Clad in jeans and cowboy boots, musician John “JB” Bell reclined in a green fabric and metal chair on a Saturday morning, surrounded by 16 computers sitting on shelves about a foot from the ceiling. The computer screens glowed blue behind multicolored static, generating so much heat air-conditioning was needed to cool the room.
Mr. Bell, 49, said he spends a few hours every night and day he’s home in this "energy room," working on lyrics, reading, thinking or sleeping. He says the energy generated by the computers creates an “uplifting vibe very similar to the feeling when the band improvises into new territory, and the audience seems to be right there alongside you." His wife Laura, 48, said, "We joke it’s the new way of catching a buzz.”
The energy room is just one of the alternative treatments at the home of Mr. Bell, who for more than two decades has been the lead singer and guitarist for Southern rock jam band Widespread Panic. For about half the year Mr. Bell is on the road, playing drawn-out concerts and jamming late into the night. It’s a frenetic life, one he seeks to balance at his 1912 white Colonial that he’s also turned into a holistic wellness center in a tiny mountain town.
via The Georgia Home of Widespread Panic Lead Singer and Guitarist John ‘JB’ Bell.