In our instant gratification-based world, blogs are ideally supposed to be spontaneous
reporting, a quick reflective fix, but in the summer season especially, when most of us are in pure experiential mode, there is not always time for reflection, and time goes by in a blur.
Here we are in the second weekend of August, and I only now have time to look back on
one of the high-points of summer for me– especially in a musical sense– the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Concert of July 27th featuring The Allman Brothers Band, and SANTANA.
It was a Friday night, and not only did I have one of my heaviest days of the year in the
business world, but was still showing property till 5pm in Saratoga Springs, and had to pick up a rental SUV before 6 (for a weekend trip I’ll detail later), with the concert starting at 7. Normally the optimum SPAC experience would involve getting there plenty early to beat the crowds, park a bit closer to the amphitheater, and secure a good spot on the lawn, if you don’t have indoor seating, which on this occasion we did not. I had opted for the 4-pack discount for lawn seating, and had planned to have my two sons– 19 and almost 21– attend with Melinda and I, a little rock concert bonding. I certainly would NOT have been caught dead at a concert with my parents when I was 19 or 20 but my theory was that my parents would NOT have gone to SPAC in the first place unless it was Frank Sinatra performing, and my wife and I are a lot cooler than my folks, rest their souls. And frankly, it was a great experience.
I had been hoping there was a warm-up band before the 2 headliners took turns, but alas as we were walking across the footbridges with our folding chairs, I heard Gregg Allman’s gravelly voice reveling in and growling an old Elmore James tune, “Statesboro Blues”, and knew that his band was already underway. Both he and Santana had received biographical write-ups in ROLLING STONE magazine as a lead-up to this tour, and the lengthy tale of Gregg’s epic journey was the grittier and grimier of these two 60-something warhorses of rock we were about to see. In short, it was amazing he was still alive– alcoholism, heroin addiction, coke by the bucket, liver transplant, the early death of his stalwart guitarist brother, and a few messy public divorces– he’s been through a hell of a lot, and his version of the BLUES was no longer as theoretical as it might’ve been when his brother Duane was first putting this band together in the late 60’s in Jacksonville, Florida. What amazed me in reading the article (an excerpt from his autobiography, recently published) was not the sheer volume of drugs and booze he had consumed in the first few decades of the band, but the fact that many of his best tunes were written BEFORE the band was actually together, and they brought him in not only to play organ and sing, but to teach the rest of the band those “22 tunes” he had already created, when he was about 21 years old. Think about the tune DREAMS, for instance– which they would play an amazing version of, later that evening… Could anyone you ever met write a surreal deep blues like that– channeling grizzled old man wisdom– within three years of graduating high school? I would’ve thought that came years later.
In checking the set list, the next couple of tunes the band played while we were walking around the SPAC premises, checking out the rock ‘n roll crowd, and scoping out the best place to set up our seats–came from those early days, the original band– real cheerful blues titles like “Don’t Want You No More” and “It’s Not My Cross To Bear”–which a young Gregory Allman had also penned way back when. Then as we were getting the lawn chairs settled in the right-side back throng on the lawn,
we heard “HOT ‘LANTA”– a beautifully rousing and upbeat antidote to the sad side of the blues. That seemed to galvanize the crowd– which was definitely the oldest aggregate mass I’ve ever seen at a rock show there, but they were loving it, no matter what their age or style or shape. My sons were two of the youngest dudes there that night, and didn’t see any of their friends there, so the cringe factor of hanging out with us was lessened, for them, I guess.
While Melinda and I sought out some beers, which ended up being $12. a pop at the concession stands in the paved Food Court area behind the lawn area, I thought I heard a strain of Van Morrison, as sung in a warbly white almost-Willie Nelson-esque quaver…. it was Greg Allman doing “Into The Mystic”! That was unexpected, and made the first beer taste that much better.
Another throwback blues got us back to our seats, “You Don’t Love Me”. Then “Midnight Rider”– a cool road-travellin’ classic from the mid-70’s, after Duane was already gone, and they were trying to stay relevant. Then they jumped into the Texas blues of the ’80’s with Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “The Sky Is Crying”– another unexpected beauty of a cover, almost an homage to another too-soon dead white master of the blues, like Duane. I hate to say it but it is good music to accompany beer drinking at a rock concert, and makes the expensive lagers even better, going down on a Friday night in a civilized, reverent outdoor environment, like SPAC. No one that I saw was puking or tripping or talking on their cell phone or crowd-surfing or acting aggressive– it was a great summer night, and beer was the sacrament of choice in this blues church, and it was good.
The jittery tempo picked up after the soaring Stevie Ray ballad, with the spunky shuffle and bass thump of ONE WAY OUT, another classic Allman’s tune which has aged well. But that just set up my favorite long tune of the whole night, other than the Encore itself… an extended, contemplative version of DREAMS. The song’s lyrics would give me chills if I just heard Greg Allman sing them a capella in an empty alley, but with this great, sympatico band wrapping itself around the tune it was just enthralling. How much more potent can a song like this be, when it is sung in the gravelly, returned-from-near-death voice of a 65 year old recovering drug addict and admitted alcoholic who has had like 6 wives and five hundred affairs and too many groupies to count? And he still sings convincingly about DREAMS I’LL NEVER SEE, even though he’s seen so much, good and bad both. It’s a mind-boggling tune for the remnant culture of the 60’s and 70’s, and again, he wrote it before he was 22 years old. Give the man credit. He has survived, and is wiser for it. The best part was not either his recurring lyrics, or
Gregg’s crooning moan, but the consecutive guitar solos: the youngblood Trucks, and then the swaggering heft of the classic countrified hippie, Warren Haynes. Derek at first so restrained and pensive, refraining from histrionic chops in favor of meaningful musical
haiku phrasing, in line with the droning groove of this tune. Then when Warren sauntered front stage, it was set for him to take off with a slowly building skyward questing solo that Coltrane would’ve approved of. It raised the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck. I can’t imagine too many wordless solos that could have that kind of universal meaning– a melancholy of regret we all have known, at least once, it our time. When he climaxed that solo, and the rhythm section took over to bring things back to earth, I felt like I’d been transported to 1969, or ’70, and felt the hopeful angst of those times.
The last tune of their main show was kind of lightweight compared to what came before it, and then after. It was ironically titled, “No One To Run With (Anymore)” which is one of Gregg’s more recent writing efforts– ironic because, other than me, it was inspiring twenty thousand other middle-aged dudes and dudettes to shake their booties and raise their glasses, at that moment, and want to continue the party with him. I was waiting for something heavier than that.
When they abruptly went off stage after that one, there was a sense of unfinished business, and we were collectively hoping they weren’t mad about being the warm-up act, and would come back…. which after time for a long drink each, they did.
WHIPPING POST was indeed the finale, the encore, the true occasion for the band to pull out all the stops, especially the two stellar guitarists– Warren Haynes (of Government Mule fame) and Derek Trucks, the blond stud nephew of drummer Butch Trucks, who Gregg intimates is channeling if not reincarnating Duane Allman himself these days. The two of them made my night with the extended solos they each cranked out, in turn, during that epic original, also written by Gregg in the early days of the band, and played thousands of times since then. It never gets old to me. Yet those of us who listened over the years to the Fillmore East version of this from 1971 never really believed we’d see a CURRENT live version that would match the intensity of that Bill Graham produced concert in NYC, March of that year, seven or eight months before Duane died. Duane himself will never be matched, and Dickie Betts was probably never really as good again as he was on that recording, but Haynes and young Trucks gave that song all they had in terms of guitar licks and emotional flow. I had chills for 15 minutes during and 10 minutes after.
The two drummers, Butch Trucks and Jaimoe (Jai Johanny Johanson), are also original members, and still amazing and powerful in their own ways. Bass player Oteil Burbridge provides critical functional funk underneath, and percussionist Marc Quinones adds flavor and emphasis and spark galore. Gregg’s Hammond B-3 is surprisingly effective and dextrous, at age 65. But the twin lead guitarists are unparalleled in performance these days, from what I saw that night. I was skeptical when I read some opinions that they are the best rock band performing in America these days, but that night I was a believer.
My wife was not as enthused as an elder rocker like me– she is more a Santana fan–
but my sons…I think they understood, if only briefly, why I was so worked up. They would understand more, as the night wore on.
*****
There is more to say, but I’m going to post this part first, and tell you about Part 2, in my next serial episode, real soon… I don’t always have time…to say all I want to say. But I will try again…next time.
Peace,
Wayne Perras