As part of the FBR Holiday Sale, Brendon, Spencer and Dallon wrote down what they are most looking forward to in the next year and what their new year’s resolution are. Click the image above to view their notes or keep reading for the transcribed version. Read the full article »

Given all that Panic! At the Disco has been through recently, it would be understandable for them to, well, panic.

Half the band split to form The Young Veins, leaving original members — singer Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith — to figure out their new roles and chart a course for the future. Their recent, well-crafted Top 10 album, “Vices & Virtues” (Fueled by Ramen), along with a string of well-received tours, has them steady again. Even a health scare for Urie, who was hospitalized with a high fever and a possible case of malaria, didn’t ruffle them.

“We’re getting into the groove of things,” said Smith, calling from a tour stop in New Orleans.

First off, how’s Brendon?

He’s fully recovered. It was just a bad flu, but they couldn’t rule out malaria because we had just been in Indonesia. We learned a lot more about malaria than we ever wanted to. Read the full article »

Facebook: Hanging out on a day off in Flo-Rida.

Spencer and Dallon during an interview at X96 Big Ass Show in Salt Lake City, Utah. October 8, 2011.

Update: X96 Big Ass Show (+4)

I saw you guys in June, and I was impressed how much your fans appreciated and welcomed Foxy Shazam. They’re not immediately accessible, and I thought it was a testament to the type of people who come to your shows.
I was really excited about that, too. It was a band we were fans of for quite awhile. We just love the guys in the band, their stage performance and the music so much that on tour, it was like, “Well, we don’t really care what anybody else thinks, because we think they’re great, and they absolutely deserve to be on stage.” I just thought they were so good live, it would be a little odd to me if it didn’t translate to some people. That’s the best thing about having them as an opener—I feel like we’ve got an unfair advantage on the tour, because we have this opening band that’s putting on just as good a show as any headlining band I’ve seen in quite a while. It makes the show that much better for everybody.

Now that Vices And Virtues has been out for awhile, and you’ve played the songs live and they’ve had a chance to grow, what’s your take on the music on the record?
We have a weird perspective on it, because we were working on it for quite a while, and some of the ideas came from demos that were two years old—and then there are a couple songs that were written within the last few weeks of recording. [The album] seems to me like a good representation of what it actually was—which was two, two-and-a-half years of trying to figure out what we wanted the band to be, post-splitting with Ryan [Ross] and Jon [Walker]. Read the full article »

Panic! at the Disco, a band of kids fresh from high school, came out of Las Vegas in ’05, with a pop/rock/emo sound, Internet buzz, a world of energy and a fistful of smart songs. They signed to Decaydance Records, the label run by Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy; their debut CD, “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out” and the sophomore release, “Pretty. Odd.” spawned hit singles and videos and reached lofty positions on album charts.

Two years ago, it looked like the wheels might fall off the bandwagon when founding member/guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker left. But drummer/co-founder Spencer Smith and singer/multi-instrumentalist Brendon Urie pressed on. They wrote like crazy and, in March, released the third Panic! at the Disco studio album, “Vices & Virtues” (Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen).

Panic! at the Disco will work Backstage Live Tuesday. The lineup includes Smith, Urie, bassist Dallon Weekes and guitarist Ian Crawford. Smith talked about going through the changes.

“We were in a unique situation after the first album. It was completely unexpected what happened with us,” he said. “It was us at 19 years old. We went through changes anybody would go through. If we hadn’t had the success we did, we probably wouldn’t be in a band together. Me and Ryan grew up together. I saw him last night and it’s good; we’re still friends. Read the full article »

Salt Lake City rockers King Niko sent over this bit of news about how their frontman and Neon Trees’ Tyler Glenn helped save the day for a PATD appearance at a radio festival this past weekend after the PATD’s singer Brendon Urie was hospitalized.

Panic! At The Disco arrived at Gallivan Plaza in downtown Salt Lake to headline the X96 FM Big Ass Show without their lead vocalist, Brendon Urie. Urie, who with the rest of Panic! At The Disco had recently returned from a tour in Indonesia, had a fever of 105 degrees [Panic!'s site said 102.], and doctors at the Los Angeles hospital where he was being treated warned the singer against travelling, fearing malaria.

In a moment of desperation the band considered their options: cancel a sold-out festival-headlining gig, or figure out a way to play without their charismatic front man. Luckily, Panic! At The Disco bassist Dallon Weekes caught Salt Lake City rock band King Niko’s Big Ass Show set, and found in frontman Ransom Wydner the onstage persona he needed to fill in for Urie.

“It’s every musician kid’s dream,” Wydner said, “you go to a show for this band that you love and their lead singer is sick, and they need YOU to fill in for him. It’s like a Disney movie or something, it’s nuts.” Read the full article »

From Facebook (10/09)…

The US tour starts tonight in Reno, and we are very excited to kick things off in our home state! We had an amazing time in the spring, but weren’t able to play as many cities as we would’ve liked. If you couldn’t see us then, hopefully we are coming close enough to you that you can on this run! Foxy Shazam will be opening the show, and if you haven’t seen Foxy before, I highly recommend you get there in time to see them. If there were one band that can put on a better show than us, it would be Foxy. Also, we can’t wait to be back on tour with our good friend Patrick Stump, who will be main support. It’s been far too long since we’ve been in the presence of his greatness!

As you may know, we love to do cover songs. So, for this tour we decided to do something a little special and let you be involved in the choice of the cover song we play night to night. A few days before each show on this tour we’ll be putting up a poll with 5 new cover songs that we’ve learned.  This way you can vote for which one you want us to play at the show you’re going to. You get a chance to weigh in on the set list for that night, and it keeps things fresh for us. We’re excited about this, and hopefully it’s as fun for you as it will be for us! Stay tuned for updates about the online polls, and we hope to see you soon!

- Spencer

The polls will be posted on the band’s Facebook wall.