Just hearing the name — The Allman Betts Band — will likely lead any uninformed individual to the foregone conclusion that they are simply the Allman Brothers Band Revisited. Hearing their 2019 debut Down To The River and seeing them live may very well confirm such a suspicion. When the music is in your bloodline, it’s hard to shake it off. Even so, Bless Your Heart, their 2020 sophomore release, shows a mindful effort on the band’s part to forge a style, tone, and attack all their own.
If you didn’t know already, the core of the Allman Betts Band is a progeny of the original Allman Brothers Band — Devon Allman is Gregg Allman’s son; Duane Betts is Dickey Bett’s son; and Berry Oakley, Jr. is Berry Oakley’s son. The group is rounded out by slide guitarist Johnny Stachela, keyboardist John Ginty, drummer John Lum, and percussionist R. Scott Bryan. Together, the seven musicians, without reservation, present themselves like an Allman Brothers Band spinoff. On stage, they liberally pull out random numbers from their fathers’ songbook. But they also veer into territories more akin to Widespread Panic, the Black Crowes, and the Grateful Dead. Some would call it a hybrid of blues, country, jazz, folk and rock; others take the easy way out by labeling it “Americana” music, if you like.
Featuring musical guests singer-songwriter Shannon McNally, Wet Willie singer Jimmy Hall, and saxophonist Art Edmaiston, Bless Your Heart is a wellspring of all these converging ideas, which have allowed the group to mature into a formidable unit armed to the teeth with a sharp, incisive delivery. “Pale Horse Rider” eases the record into motion. Allman’s voice flows through the verses before the guitars rise up and slice through the melody. Before you know it, you’re pulled in. The raunchy chords and harrowing choruses that push “Carolina Song” forward has the band asserting its soulful might, while ‘King Crawler,” featuring Betts at the mic, chugs along like the Rolling Stones slaying dragons at Muscle Shoals — where, it just so happens, Bless Your Heart was recorded.
The 12-minute instrumental “Savannah’s Dream” is probably the closest to something the Allman Brothers Band would do. Its dreamy keyboard-driven landscape allows the three guitarists — Allman, Betts, and Stachela — to frolic and leap about at will. There’s a rugged, yet melodic sensibility that make other numbers like “Ashes Of My Lovers,” “Airboats And Cocaine,” “Southern Rain,” and the light, whimsical “Magnolia Road” easy to digest. “Should We Ever Part” is one of the album’s most poignant moments — an edgy, soulful reckoning of romance. Here, Devon Allman convincingly emotes on a level that rivals his father’s.
Oakley takes the lead vocal on “The Doctor’s Daughter,” a moody ballad that shapes the piano and guitar into a blues-heavy Pink Floydian collage (not surprising since the bassist was part of Blue Floyd, a blue-based Pink Floyd tribute band in the early 2000s). An extended Spanish-flavored acoustic solo brings it all home. The polite sentiment attached to “Much Obliged” and “Congratulations” undoubtedly leaves the listener with an optimistic feeling to the very end. Not a bad way to go in a year of turmoil.
Is Bless Your Heart everything an Allman Brothers Band record used to be? Maybe that and more. The Allman Betts Band has the spit and polish to push boundaries without straying too far away from their roots. You can sense an evolution. The batons have been passed, the legacy lives on, expectations are high for something new, different, modern. We are witnessing a new generation of the ABB family ascending the throne. Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess.
~ Shawn Perry
