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Todd Nance
(October 2005 Issue)
Widespread Panic's Jamming DuoWith Till The Medicine
Takes, Widespread Panic move way beyond their reputation as merely a jam band. Not that they'll necessarily be
jumping up the Billboard Top-40
charts any time soon. But the album does show a tighter grip on
songwriting and a
wider palette of sounds than the band has explored in
the past.
So, what makes Widespread Panic work? Drummer
Todd Nance thinks for
just a second before answering, "The main thing is that nobody in the
band sat around and tried to
sound like somebody else. Our sound is
derived from all forms of American music, but I don't think the band
sounds like
any other band. I think once you've heard Widespread Panic
a few times you know what you're listening to. And even
as different as
this record is, I think people will recognize it as Widespread Panic."
So just how does Nance
accomplish that behind the kit? Laughing, the
drummer says, "Man, I have no clue. I just get in there, cross my
fingers, and
hope for the best."
To date Nance and percussionist Domingo "Sonny" Ortiz have found a formula that works
exactly
for the best. Both members joined Panic in 1986 and quickly found a way
to work together. Though their live
set and studio albums boast
intricate layers of drumkit and percussion, neither say they talk much
about who is going to do
what. According to Ortiz, "I remember when we
first started playing together. We didn't spend a great length of
time
talking about, Well, you're going to take eight bars and I'm going to
take eight bars and solo, and then
we're going to break it down.... We
just said to ourselves, Let's play and see what happens."
What
happened, Ortiz continues, is that he and Nance became one. "I
want to color things and complement what Todd and the rest of
the boys
are doing." As Domingo explains it, that was exactly the lesson he
learned when he put away his drumkit and
picked up his percussion rig.
"There are three things you should do as a percussionist, and that's
listen, complement,
and don't overplay. That's been my philosophy ever
since I started playing percussion."
While Ortiz got
his original percussion inspiration from Tower Of
Power's Brent Byars, Nance cites Steve Ferrone. ("Man, he's a
groovin'
mo-fo in my book.") And where Ortiz studied with master teachers, Nance
learned how to play by feel in a
marching band. But from those
seemingly disparate backgrounds, the duo has come together to create
one of the tightest
drum teams in modern music.
David John
Farinella
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