Stockholm Syndrome

When Widespread Panic bass player Dave Schools and acclaimed writer-artist Jerry Joseph of the Jackmormons decided to do something together, each initially figured a joint project would be a cool change of pace. Schools was currently touring with Panic, and although he had done numerous guest appearances and played in several informal side bands, he was eager to sink his teeth into something a bit meatier. Joseph, meanwhile, decided it couldn’t hurt to air out his career-long predilection for what he wryly describes as "religious-sex-junkie-heartbreak songs" in a collaborative scenario with an upbeat guy.The pair began their collaboration casually, as Joseph left his home in Portland, Oregon, to hang out at Schools’ home studio in Athens, Georgia. The two friends had formally worked together just once—when Schools produced the Jackmormons’ 2002 LP Conscious Contact—and found that their disparate sensibilities cohered quite naturally, as Schools’ left-brain approach combined with the right-brain aesthetic of Joseph to create something quite, well, brainy. The next step, they decided, should involve playing together live while simultaneously indulging their mutual love of travel, so they embarked on a shakedown acoustic tour of Europe.The band’s unusual choice for a name, Stockholm Syndrome, refers to the psychological phenomenon in which a hostage bonds with his kidnappers. It seemed an apt moniker for the pair’s somewhat twisted view of their new endeavor. Now all Schools and Joseph needed was a band.They came up with a wish list of players one or both of them had worked with in the past. At the top were three names: Eric McFadden (a versatile San Francisco-based guitarist whose extensive resume includes work with Keb Mo’, Primus’ Les Claypool and George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars), Danny Lewis (Gov’t Mule) and drummer Wally Ingram (an L.A.-based drummer who has worked with Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow and Tracy Chapman, among others, spending the last few years with the brilliant multi-instrumentalist David Lindley). All three musicians eagerly threw down for the project.