‘I had angels watching over me’

‘I had angels watching over me’
February 11, 2011
Graeme Thomson
HeraldScotland

Singer, keyboardist, guitar player and founder of legendary southern blues-rockers the Allman Brothers Band, Gregg Allman may have battled addictions to heroin, cocaine and alcohol and recently undergone a liver transplant, but even grizzled rock stars have their limits. When I ask about his apparently indeterminate number of wives Allman seems rather wounded, promising that there have been, to date, “just the six”, although he does concede that perhaps the seventh is “out there, taking her good time”.

Given his many scrapes with both mortality and matrimony, Allman is fortunate to be here at all. Aged 63 and a little frailer these days, 2011 nevertheless finds him in rude creative health. Low Country Blues, his first solo album for 14 years, is proving the most critically and commercially successful release of his career, entering the US albums chart this week at number five and garnering rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. It is an album of old blues numbers – and one new Allman original – played with rustic, intimate ease by a band of accomplished players, topped off with Allman’s distinctive voice, pleasingly frayed by the passing years.

Low Country Blues was produced by the ubiquitous roots music aficionado T-Bone Burnett, although Allman was completely unaware of Burnett before the producer approached him to propose working together. “I’d never heard his name,” he laughs. “Not a clue. But I tell you, he had his finger on it. He has a lot of patience, a lot of guidance. It was just like he was part of the band, he even played six-string electric bass on a couple of songs.”

Burnett doesn’t simply produce albums, he curates them, and so it was with Low Country Blues. Allman recalls that a friend of Burnett’s had given him a zip drive with “literally thousands of old, old blues songs on it”, from which the producer selected 25 to send to Allman. “T-Bone said to me, ‘Pick out 15 you’d like to record’, which took me seven weeks. A couple of them I recognised: Blind Man was recorded by Bobby Bland and also Little Milton, who is my favourite singer of all time. What a throat he had! I put arrangements on them and they really, really worked.”

The album features many of the same musicians who played on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Grammy-winning album Raising Sand, also produced by Burnett. As an added treat, Dr John plays piano. The whole thing was done and dusted in 11 days. “Everything just fell right together,” says Allman. “After we got the first song down and realised the great band we had there, those guys communicated with me just perfect. We would do one and a half songs a day, just finish one and start another.”

Allman says he “knew it was way past time” for him to make another solo album. He has been serving in the Allman Brothers Band on and off since 1969, the group surviving lengthy breaks and numerous personnel changes, some enforced. Shortly after they enjoyed their mainstream breakthrough with the Live at Fillmore East album, Allman’s older brother Duane died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident at the age of 21; bass player Berry Oakley was killed in almost identical circumstances a year later.

Allman admits that he has also teetered on the brink of death. “Drugs and alcohol could have very well ended it for me many times, but thank God I had my angels watching over me,” he says. “Those things just slow you down, they’re the beginning of the end. Drug addiction creeps up on you. You have to use heroin 30 or 40 times before you wake up one morning and think, boy, something ain’t right. I took a bunch of cocaine too. It takes away your time, your money, but I’ve been completely sober now for 16 years.”

But sobriety has not meant a clean bill of health. Allman suffered from hepatitis C for many years, and his condition declined to the point where there was little option but to operate. He underwent a liver transplant in 2010, shortly after finishing work on Low Country Blues.

“Right after I cut the record I went straight from LA to New York to get a femoral embolism,” he says. “I had three tumours which were growing and they said I needed a transplant. I asked my doctor what would happen if I didn’t get one and he said I’d live about three more years then I’d start going down slow. Before the operation I didn’t once think about the aftermath, and boy was I in for a surprise. Oh God, it hurt more than anything else in the world, but it was really great to know I already had this record in the can.”

Despite his pride in the new album, the Allman Brothers Band remains his first love. He claims the essence of the group has hardly altered in more than 40 years. “No sir, it hasn’t changed,” he says. “It’s heavier than ever, but improvisation is the still the key thing. It’s different every night and, God, I can still feel Duane on stage. It’s almost like I could lean over and talk to him. It’s a kind of sweet and sour deal.”

In March the band will embark on their annual run of shows – eight this year – at the Beacon Theatre in New York. That was the scene in 2009 of their 40th anniversary celebrations

After the Allman Brothers shows he will be touring again in the summer with his “killer” solo band, including a stopover in Edinburgh. It’s quite a pace for a man still recovering from major surgery, but Allman sees it all as essential therapy. “I’m still a little flat,” he admits, “I can’t get up a whole lot of energy, except when I’m playing music. Playing heals me.”

- Low Country Blues is out now on Rounder Records. The Gregg Allman Band play the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on July 6.