Just because you missed the golden days of The Allman Brothers Band doesn’t mean you can’t get into the next-best thing.
Gregg Allman, who formed the band in 1969 with his late brother Duane, is still going strong despite well-publicized bouts with Hepatitis C and other maladies.
“I want to get in as much playing as I can,” Allman, 62, said. “Now I have to give myself so much time to rest up [between shows]. You don’t want to go out and do a show on automatic pilot. I want to give it all I can.”
Indeed, the man who is credited with creating Southern rock/blues rock may have slowed physically, but he still has the enthusiasm, musical chops and whisky-heavy drawl of his youth.
This time out, listen for Allman to have a mix of new songs he’s recently written with some of the classics, including several almost sure bets such as “Midnight Rider.”
“I can’t play everything, but we mix it up,” he said. “Things slow down when you get older.”
Not that Allman has slowed that much by contemporary standards. True, he can’t play the 300-plus shows each year that once filled his datebook, but he still puts on high-energy shows that exceed two hours.
If you go
Gregg Allman
Where: Rams Head On Stage, 33 West St., Annapolis
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Info: $125; ticketmaster.com
Fan reviews — including those that attended this year’s Allman Brothers Band show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia — report Allman’s sound is as clear and magical as ever. “Anyone wondering if Gregg was up to touring had all their fears put to rest as his voice sounded good and every note out of his keyboarding was loud and crystal clear,” Roland Ray wrote on the band’s site.
That’s no one-time fluke, as evidenced by the bounty of accolades heaped on the man and his band by numerous critics including David Singer of the Schenectady (N.Y.) Gazette:
“Gregg Allman sounded strong and healthy through classics like ‘Midnight Rider,’ ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and the coolest ‘Come and Go.’ They’re as good as they ever were, which, at one time, was as good as it gets.”
