A view of Herring in the studio via his Facebook page

A full two decades after they toured the Southeast on the first H.O.R.D.E. in 1992, Widespread Panic/Aquarium Rescue Unit guitarist Jimmy Herring and Flecktones bassist Victor Wooten will co-headline a tour later this year. The two groups will head out with their respective solo groups while Panic and The Flecktones take the rest of the year off. As previously reported, Herring is currently working on his second solo album with musicians like Etienne Mbappe, Jeff Sipe, Matt Slocum and Neal Fountain. Wooten will also release a pair of albums: Words & Tones, which features a number of Female vocalists, and Sword & Stone, an instrumental rendition of the same recordings. The musicians will confirm their tour plans in the coming weeks.

In related news, Widespread Panic John Bell recently reflected on the first H.O.R.D.E. tour as part of an exclusive interview tied to the April/May issue of Relix. When describing the Flecktones, Bell says:

We were very familiar with Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler and Phish and obviously ARU. When we did the southern run with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, we were like, “Holy crap, there are other bands that embrace this Aquarium Rescue Unit kind of mentality. To watch the Wootens, the combination of technical ability and improvisational and intuitive skills was just off the charts. It was great to be able to play your set and then watch this stuff go down. It felt really good

Bell also talks at length about the planning that went into the first H.O.R.D.E., his musical highlights from that first year and the time his dad scolded him after a Rolling Stone article reported on the H.O.R.D.E. bands drinking Dewar’s out of a measuring cup.

Though Herring is currently in the studio and Bell is enjoying some time off, Widespread Panic percussionist Sunny Ortiz will perform this evening. He is slated to sit in with The HEAP at Athens, GA’s The Melting Point.