Widespread Panic Plays Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd With Chuck Leavell At 75th Straight Red Rocks Sell-Out
Widespread Panic on Sunday celebrated its 75th consecutive sold-out show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with a Pink Floyd cover debut, a second-time-played Rolling Stones tune, and stacked sandwiches of songs in both sets. Even better, Chuck Leavell stuck around for the third night, adding depth and relief for a recovering JoJo Hermann.
Sunday’s weather in Morrison was ideal—not too hot with cloud cover and a gentle breeze. Due to the early showtime, the race to get in line for decent spots wasn’t as brutal as in years past. The Panic faithful filed into the pews in front of the stage, which was decorated with a green banner commemorating “Widespread Panic 75th, 1996–2025.”
Once John Bell, Dave Schools, Jimmy Herring, Sunny Ortiz, JoJo Hermann, and Duane Trucks settled in onstage at 6:15 p.m, they flashed a brief tease of “Space Wrangler” before kicking off the night with the slow rolling-drums of “Wondering”. The camel’s back bent but remained unbroken during the ensuing “The Last Straw” as Jimmy Herring, white axe in hand, slashed his first solo of the evening.
Next, following Duane Trucks’ lead, the Panics crashed into an “Up All Night” that resonated with all weary but wired attendees who had stayed up a little too late after Saturday’s show. Rumored to be playing through the agony of a broken jaw throughout the weekend, JoJo—his face visibly swollen but his hands working just fine—embodied the gritty determination of a warrior and sung through his piano during a furious solo. Jimmy’s mind-bending guitar work added complexion to the song.
Without relenting for a moment, Widespread Panic shifted gears into a “Driving Song” sandwich. Halfway through, Jimmy Herring took the wheel to steer down the hazy highways of “Pilgrims” before cruising through the backroads of “Driving Song”. As a musical thank you to weekend guest Chuck Leavell, otherwise known as the “Tree Man,” the band performed “Life as a Tree” for only the fourth time ever. The song debuted during 2019’s acoustic run at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN and was last played at 2024’s Red Rocks finale.
Following up on the first notes teased, the band paired two Michael Houser compositions as a cosmic “Space Wrangler” took off into “Airplane”. Feelin’ spicy, JB dropped a “shot of whiskey” into his beer and rode the buzz through a “Take Off Jam” bound for an emphatic “Action Man”, the final destination for Sunday’s all-originals first set.
The second set started akin to the imagery of the show’s opener; whereas “Wondering” describes working “beneath the grey sky,” set two’s opener “Pigeons” invoked atmospheric conditions with “your reflection’s looking clearer now that you’re working on a cloudy day.”
A barrage of fan-favorites flowed sequentially as an uplifting “Pleas” startled “King Baby”, who awoke with screeching guitar screams. Above the clouds, the band piloted “Saint Ex” through a soaring dogfight before “Conrad” emerged from chilling in his cocoon with legs a-wigglin’.
Next, for the third straight night, Widespread Panic welcomed pianist Chuck Leavell back onstage. Playing as a septet for the first time on the evening, the band continued the weekend-long theme of cover selections from the guest pianist’s iconic resume with a sing-along take on The Rolling Stones‘ “Dead Flowers”. This marked Panic’s second-ever take on the Sticky Fingers classic, following its debut on 12/29/15 in Atlanta (which also featured Leavell).
JB equipped his slide from there for a savory “Ribs and Whiskey” featuring heaping portions of JoJo and Chuck’s pianos as the two keyboardists’ images adorned the screens on either side of the stage. Remaining in the Panic catalog, the Leavell-assisted crew gave a nod to the natural splendor of Red Rocks via “Surprise Valley” as a solitary patch of grey clouds over stage right flickered with bolts of lightning in an otherwise clear sky (“Spirit moves, it moves through all things”). A frenzied “Tie Your Shoes” served as the meat of the sandwich before a return to “Surprise Valley” rounded out set six of the weekend.
Back for their 75th consecutive sold-out Red Rocks curtain call, Widespread Panic moved through Murray McLachlan’s hard-hitting “Honky Red” before Leavell joined them onstage once again. Leavell thanked his Widespread brothers for the invitation to their milestone blowout before pulling from yet another line on his legendary C.V.—his work touring with David Gilmour—to lead the jaw-dropping Widespread Panic debut of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” (shoutout to JoJo’s jaw). Appropriately, the last words came in the form of Bloodkin’s “End of the Show” as JB welded his mandolin and the audience sang along word for word.