Widespread Panic
7/8/2000
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, The Woodlands, TX

Source: SBD>ALD>DAT
Lineage: DAT Master>Adobe Audition>Adobe Logic>FLAC
Recorded and remastered 2026 by Kevin James

My ALD Soundboard Story…
One version or another of this tape has been around since shortly after the show, but I was never really happy with the sound. A friend asked me about this show recently, along with some of the other ALD boards I’d made, and during that conversation I realized I really should revisit these recordings. These days I have far better equipment and far more control at my fingertips, along with decades of FOH and recording experience under my belt, so a remaster was definitely in order.

I’ve seen a lot of posts over the years about Assisted Listening Device recordings, and people usually either get it totally wrong or treat it like some mystical process. It really wasn’t. You got the ALD receiver from the venue, unplugged the terrible headphones, plugged the output into the DAT deck, and hoped the reception wasn’t awful.
I’d read about it somewhere — probably an email list — and thought, “That sounds like complete BS.” Then I tried it myself and was shocked at how straightforward it actually was. I mean, the system existed because of the ADA, and most venues were surprisingly helpful.
The first time I asked for one was at Starplex, and nobody had any idea what I was talking about. By some stroke of luck, one of the medics walked into the infirmary while we were discussing it and said, “Yeah, that’s a thing. We’ve got a couple receivers somewhere.” They found them, and I was off to the races.
All told, FM recordings were weird. I don’t know if you can even still do them anymore. By the early 2000s, the devices had mostly disappeared. I’d ask venues for one and get told people never returned them. I never knew other tapers making ALD recordings, and none of the Texas tapers I knew were doing them either. So maybe they really did walk off, maybe they got lost, or maybe venues just wanted me to kick rocks.
Either way, I got lucky.
By the time I made this recording, I’d figured out that the cable running from the receiver to the DAT deck — usually just the original headphone cable — acted not only as the audio connection, but also as the antenna. Not exactly ideal for a shielded audio cable, but over time I more or less figured out how to build something that worked reasonably well as both: a reliable audio cable and a halfway decent antenna. Certainly better than some Monster mini-to-mini cable.
The RF flutter and static were unavoidable. Checking levels almost always caused some kind of issue, which is why most of the noise tends to happen near the beginning of shows. Monitoring with headphones was basically pointless anyway. You could barely hear over the PA, and the less movement involved, the better the reception tended to be.
I also tried to keep these gigs as streamlined as possible: small backpack, Sony D8 deck, extra batteries, DATs, and a hillbilly homemade Franken-cable.
As an aside, Bob Dylan was the only artist I ever encountered who actually turned the feed off. It was a Dylan/Paul Simon show. Dylan went on first: no feed. I figured, well, cest la vie. Then Paul Simon came out and suddenly the feed was there. I always thought that was peculiar. They knew they could turn it off — and did.
I’m fairly convinced that guy is a wizard.
Every ALD recording I ever made came through with a strong left channel and a very faint right channel. Didn’t matter what venue; they were all the same. Dual mono, heavily compressed, with an anemic right channel that still contained useful information if you boosted it enough.
The left side usually carried most of the lows and mids, while the right side contained a surprising amount of upper mids and high-frequency detail. Oddly enough, the feeds from The Pavilion in The Woodlands consistently produced the best results. No idea why.
This particular night was pretty funny.
The venue had roped off a huge section of the lawn because the band allowed recording, but by 2000 the policy was basically “tape from your seat.” So I’m standing near the lawn entrance getting plugged in when a venue employee walks past, notices me, and asks, “Are you taping?”
“Uh… yep.”
He gets all excited and says, “Oh, come with me — we have a place for you!”
He marched me over to this massive roped-off section in the dead center front of the lawn and proudly said, “Here you go!”
So I lifted the rope and walked in: one guy, alone, in a giant parcel of prime lawn real estate. No microphones. No mic stand. Just a little backpack.
I was the only person in there the entire show.
Meanwhile, my friends were either taping from their seats or hanging out under the pavilion. The lawn — especially near the back or edges — usually gave me better reception anyway.
People kept wandering over asking why they couldn’t come into the section, and I’d tell them, “Oh no, they aren’t keeping you out… they’re keeping me in.”
Nobody questioned it. They’d just give me a confused look and wander away.
The good old days.
Anyway, I’m happy with this mix and master. Is it great? No. It isn’t. But it sounds good enough, and certainly better than any audience tape I’ve come across from this show. It’s still far too mono for my taste, and there’s only so much you can do with a heavily compressed source.
But it serves its purpose.
It reminds me of those brutally hot Texas summer nights hanging out on the lawns at the sheds, listening to music with all the freaks held at a distance from the weird guy sitting alone in the taper section with no microphones.
I’ve included one raw track just for grins. You don’t have to listen long to see you need some heavy lifting to make it sound good..
-KJ, Spring 2026

Set 1 Crowd and beginning of Take Out sourced from Eric Britt’s AKG 460B with CK68 Shotgun Caps>Lunatec V2>Graham-Patten ADC-20>TascamDA-P1
Some interference and RF flutter during Take Out.

Set 1
01 Crowd
02 The Take Out
03 Tall Boy
04 Little Lilly
05 Hope In A Hopeless World
06 Airplane
07 Rock
08 Walkin
09 Sometimes
10 One Arm Steve

Set 2
11 House music (Dubtribe Sound System’s Aint Gonna Do Ya No Good)/crowd
12 Action Man
13 Thought Sausage
14 Pusher Man
15 Stop Go
16 Drums
17 Mercy
18 Surprise Valley
19 Love Tractor
20 Crowd/tuning
21 Heaven
22 Flat Foot Flewzy

FFP Fingerprint================
;flac fingerprints generated by xACT 2.58 on 2026-05-16 01:46:32 +0000

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04 Little Lilly.flac:1c479ec7c0d3f4169f84a47298745ff1
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08 Walkin.flac:a4a7f872a6b194495cc255b57b39f377
09 Sometimes.flac:81d9bd2a2bf6a3af80219754c4d3021a
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15 Stop Go.flac:83d6100bbc6a879dd79d18598170e5f0
16 Drums.flac:a2e3cbb0b713db70b35dc2409d8bcefb
17 Mercy.flac:b3ef56b1cc3decc353e4cf8c829b5921
18 Surpise Valley.flac:01737318f0f5e6d5f7b75cd87e38f1cb
19 Love Tractor.flac:433bcf4f44264e4e6e4294098dfac401
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21 Heaven.flac:20144c7de22b7327fad3474c0435b6be
22 Flat Foot Flewzy.flac:e03e921491db66f3c80873355899338a
23 Tall Boy RAW RECORDING.flac:e4a2b095e414acc0c216c28d407c0397



