One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (49 page)

“I’m all about going on a musical trip and taking it as deep as you can take it. Music is supposed to become a part of your life in a major way. The Allman Brothers have done that and are fully ingrained into many American lives. At the end of the day, that’s the highest compliment. That’s the goal.”

DEREK TRUCKS:
Playing with Oteil is just awesome and amazing because he is so rare: an incredibly technical player who puts the groove first and never, ever loses that focus because it’s so deep in his soul. He can do Michael-Jordan-of-the-bass moves without leaving the pocket. That can’t help but inspire all of us to play differently. I can’t even describe how much fun it is to play with him. If you don’t enjoy listening to Oteil, you must be listening sideways.

HAYNES:
Gregg is playing his organ more aggressively and singing great and it’s an absolute pleasure to work with him like this. I’m really pleased about that. Also, the stage volume for the band has gone down and you can hear the organ and vocals better, which makes it even more apparent. A lot of what he used to do was drowned out.

PEARSON:
Gregg plays some funky rhythm on that organ and I always thought it was a shame how low in the mix it often was and how overlooked his playing was by so many fans. I loved being on stage with that sound next to me.

ALLMAN:
My voice has been real good to me, man, the way I punished it.

CHAPTER

28

Hittin’ the Note

I
N
M
ARCH,
2003,
the Allman Brothers released
Hittin’ the Note,
their first album of new material in nine years and the only one to feature Haynes and Trucks together—and not to feature Betts, whose impact on the band could still be heard loud and clear.

The ABB in Gregg’s Georgia backyard, 2003.

HAYNES:
It was really different to record an Allman Brothers album without Dickey, and playing in this band without him has led me to alter my style quite a bit. His playing is marked by a very clean tone and beautiful melodic sense, so I tended towards a nastier approach playing with him. The melodic thing and the clean-versus-dirty tone contrast both have to be there to sound like the Allman Brothers, so I’ve taken some of those things on myself. To go too far against the grain just wouldn’t be right … which is why you hear those ascending lines on songs like “Firing Line” and “The High Cost of Low Living.”

DEREK TRUCKS:
“The Dickey lick.”

HAYNES:
If Gov’t Mule was recording the song we probably wouldn’t put that lick in there. It’s there because it’s an Allman Brothers riff, and you need things like that to keep the thread going from 1969 until now—though I must say that Gregg wanted it out. He said, “We’ve been doing that shit for thirty years. Can we take that lick out?”

DEREK TRUCKS:
A lick like that is the band’s sound. The rhythm section and Gregg’s organ sound lend themselves to certain guitar lines and you play them almost without realizing it. When you’re playing a tune, you think, “This is what the Allman Brothers would do.” You just happen to be in them.

HAYNES:
There are just simply different rules in the Allman Brothers Band. I remember one time during my first years with the band, we were working up the solo section of a new song and Gregg asked why there had to be a guitar solo. Dickey responded, “Because this is the Allman Brothers.” And he was right. Most bands don’t need a guitar solo in every song, but I don’t think there’s ever been an Allman Brothers song without one. Even “Midnight Rider” has that short, memorable solo.

DEREK TRUCKS:
I was really happy that we got this new batch of material. It’s impossible not to fall into ruts if you’re playing the same stuff every night. Any time you add to the active catalogue it makes the tunes you’ve been playing over and over fresher, and we want every song to be different every night and to have the spark and excitement of improvising.

JAIMOE:
Bringing in new songs is gonna trigger something, whether or not they are as intense as “Whipping Post.” I always bug Warren and Gregory about this; when are they gonna write some new songs? It makes such a difference.

ALLMAN:
The only thing about adding new songs is I get real self-conscious with the crowd. After all these years, I still get stage fright. I start sweating when I get out of the bath and it doesn’t go away until I’m maybe halfway through the first verse of the first song. Then it’s just over and gone, man. I think if I didn’t have it, something would go fiercely wrong. It’s a pretty ridiculous syndrome at this point, but I guess it’s just meant to be.

I’ve just learned to accept it, and the only time it returns after the very beginning of a show is when we introduce a newer song. At times like that, you just roll your eyes back in your head and sing for the gods and the people just happen to be there. That’s not an original line by the way. Some old blues guy told me that a long time ago. The truth is, the people give you the energy to deal with your doubts.

HAYNES:
New material allows you to relax and it changes your perspective about the whole night. Bands that thrive on improvisation stagnate without realizing it if they get bogged down in the same material. Writing all of these songs and doing the record is the best thing that’s happened to the band in a long time. That’s also why I like to have us work up a bunch of “new” old tunes that haven’t been done in a long time as well as blues and jazz covers.

“Rocking Horse” started out as an Allman Brothers song, but it didn’t make it onto
Where It All Begins
and then the band started splintering, so Woody and I decided to cut it on the Gov’t Mule debut. I brought it back to the Allman Brothers, intentionally making it very different on
Hittin’ the Note.
And the song keeps evolving live.

ALLMAN:
I haven’t found that many people I really enjoy writing with. It’s real easy with Warren, a pleasure. He came down to my house and we worked on a bunch of these tunes together.

Warren Haynes and Gregg Allman, rehearsal at the Beacon, New York, 2009.

HAYNES:
Our process varies greatly from song to song, but it’s generally different than most people would expect. The most interesting process was “Old Before My Time.” Gregg wrote most of the music on acoustic guitar; he is a really cool fingerpicker. I sat there listening and going, “That’s great, but try going to a C.” We ended up with this nice piece of music and I had a lot of good lyrics, but no real theme or starting point. Gregg went to bed that night and I sat there with my notebook trying to put the words together. I sat at his piano—I’m a terrible piano player but I like to mess around—and something he had written at breakfast was sitting there: “There is a long, hard road that follows far behind me and it’s so cold I’m about to die. Chasing a dream around the world has made me old before my time.” Wow. That inspired me to write the rest of the tune, pulling together all these unfocused ideas.

Gregg co-wrote five of the tunes on
Hittin’ the Note
, which is the most he’s written in a long time. I think he feels more confident right now about where he is as a person, as a singer, as a writer, and as a musician. My relationship with Gregg has solidified more and more through the years, partially because when you’re friends that’s what happens and partially because he’s in a much better place. When Gregg got sober, it made the opportunity for personal relationships to flourish much better.

ALLMAN:
It was hard to feel comfortable as a singer for a long time. I just started to realize that I had a voice that you can distinguish who it was in the last ten years or less. I’ve always been real critical of my voice. I started singing because my brother told me to; when we were just starting, we needed a singer in our little band and it wasn’t going to be him. I would get so pumped up and nervous when we hit the stage that I sang sharp, which sounds way worse than singing flat, and that feeling of horror never totally left me. I finally learned to keep my heart rate down and not get too excited. I sometimes close my eyes and pretend I’m sitting under a big ol’ magnolia tree singing to myself—anything to just relax.

You have to be comfortable within your own skin and your own singing. I have to go with the gut feeling, and for a long time that told me I was nothing special. It’s not that I thought I was a bad singer, but I would hear some Ray Charles, some Otis Redding, some Little Milton. We all learn from someone and it’s all fathers and sons—but I did not hear an original style.

For decades, I could not listen back to anything we recorded, because I just heard flaws and mistakes. Recently, I’ve been going back and doing the YouTube thing and some of the live things are incredible. I can finally appreciate that a little.

PEARSON:
Gregg is a great musician. He knows a lot more than what he carries on stage.

ALLMAN:
People think I was born with my voice, that I just opened my mouth and it came out, but I went to great lengths to develop it. I devoted my whole life to it because I really, really wanted to learn how to sing. I think the only musical talent you can be blessed with or cursed without is the ability to carry a tune. You gotta work for everything else.

I listened and tried to learn. Ray Charles was the first one that just really blew my dress up. He is the first one that rung my bell, and he was a big, big influence, both on my singing and my playing, once I started to figure out keyboards.

HAYNES:
Gregg is a minimalist, the ultimate example of trying to do the most with the least. One of the first things I learned from Gregg is a lyric has to be able to be sung properly. He’s really taught me that it doesn’t matter how a lyric looks on paper. He’ll often say, “That don’t sing right.”

DEREK TRUCKS:
He likes to breathe when he sings.

PEARSON:
I learned a lot about singing from being with Gregg. The way Gregg breathes as he sings is incredible. I learned so much playing acoustic with him in a hotel room and having him sit on a bed two feet from me, singing. The first time it was just him and me, and hearing him sing like that was just remarkable.

HAYNES:
And his phrasing, of course, is impeccable and all about finding out how beautiful you can make it and still have it be simple.

ALLMAN:
Singing is just like guitar playing—the phrasing means as much as the sound of the licks or the tonal quality. The phrasing in your voice has to, in some way, really relate to the music, and I put a lot of work into that.

HAYNES:
A lot of people will try to be tricky and clever, but Gregg is completely clued in to the truth that whether it’s your instrument or your voice, the goal is to speak from your heart and clutter it up as little as possible. I’m still working on that.

DEREK TRUCKS:
That belief is at the heart of the Allman Brothers’ music, not just the singing. A lot of Duane’s best solos are very simple ideas perfectly executed—just cut right to the chase and nail it.

HAYNES:
That’s why it’s easier for me to play more simply and fit it in better in the Allman Brothers than anywhere else—because I am surrounded by people who have made an art form out of it. Whenever Gregg hears a guitarist overplaying, he says, “That cat sounds like he’s getting paid by the note.” You hear it about a hundred times and you start to think, “Less notes is better.”

DEREK TRUCKS:
Playing with three drummers and Oteil creates such a huge rhythm pocket that you can do anything you want in there. But at first I was just trying to stay on top of learning the tunes right and having the right feel and being respectful to the music. When you step into an institution that’s been around for thirty years, you want to make sure you’re not stepping on anyone’s toes. Now that I really understand the parameters, I know when and how much I can break them.