge band is covering us. When you know somebody like that, you don’t think of it in those terms. But, as David Barbe pointed out, is that that’s probably been kind of, you could almost say, a blessing and a curse because some people might expect something that they’re not going to get kind of thing. But that’s just part of the whole package. They’ve been very good about that, about some of the people they cover, trying to put a spotlight on some people that might not have otherwise been heard by these folks. Like somebody like Vic Chesnutt. They did a lot of work with him. Or Jerry Joseph. Those two come to mind immediately. And then there’s us, of course. There’s a lot of our songs that they play that they haven’t recorded on a record.

ERIC MARTINEZ (Bloodkin/Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons): I can only attest to being the new guy— you know, 20 years ago— to that group of friends. And to be honest, every last one of them is as embracing as you think they are. From Danny and Eric, through Jerry, through— I never met Vic— but through the Panic guys. They are as gracious and hospitable to friends of these other friends of theirs, that it’s great. I’ve been pulled into that world and it’s an amazing thing. And then to see this band playing this weekend [at Red Rocks] in front of 10,000 people three nights in a row, and a huge percentage of the music that they will play is their friends’ music, it’s amazing. It’s Jerry, it’s Bloodkin, it’s Vic, it’s songs they’ve written with their friends. It’s a really cool thing. It’s something I try to do too. I try to play my friends’ songs. My friends write great songs. It’s very seldom I play a show and don’t play at least like four Bloodkin songs. I play a lot of Jerry. I play a lot of Vic. I play a lot of Bloodkin. And only because that’s how I was taught to do it by these guys.

But, aside from record releases and DVDs, perhaps no greater tribute to that spirit of camaraderie exists than the full set of Bloodkin tunes Panic would perform at Red Rocks last summer, when they took the stage to honor their fallen friend in a show of solidarity— and profound thanks— to a man who not just helped them on their road to success, but in many ways showed them the way. And not through chasing album sales or personal glory, but rather, through his words and own generosity in sharing with them some of the greatest jewels from his vast collection of unpolished gems. One of which, the song “Trashy” from Black Market Tango, would not just make its debut at the show, but become a staple of Panic’s live sets over the past year as they incorporated it into every three night run they’ve done around the country since. One of the standout tracks from Bloodkin’s final album with Hutchens, the song has quickly become a crowd favorite, and one that speaks to not just his own lyrical acumen, but to a particular strain of Southern life and storytelling, evoking the sights, sounds and characters he’s encountered along the way. Poignant, melancholy, but with a message of redemption through music, and ultimately salvation, as only he could deliver, the song has taken on a resonance of its own away from its original author and turned into something of an anthem representing a sentiment much larger than either Hutchens or Widespread Panic. With its colorful imagery of backwoods America, whether it be somewhere in north Georgia or rural West Virginia, and the overgrown yards littered with salvaged tombstones and dreams of escaping the doldrums of poverty with fast cars, or just a shot of drugs and some old beat up guitars, it’s a cinematic space that tries to bring dignity to the downtrodden and demoralized, and those suffering from a poor hand in life. Trashy but true, even though they may live an existence on the edge of polite society, they may in fact be the luckiest folks in the world, because they keep it simple. And honest, and real. Even when they have the blues. Much like Hutchens himself.

DAVE SCHOOLS: We really wanted to do something special for Danny when we got to Red Rocks [last] year. And I was like, look, the obvious thing is we just do a bunch of the songs of his we always do. But what if we find a couple of new ones that we’ve never done? And so, “Mercy Train to Bogart” came up, and like doing things that we very, very seldom did or that we’d only do with Danny sitting in like “Success Yourself,” things like that. Sure. We’ll play those. But my suggestion was “God’s Bar.” Because while it’s ponderous— it’s 13 minutes— it’s not like some complicated thing. It’s just a three song cycle. It’s like three songs compounded into one big chunk and it’s classic Danny. And I threw it at JB— and once again, JB being the guy who has to sing the thing and sell it— looked for something that I think was of Danny for him. You know? And I think that JB’s appreciation as a songwriter, when he came across “Trashy,” he was like, well, I got to sing this line about my black light Led Zeppelin poster. This is like, “we’re trashy, but we’re true.” That is our ethos. That is as Southern as it gets. And to play that song at Red Rocks in the midst of a whole set of Danny’s music, that was important. And we’ve kept “Trashy”….and I’m sure we’ll play it more.

ERIC CARTER: I think I’ve heard recordings of them doing it a couple of times. I know when they did the Bloodkin set out at Red Rocks— I was actually out there, I was playing with Eric Martinez, sort of the west coast Bloodkin combination of the Dirty Birds/Bloodkin, it was a mishmash of all these different musicians— and I started getting messages from random people. It’s like, “Man, Eric, if you come to Red Rocks”— like however many people it holds— “there’s like 13,000 hugs waiting on you.” And I was like, that sounds horrifying. And I can’t be there. And they were like, “You should be on stage with them.” It’s like, they’re not having guests like that. It’s the COVID thing. There’s no backstage or anything. So there’s not going to be any walking out and sitting in kind of thing. And plus, I was actually setting up somewhere across town for another show. So I didn’t get to see any of that stuff. But I was playing a show later with Eric Martinez, and when we were loading out, somebody had put on a live recording of that set. So that was kind of strange to hear when me and Eric are loading out. And it’s like, man, that actually sounds pretty good. But they did a whole Bloodkin set. Now, there’s a part of me, like the thing with the Panic fans, there’s certain songs that Panic does of ours, like if you go to YouTube or something like that, and you can see the number of views— and I did this just out of morbid curiosity— I was like, well, let’s check. The views of like “Man in Trouble,” and it would have like 400 or something. And then it’s like, now let’s check out “Trashy.” And this is after Panic started doing it. And it’s like 10,000. And it’s like, man, it would be awesome if Panic did a different song off that record every night and then the crowd could go, “Oh wait, there’s a whole other record here. There’s a bunch of other songs.” Sometimes there’s sort of amusing tunnel vision with that kind of stuff. And there’s a treasure trove of other songs out there that you might like too.

DAVID BARBE: Me as somebody else in another band, and observer of it, and then having worked with both bands as friends with all those guys, it was a very important cross-pollination between the two. Obviously Danny and Eric writing all the songs that Panic has done, and Panic, after Danny’s passing, playing a set of Bloodkin music at Red Rocks as a tribute to him. Obviously they were extremely close. Todd was always like a member of Bloodkin. I mean, he plays on Creeperweed— brilliantly— and plays on Last Night Out. But as a presence they were intertwined really from the moment that Danny and Eric got into town. And it’s interesting, in the case of one, they struggled. And when the scarecrow pointed, they always took the yellow brick road that probably didn’t go towards Oz. And the others turned into the guys that have sold out Red Rocks more than any other artist of all time, which is mindblowing, and are summarily wonderful people. I always thought there was a lot of love and respect that went both ways. And it’s interesting because, there are people who are well-known, famous, and they then kind of become like the people who hang out with the other well-known famous people. But I always had the feeling that the Panic guys held Bloodkin in the same regard as they did any other like genuine greats of music, and that’s so cool. And it does speak well of those guys. And Danny and Eric, of course, I’m sure felt the same about Panic. It seems like that they really respected those guys and what they did and what they stood for and how they did things. And I think the part of the creative partnership of Danny and Eric writing songs and Panic performing them, is as valid as Leiber and Stoller writing them and Elvis Presley singing them, or Bob Dylan writing them and the Byrds singing them. It doesn’t make the Byrds any less that they created these transcendent versions of Bob Dylan songs. And it doesn’t make Bob Dylan any less of a songwriter because, “well, you know, the version that the Byrds did is beautiful.” And it’s the same thing with Panic and Bloodkin. And it’s like Panic breathed a different kind of life into those songs, but the skeleton remained the same. I think it’s a beautiful thing between all those guys.

DAVE SCHOOLS: Just like the idea of a song from Danny Hutchens while we play it on stage as Widespread Panic, standing up there in that glorious outdoor amphitheater on a cold, weird day, and paying tribute to someone I’ve known for 30 years whose music I’ve had an intimate relationship with, just all of a sudden in the middle of nowhere— and it’s not even a line, it might just be the turnaround back into a verse— something clicked in me and like a single tear came out. And for me to actually cry? I had a shrink that I spent thousands and thousands of dollars and years [on], and she’s like, “why don’t you just cry about it?” And it doesn’t happen. It don’t come easy for me. But what was in that single tear was just like a lifetime of friendship. I mean, Todd Nance— losing my brother. He was part of what the Red and Black called “the heaviest rhythm section, other than the Georgia marching band.” Which I never knew if it was a dig on our weight, or just that we were “stomping firmly on the terra,” as Todd put it. We could stomp like a motherfucker. We could drop the bomb. Just to know that that will never happen again, that I’ll never get another note where we just dropped the bomb, and I look at Todd Nance and it’s like, yeah, we just did that. Or to like play a song like “Trashy” and be like, wow, I never even knew that he had this song until here we are playing it. That sucks. It sucks, you know? But that’s life, and what I just described to you, if Danny felt it he probably already put it into a song.

ERIC CARTER: This is a hindsight thing too, like now that he’s passed, all those lyrics, it’s like he’s summing up everything, summing up his life, you know? That’s definitely a song where you look at it after the fact it’s like, “oh, well now I see what he’s saying.” \\ If anybody ever writes a Bloodkin book, it’ll have to be called Trashy. I think me and Danny had a title like The Dark Carnival or something, but now it would probably be Trashy.

So again, one has to ask: just who do these songs belong to? In the end, it would be fair to say they truly belong to all of them— both Bloodkin and Panic alike, along with their fans— as a collective gesture whose roots date back to their earliest formulations as artists trying to make their way in the world. Part of a shared odyssey that would see ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs, deaths and rebirths, and all built around the power of song to connect with each other in a deep and meaningful way that is singular in the annals of modern music. Having spent an ass-kicking lifetime wowing audiences around the country with their unique musical brotherhood, it is a journey that hopefully one day more people will come to appreciate as one of the greatest collaborations in rock and roll, and all emanating out of a small college town, and vibrant music scene, that cherished craft and camaraderie over crass commercialism, lifting those up around them in whatever way they could. And maybe, one day, many years from now, Hutchens and Bloodkin will get the respect they so richly deserve.

DAVE SCHOOLS: I feel like there’s just an incredible mother load, like we’re mining for gold. And you hit that Danny Hutchens/Eric Carter mother load, I mean, I can’t see a better batch of woefully, and totally unacceptably unknown songs, just sitting there waiting for some band to get them. And by get them I mean understand them. And to be able to refract them. It’s interesting, and it’s never fun to talk about, but you know, in the wake of Neil Casal’s exit from this earth, and the way that I’ve spent the last two years of my life making this incredible 41-song, 5-LP set of Neil Casal songs [2021’s Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal covers compilation], it’s not a far cry to consider doing something similar with Danny’s music. There’s certainly enough of it. The question is, because he never toured that much, how many musicians outside of, let’s just say Southeast region, really have an appreciation and can refract that stuff. It’s like, there’s a generation that needs to do some research on the music of Danny Hutchens and record it. But if I can enable that, and if David Barbe and I can enable that, and if Eric Carter and David Barbe and I all approve and can enable that, and there are a million other people that will join in— if they can do some good, other than getting this music out into the world, and help Danny’s kids, and help Eric and the people that helped create this music, if not influenced it, then downright co-wrote it.

ERIC CARTER: That’s another one of those things that like, since you were the one that lived it or whatever, and it’s people that you’ve known for so long, you sorta take it for granted. And it’s one of those when you can step back and look at it, it’s like, well, we met those guys when we were all young. And it was just such a perfect time to meet and to have that kind of thing happen. Because we were at a certain age where we’re still like— I’m sure both bands, all the musicians— they’re still just soaking stuff up and trying to learn and try trying to become formed themselves, you know, but come fully formed. Or if not fully, on the way. And it was a cool collection of personalities to know at that particular age, at that particular time. I think about— this gets into a whole other thing— but I think about things like, man, I wish I would have been around London in 1964. Imagine all those guys, all those bands that were happening. They were kids out of World War II. You know, World War II babies. They didn’t know each other yet, but they were all discovering this music at the same time, and this weird music from America that Americans weren’t listening to. And then all these kids got to know each other and they were all in their late-teens or early-twenties or whatever, and just all those different bands that formed and all those friendships that came out of that time. And that’s never going to happen again. That’s just a lightning in a bottle kind of moment, which led to the British Invasion. I just think about stuff like that. Now, somebody might look at our situation and think, “Oh, I wish I would have been there when Panic knew Bloodkin back in like 1986 or 87.” Everybody’s got their things and it’s usually outside of themselves. Like, man, I wish I would have been there for that.

DANNY HUTCHENS (from the liner notes to the One Long Hustle box set): For the record, those guys deserve all the success they ever received— they have always played music for the purest reasons— and they have always treated their crew, their fans, and everyone else with the utmost respect. They have always tried to help us out at every possible turn. I loved those guys from the start and I still love every one of them. They are the real deal. Fifty years from now if anyone’s still listening to music from this Athens scene, the first improv-heavy music they’ll Liston to will be Widespread Panic, just as people today are listening to old recordings by Charlie Parker and John Coltrane— the Panic boys are that good and that timeless— and I say God bless ‘em.

In Memory of Daniel Hutchens