One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (44 page)

PEARSON:
One of my favorite things was when Butch and I would look at each other and lock into a good rhythm and Dickey would just take off. There was something about locking up together and getting into that groove that was very exciting and special. Duane and Dickey were great rhythm players, too, which was a very important part of the band’s sound.

It was an honor to be in the Allman Brothers Band and I took the gig very seriously and tried to do the best I could. The original band is still one of my favorite bands of all time. I wore those records out learning how to play what they did. I tried to play in honor of Duane, and also play like myself. Sometimes it was tricky—and not always in the way you might think. There were a few songs where I’d get up there and be soloing and I’d think, “Ooh, I have to back off because my Dickey Betts influence is coming out.” Dickey was a real hero of mine and it could be odd to be playing next to him and start playing like him. I would quickly change approaches.

ABB, 1997–99, with Jack Pearson and Oteil Burbridge.

This lineup was not captured on any official recordings, despite playing some very strong live shows. Pearson, who struggled with tinnitus, was drawn into an ongoing battle about stage volume, which Allman and Betts had long waged. It came to a head during the 1999 Beacon run.

BUTCH TRUCKS:
Jack seemed really unhappy and was struggling with his ears. He said, “I could be playing sessions in Nashville right now,” and I said, “Why yes, you could.” He had bad tinnitus and our stage volume had just gotten so loud, with Dickey turning up, that it was a nightly battle for him.

PEARSON:
Dickey was playing through two or three hopped-up 100-watt Marshall heads. There was talk about him switching to 50-watt heads, but that never happened and it became very hard for me to get a good sound—or a sound that I could even hear onstage. Everyone else was struggling to be heard and to hear each other over Dickey’s volume, which he basically wanted loud enough so he could feel it. I would get bigger and bigger gear and I still couldn’t hear it properly. I was having pain from the damage.

Gregg was setting up as far away from the guitar amps as he could; I would have to walk ten or fifteen feet to talk to him. He couldn’t handle the volume and Dickey didn’t want any Plexiglas on stage. I was wearing the highest-end, custom-made plugs you can get and it still was not enough. I had a couple of meetings with Dickey, where he said, “I don’t know how much longer I can take it either, Jack, but I’m not turning down.”

I was seeing an audiologist, who told me that playing with them was causing me damage and it was getting irreparable. It was like, “Do I stay in this band I love being in, or protect the hearing I have left?” I was in tears. It was not an easy decision to leave that band, but I was worried about having to stop playing in the middle of a long summer tour and I tried to do the right thing. My ears were so messed up that I barely played at all for the next two years. It was an honor to be in that band, and I wish it could have lasted longer.

BUTCH TRUCKS:
We knew we had to do something—and I knew what we had to do. Not long after I had said Derek wasn’t ready in ’97, I formed the band Frogwings with him and Oteil and Jimmy Herring, and after playing a bunch of shows I realized how wrong I was. He was more than ready, so we called him up.

Butch’s nephew celebrated his twentieth birthday by joining the Allman Brothers Band for their thirtieth-anniversary tour. He was younger than any of the original members were when the band formed.

DEREK TRUCKS:
It was an honor to be part of such a great institution from the start. When I first got the gig, I was just trying to maintain the spirit of the whole thing while hopefully bringing some fire to it, hoping to hold up my end while also expressing my own voice. I spent more time practicing after I got that call than ever. I usually listen to music for eight or ten hours a day, and just play for a few, because I’d rather hear the masters play than myself. But I spent a lot of time woodshedding, playing along with tapes and being awed by the level of musicianship—and the number of songs I had to learn. But I wasn’t intimidated. I was excited about playing with Dickey. I had listened to him forever, and knew it would be a trip playing off of him and behind him. I was looking forward to learning a lot from a master.

I listened to tapes of everything, but for the classic material I went to the source, which is Duane. I don’t want to do an interpretation of an interpretation. I love what Warren and Jack and Dan Toler did, but I knew that I had to put my stamp on it. One of the hallmarks of the band is everybody gets their own voice. They don’t dictate what you play, but you have to hit the milestones and that’s good—I always need some forced discipline. That first tour was sink or swim. I wasn’t too worried and it’s nice to be forced to play things that you don’t normally do. I think it made me grow. Being thrown into a situation like that, with a legendary band, large crowds, and so many people with distinct, strong sounds and identities forced me to reach beyond what I would normally do.

BURBRIDGE:
Derek was my friend and when I heard he was coming on board, I was a little apprehensive, truthfully. I didn’t think it was the healthiest environment for a young person.

DEREK TRUCKS:
No one warned me of exactly what I was walking into, but as young as I was, I had been on the road almost ten years and had an idea of what happens out there. I had an innate sense of when to stay out of the way and when to mix it up. If it’s not my fight, I’m not gonna mix it up. It wasn’t really that stressful to me. It was like people-watching in New York City—you see crazy things and just observe. The Allman Brothers were an amazing opportunity but it wasn’t my ship to steer.

BURBRIDGE:
It was tense in the band back then and I had only been in it for a couple of years. I still didn’t really understand what I had gotten myself into, and I was also going through a hard time personally. In some ways I thought Derek knew them better than I did since he was related, but he was still very young. He proved to be one of the most mature of all of us.

HAYNES:
Derek is so mature—and even when he was a kid, he was far more mature than most people I’ve worked with that are twenty or thirty years older than he is. He plays music for all the right reasons and is an extremely selfless musician. He plays for the music and he has so much reverence for the music and the people playing it. I’ve played with him in so many different situations, and whenever there is a new person, a guest, or he’s sitting in with a legend of some sort, at the beginning he’ll take it all in and you’ll think, “Oh, Derek is laying back too much.” But he’s just settling in, letting everybody get their groove and getting his own groove and waiting until the right time to explode—and explode is what he does.

DAVID GRISSOM:
When I played those shows with the band in ’93 Derek sat in one night and his guitar was bigger than him. I thought to myself, “This is the Allman Brothers Band. It is not right to have a little kid up here just because he’s related to someone.” Then he played like three notes and I said, “You’re kidding me.” I was astounded. Obviously, he’s grown by leaps and bounds, but he was damn good at that young age.

DEREK TRUCKS:
I’ve always had mixed emotions about people talking about how much I sound like Duane. Obviously, the fact anyone would say that is a great compliment—especially when I was just starting out—but you don’t want to get lumped in one bag, or with one person. Your first influence stays with you, especially when you listen too hard and don’t let it go through. I actually never tried to sit down and copy licks. I would just listen and play.

ALLMAN:
Duane was his mentor—Derek’s posthumous teacher, if you will—and you can sure hear him in there. But Derek’s in there, also—and always has been, from the first time I heard him. He’s got his own style.

BETTS:
I think Derek sometimes tries too hard not to sound like Duane and I wish he would just go ahead and play. But he has truly got his own voice and original playing style.

DEREK TRUCKS:
I went through a phase of rebelling and stopped listening to all guitar players from about fifteen to nineteen. I got tired of hearing people yelling for “One Way Out” or “Statesboro Blues.” I wasn’t in the Allman Brothers; that wasn’t my music, wasn’t what I did, and I found the best way to establish yourself is to fully take a left turn. Of course, you run a lot of people off, but it makes you a better musician. It adds another layer to what you do. It’s easy to give people what they want when you know the handful of tricks that will make people clap. It’s much harder to stay inspired.

BUTCH TRUCKS:
I think Derek is what Duane may have become if he had more time. Remember, Duane was twenty-four when he died and had only been playing slide for a few years.

Kickin’ Ass

The story of Gov’t Mule.

Allen Woody, Matt Abts, Warren Haynes, Macon, Georgia, 1994.

Gov’t Mule was an idea before it was a band, born in countless conversations between Allen Woody and Warren Haynes on long-distance bus rides from one Allman Brothers gig to another. The two younger Brothers would sit up all night listening to music and talking about the kind of group they would like to form.

“We were listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Free, caught up in the musical freedom they displayed,” says Haynes. “That sparse use of space seemed like a complete one-eighty from playing your role in a seven-piece band like the Allman Brothers, so naturally that’s the approach we were drawn to for what we imagined would be a fun side project. Woody and I had gotten much closer as friends and musical cohorts and doing something together seemed like the next natural step.”

Haynes played with drummer Matt Abts in the Dickey Betts Band from 1986 to 1989 and they had stayed in touch. “Warren called out of the blue, very excited about putting a band together,” recalls Abts. “He and Allen were very intent on a power trio.” On the Allman Brothers’ next visit to Los Angeles, where Abts lived, Warren and Woody joined the drummer at a Sunday-night jam session that confirmed the trio’s potential.

“Warren and I had played together for about five years by then and I loved it,” Allen Woody said in 1997. “Then, the first time I played with Matt, I thought, ‘This is it. This is the drummer I’m supposed to play with.’”

The band didn’t have a name until Woody, Warren, and Jaimoe watched a James Brown show from the side of the stage. “Apparently, Jaimoe kept saying, ‘That’s a government mule,’” Abts says. “When Allen realized he was referring to James Brown’s wife’s behind, he thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard and our band had a name; Gov’t Mule was named after James Brown’s wife’s booty.”

The Mule debuted at the Palomino, a North Hollywood club, on May 12, 1994. “I think we only knew six songs,” Abts says. “We were basically just jamming, and a lot of friends joined us for a second set.”

A month later, the trio went to Macon, Georgia, moved into the Big House, then the home of Kirk and Kirsten West, and spent a week jamming and writing music in the same room where the original Allman Brothers Band had rehearsed. They emerged with a cache of songs, then played three shows in three nights, and Gov’t Mule was born in earnest.

“We didn’t have aspirations of being a full-time band or going beyond one experimental record,” says Haynes. “We wanted to have fun and fill a void that we felt existed: an experimental power trio. The audiences were small, the ticket prices were low, and we were having fun and not putting pressure on ourselves. That led to a certain looseness.”

In October 1995, Gov’t Mule released their self-titled debut and hit the road, touring incessantly around Allman Brothers runs. The group’s sound both tightened and expanded; their shows were high-volume, high-intensity three-way musical conversations that could roam from a capella Delta blues to ear-splitting covers of Black Sabbath. In March ’97, as they finished work on their excellent, ambitious second album,
Dose
, Haynes and Woody announced they were leaving the Brothers to focus on Gov’t Mule.