Stockholm Syndrome

When newspaper heiress Patty Hearst began robbing banks with the Symbionese Liberation Army, she was said to have been suffering from Stockholm syndrome, a situation in which hostages bond with their captors. More than thirty years later, Dave Schools of Widespread Panic teamed up with the Jackmormons’ Jerry Joseph to form a kind of improvisational supergroup with the same handle. The band’s aim, clearly less sinister than the source of its name, was to form a group of musicians with a unique bond that allowed for a broad range of expression and dynamics, both within definite song structures and through testing and redefining those boundaries. With a lineup that includes veterans of the P-Funk Allstars and Gov’t Mule, this Stockholm Syndrome engages in fluid jazz-blues jams that manage to reel in tendencies toward excess common to practitioners of the style.