ENTERTAINMENT

'Guitarmaggedon': Allman Family Revival tour to honor Gregg Allman in Boston

Chad Berndtson
For The Patriot Ledger

In December 2017, Devon Allman assembled the inaugural Allman Family Revival as an all-star concert in celebration of the 70th birthday of his father, Gregg Allman, who had died earlier that year. Gregg, of course, was world-renowned as singer and keyboardist for the Allman Brothers Band for the better part of 45 years, as well as an accomplished songwriter and solo bandleader.

The Revival concert soon became an annual rite landing on or near Gregg’s birthday month, and as it grew, pre-pandemic, it expanded to multiple shows in multiple cities. This year, with the Revival’s full return, Devon and team decided to go much bigger. The Allman Family Revival in 2021 is a 19-show tour stretching all across the U.S., with a stop at Boston’s Orpheum on Dec. 7, a day before Gregg’s actual birth date of Dec. 8.

Devon Allman, left, and Duane Betts are the namesakes for the Allman-Betts Band.

“There’s really nothing like this right now in terms of size and scope,” Devon Allman said. “That first year was really just a big love-in, and me doing something to get through my grieving and start to heal. What was funny is that year, 2017, the only date that the Fillmore (in San Francisco) was available was what was going to be my dad’s first posthumous birthday. It just made sense and it went well, so the next year, it was two nights, and that went well, so we added extra markets. And here we are now with 19 shows. To tell you the truth, I think we had 30 offers, and there just wasn’t time or space this year to do all of them. But this is definitely a thing now. We have tour buses, a semi truck and a 40-foot video wall I’m curating.”

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The host of this caravan is the Allman Betts Band, which Devon Allman formed in 2018 with Duane Betts, the guitar-slinging son of former Allman Brothers mainstay Dickey Betts, and which has broken out in the last few years as a formidable live band that both upholds and moves past the traditions of their fathers and the previous generation’s southern-rock-flavored jam kings. 

During the Revival shows, the Allman Betts Band plays house band over two sprawling sets that feature a mix of players as added guests, from pedal steel sorcerer Robert Randolph, to British blues rocker Joanne Shaw Taylor, to singer Lamar Williams, Jr., the son of former Allman Brothers bassist Lamar Williams. All players either have ties to the Allman Brothers Band itself or Gregg’s many solo bands, or are spiritual descendants of the music and keepers of the blues, R&B and southern rock flames that inspired the Allman namesakes in the first place. 

The Allman-Betts Band brings the Allman Family Revival tour to Boston on Dec. 6.

“It’s people that knew dad, or opened for dad, or were just inspired by his music, and we keep that wide open,” Devon said. “In Year 3, for example, we had (Cheap Trick’s) Robin Zander, and we got a little bit of, what does Robin Zander have to do with the Allman Brothers? But in the 70s, they played a lot of festivals together." 

The exact lineup varies depending on the market. Boston’s mammoth roster includes the Allman Betts Band, Randolph, Taylor, Williams Jr., G. Love (who spent his formative years as a musician in Boston and Cambridge), Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr, Donavon Frankenreiter, Eric Gales, Lilly Hiatt (daughter of John), Cody and Luther Dickinson from the North Mississippi Allstars, the River Kittens and Art Edmaiston, who played saxophone in several versions of Gregg Allman’s solo band. 

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Southern rock aficionados should keep their eyes peeled for the great Jimmy Hall, singer and sax/harmonica player for Wet Willie, which was a contemporary of the Allmans and gained notice opening for the band in the 70s.

“He’s a legend, and he was also in my dad’s solo band as a sax player who’d give dad some vocal breaks during the night and sing a couple,” Devon said. “He was always ‘Uncle Jimmy,' you know? He’ll just take us to school, and he sings from the soul and from the cojones. I thought he was a no-brainer from the first time we did this.”

Gregg Allman performs in Nashville Oct. 13, 2011 at the Americana Music Association awards show. Allman died in May 2017.

Guitar fireworks are guaranteed with a heavy focus on Allman Brothers Band material, although as Devon reminds, the setlist goes deeper and wider than just the Allmans' catalog. He designs the setlist with The Band’s famous The Last Waltz concert as a spiritual guide, meaning there’s a house band that plays songs and then brings out the guests as a seemingly nonstop parade, playing songs that the guests are famous for and then yielding to Allmans or Allmans-centric material. 

“At the end, we’re up to a few Allman Brothers songs where there’s maybe five guitar players on stage – by then it’s guitarmaggedon,” Devon said, laughing. “But I also work with each guest star individually. I recommend songs I think they would kill on, or we discuss what might work, and I cheerlead. We really get them all dialed in.”

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No surviving members of the Allman Brothers Band’s final lineup, which played its last shows in 2014, appear in the official lineups. But as Devon notes, “those guys can jump on our stage any time.” (Indeed, both Allman and Duane Betts regularly collaborate with former ABB-ers such as Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks and Oteil Burbridge, all of whose bands have welcomed Allman and Betts, and other members of their band, to sit-in.)

Gregg Allman brings the Allman Family Revival to Boston on Dec. 6.

Saluting the rich legacy while moving it sonically and spiritually forward has been on the minds of both Allman and Betts since they started the band. The Allman Betts Band is gearing up for a typically busy 2022 – during which, after a lengthy spring tour (with New England stops in March), they’ll regroup to cut a new album due out in the fall. That they can pick their spots when emphasizing their sturdy original material while also playing tribute to their fathers – the band’s repertoire includes about 20 Allman Brothers songs they can summon at will – has helped their shows get into an increasingly consistent rhythm. 

“You kind of find sweet spots, and for us that’s usually two or three [Allman Brothers] tunes in a roughly 18-song set. That’s about perfect, and what we love is that people kind of don’t know where we’ll go with it, and they end up learning our songs, too,” Devon said. “Maybe we’ll be somewhere and bust out (Gregg’s) ‘Multi-Colored Lady,’ or somewhere else and do (the Allmans’) ‘Seven Turns’ for the first time in two years. We keep a nice balance.”

See the Allman Family Revival

When: 7:45 p.m. Dec. 7

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Place, Boston

Tickets: $38-$58

Info: livenation.com 

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