Widespread Panic has emerged as one of the most successful touring acts of the 21st century, but they didn’t get there alone. The Athens, GA rockers employed the likes of Aceman, a roadie who personally experienced the band grow from playing local clubs to major venues over his five year stint.
But the story of Larry Acquaviva (aka Aceman) doesn’t start there. According to Online Athens, Acquaviva wanted to write his memoir about life on the road with Widespread Panic, but his wife realized that his literary counterpart wasn’t fully developed. In turn, Acquaviva turned the project into a series of five books, with the first released yesterday, December 6th. Titled Nobody Cares Who You Are: The Life and Times of Aceman, A Widespread Panic Roadie: The Search for His Muse, the first book talks about Acquaviva’s life leading up to his time in Widespread Panic.
“I was their first roadie. I saw things from pretty much the very beginning,” he says. “We were playing in clubs where there would be a bartender and a local drunk and by the time I left five years later, we were playing to 15,000 to 20,000 people. It was an amazing ride. It was magical.”
The second part of the series titled The Hitchhiking Odyssey, is due out next spring, and will dig more deeply into Aceman’s touring days with Widespread Panic. These books should be a great read for any fan of Panic, and the first book can be found on Amazon.