Opening Lines of Interview with Widespread Panic's Dave Schools

Posted: May 29, 2009

Onset of Interview with Panic's Bassist

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Widespread Panic's bassist Dave Schools. It's an extensive interview where we discuss books, film, Panic's Archive Series, songwriting and Panic's upcoming summer tour with The Allman Brothers among other things. I thought I'd sent out the opening lines of the interview to give everyone a weekend taste. This is only the beginning...listen out,

James Calemine

James Calemine: Hey Dave...how's it goin'?

Dave Schools: I'm sitting at home on sunny California day. How about you?

JC: Not bad. It's about 70 in Atlanta...

DS: Hey, by the way, great interview with Horace.

JC: Thank ya man. So, let's get to it. You were born in Richmond, Virginia, right?

DS: Born in Richmond--capitol of The Confederacy.

JC: Talk about the first instrument you became aquainted with...was it the bass?

DS: No, we had a stand up piano. It was a middle-class family from the 40s and everybody had a piano to sit around and play. It's what my mom liked to do. We had a piano bench full of sheet music from the 40s, 50s and 60s. There's a picture of me at about six months old playing the piano...or playing with it (laughs). Progressively, they encouraged my music. I remember they would take me to Standard Drug Store--it was an interesting kind of drug store. Records were so big in those days every store sold them. Standard Drug had a bunch of vinyl 45s and of course LPs. I guess I was intrigued by the pitcure sleeve of Deep Purple's version of "Kentucky Woman", which is amazing and I'd like to take this opportunity to say a great song is a great song, no matter how you frame it...