Moral Panic Packs Show With Energy By Lauchlin Fields [4/16/05] Don't panic if you see back flips at Riverfest's Center Stage Saturday. It's all part of the high-energy show four musicians known as Moral Panic. The energy and emotion the band want to convey can't always be explained, but it comes through loud and clear in their show, they said. "Sometimes you can't express it with words You've got to bust out a back flip," said lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Scott Stiffler. "When the beat comes down, so do my feet." The back flips that Illinois native Stiffler, a gymnast for 10 years, performs at the beginning of shows are a preface to the whole band's high energy. Stiffler, 28, moved to Mississippi from California. He is backed by 21-year-old twins Kevin and Brian Hindman of Port Gibson and Meredith Spencer, 23, a Vicksburg native who lives in Posrt Gibson. Kevin Hindman pumps out perfected bass lines, while Brian wails guitar solos that flow to Spencer's often fast paced beat on the drums- the backbone to a sound the band said is as oringinal as it comes. "We have a lot influences-we really don't sound like any thing else," Kevin Hindman said. The California groove that is matched with Southern rock and a twinge of blues influences shines through the high voltage sound the band has molded in the five months the group has been together. And, it grabs listerners from ages 15 to 40, Spencer said. The Hindman brothers and Spencer had thier start four years earlier, but couldn't get the sound and recognition they wanted. After attempting to master cover songs for three weeks, the three played their first gig in 2002 when they opened for long-time friend Melvin McFatter's band at Port Gibson's Heritage Festival. Spencer and the Hindman twins, known then as Artificial Intelligence, were a guitar trio- with no singer, bassist or drummer. When they started getting serious about the music a year later, they decided to start from scratch. Spencer traded in his guitar for a drum set and Kevin Hindman bought a bass. They continued to play Heritage Fest each year- gradually changing instruments and adding members. But, they said they didn't get much recognition from organizers or the audience. Last year's perfromance was a breaking point for Spencer, he said. "We had a singer, and we were mediocre at best. I almost quit, but Kevin said he wasn't going to let me quit," he said. The band stuck with it, going through a series of singers and covers, they said. The "magic" began when Kevin Hindman's girlfriend saw Stiffler playing his guitar in the lobby of a girls' dorm at Raymond's HInds Community College campus, where he and the twins attend school. She told him her boyfriend's band needed a singer. Stiffler, who performed solo for 10 years in California, met with the band at a cabin owned by McFatter in Port Gibson where the three had been practicing for years. "After he left, I was like, 'Something feels funny-there's something about that guy," Spencer said. After that, Stiffler joined the band, and they went to work on a five song power set to perform at open mic night at The Warehouse, a club near Raymond. "In the last five months, after we met Scott- I sat down and played every day for three or four hours," Spencer said. McFatter, who has performed since the late 1970s, has seen the band grow into what he said is a group of good performers. He has supported them by letting them open for his band, Lonesome Mel and the Warrenton Road Warblers, at Heritage Festival. "The improvement from last year to this year is tremendous," he said. "I told them I'll be opening for them someday." McFatter, an attorney who practices in Port Gibson, describes the band's sound as "very original" and said Stiffler's good performance as front man is perfectly backed by the Hindmans' unique identical twin connection on bass and guitar and Spencer's fast improvement on drums. "I don't think you can help but like them," he said. "It's real good entertainment. I don't think they'll disappoint anybody." Most of the poignant lyrics in the 15 songs the band has put together come from Stiffler's past, which includes a stint 18 months ago in drug and alcohol rehabilitaion. "Playing guitar is like a shrink. I needed somebody to listen to," he said. "When I was a teenager, life seemed different than it does now." Other songs are about love and life- messages that back up the name Moral Panic, something that came out of a socialogy class that Stiffler and Brian Hindman had together. "Our lyrics are about internal conflict and childhood," Spencer said. "Nothing stands for anything anymore," Stiffler said. "We find a theme- then work on meaningful ways to express it." With a good response from the several gigs they have done since November, Moral Panic is focusing its time and money on becoming the best live band ever, they said. They are ready to show people how far they've come. "It's all been motivation. When people are mean, it's made us work harder," Spencer said. Lauchlin Fields - The Vicksburg Post (Apr 16, 2005)