July 1991 saw the release of more new Allman Brothers music. The album was called Shades of Two Worlds. After the band finished touring for Seven Turns, they let Johnny Neel go and they returned to being a six-piece for awhile. But then they added a percussionist, Marc Quiñones. Butch Trucks “stole” him from Spyro Gyra. Again with Tom Dowd producing, Shades of Two Worlds again run the gamut through rock, electric and acoustic blues, and jazz. End of the Line is a song Gregg Allman finished that Warren Haynes and Allen Woody started. It’s the familiar tale of what Gregg Allman has put himself through [mountains I have climbed could have killed a thousand men..]. It’s a very tough hard-rocking song they still play today. To me it’s the song that put the “Allman” back in the Allman Brothers band. Gregg contributes a slow electric blues number, Get On With Your Life. The one song that Dickey Betts sings is Desert Blues. He wrote that song for all the people who served in Operation Desert Shield/Storm. I thought “wow! A song that could be about me!” Dickey’s instrumental contribution [co-written with Warren] is Kind of Bird. As you might suspect, it’s inspired by Charlie Parker. They still play that one from time to time, even if it is a “Dickey” tune. The Allman Brothers showed a sign of things to come when they played MTV’s Unplugged show. I recorded that show and I replayed it so many times I wore out the tape. It being a half-hour show [22 minutes when you cut the commercials], they played four songs – Midnight Rider / Melissa / Seven Turns / Come On In My Kitchen. That last song is from the late, great Robert Johnson. The band liked how the Unplugged session went they recorded the song, acoustic arrangement and all, for Shades of Two Worlds. It was a good change of pace for a band that has been known for long electric jams. Speaking of which there is one of those jams on Shades. It’s called Nobody Knows, another song written by Dickey Betts but sung by Gregg. It’s about eleven minutes long, and only High Falls [from Win, Lose or Draw] is a longer studio cut. As good as this version was, when they put out a live version on An Evening With the Allman Brothers Band – First Set [1992], it absolutely smoked. It was sixteen and a half minutes of jamming bliss. It would not be out of place on At Fillmore East.
End of the Line
Come On In My Kitchen
Nobody Knows [Live]
At this time, Carol and I picked up from Northern California and moved to the Washington DC area. Shades had come out just before we left California, so we knew the Allman Brothers would be touring soon. Sure enough, we found where they were going to be playing and when, bough two tickets and went to see them for the third time. Here’s the setlist from that show:
August 27, 1991 – Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD
Hot ‘Lanta / Statesboro Blues / Blue Sky / End of the Line / Nobody Knows / Kind of Bird / Low Down Dirty Mean / Melissa* / Come On In My Kitchen* / Midnight Rider* / Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad* / Hoochie Coochie Man / Get On With Your Life / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed / Revival / Jessica / Whipping Post
*Acoustic
Such was the popularity of the Unplugged format, they played a four song acoustic set. It was something different for them – they hadn’t played any acoustic sets when Duane and Berry were alive, and by the time they were big successes, they were playing stadium shows where nobody could hear an acoustic set. It was hot, it was muggy and sweaty, but we suffered happily as we got to hear some more Allman Brothers music live. Soon, the rest of the world would get to hear more live Allman Brothers performances because they recorded several shows from the Shades tour.
An Evening With the Allman Brothers Band – First Set:
End of the Line / Blue Sky / Get On With Your Life / Southbound / Midnight Blues / Nobody Knows / Dreams / Revival
The song selection was kind of curious – there’s new stuff from the previous studio album, there’s a new acoustic blues number [Midnight Blues], there’s old stuff [Blue Sky, Southbound], and there’s stuff from their Jurassic period [Dreams, Revival]. Get On With Your Life was ok, but I thought if they would add a new slow blues number it would be Gambler’s Roll. Warren’s slide solos on Dreams and Blue Sky are a bit repetitive and after one or two listens you don’t want to here them anymore. But Southbound is another matter. Gregg sang the original on Brothers and Sisters, but for this version the band played the arrangement Dickey had been playing with his band before the Allman Brothers’ “revival.” It’s the same arrangement Carol and I heard him play in 1986 at Denver’s Rainbow Music Hall with Lonnie Mack. The playing on Southbound and Nobody Knows make this CD worth buying in and of themselves. When I saw the title of the album had the words “first set” in it, I assumed there would be a second set sometime. Then several months later the Allman Brothers put out an all-acoustic charity CD to help support the International Rhett Syndrome Association [IRSA]. There were only 15,000 copies made [I have one of them]. Was this the “second set”? As it turned out later, the answer to that question was “no.” But it would suffice for awhile until a proper “second set” would be released.
Southbound [Live]
Midnight Blues [Live]
The IRSA Acoustic Set:
Come On In My Kitchen / Seven Turns / Midnight Rider / Southbound / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed / Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad / Melissa / Midnight Blues
Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad [Live]
After 1992, there was silence. Being the prolific writer he is, Warren Haynes recorded an album with Chuck Leavell producing called Tales of Ordinary Madness. I found a copy while I was stationed in Korea. It’s a fairly good album, full of songs that would not fit on an Allman Brothers album. The Allman Brothers did tour in 1993, but they ran into a problem: Dickey Betts. When the band reformed in 1989, Dickey had a bit of a drinking problem. He said for the first couple of years it was ok, but the third year was a nightmare. It all came to a head before a gig in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1993. He and his wife had a domestic disturbance and somebody called the cops. When they arrived, he pushed one of them. He was arrested for assault and for resisting arrest. While he cooled his heels in jail, the band went to the next tour stop without him. Dickey was the musical director of the group, and with him gone off the rails the band was in disarray. For one night, Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist Zakk Wylde [?!?} filled in for Dickey. He didn’t quite fill in, so the band later got David Grissom from John Mellencamp’s band, and when he had to go back to his day job, guitarist Jack Pearson got the temporary gig. Dickey went to rehab to dry out and sort out the demons that were bothering him. After Dickey got his act back together, it was time to do another album. The title: Where It All Begins.
The Allman Brothers don’t like recording studios. Playing in live is their thing. After a long search for a good place to record their next album, they found a place. It was at Burt Reynold’s place. It had a soundstage and they thought it the perfect place to record this album. As it turned out, Where It All Begins was a very good album. It has another very long Dickey Betts song called Back Where It All Begins that is much in the same vein as Nobody Knows from Shades, but not so intense. Curiously, Dickey had a medium-tempo blues called Change My Way of Living that was written before the Saratoga Springs incident. But clearly Dickey could see what was coming. But for me, the best sign of all that all was better in the world of the Allman Brothers was seeing that Gregg Allman had a hand in writing four songs – All Night Train, Sailin’ ‘Cross the Devil’s Sea, What’s Done Is Done, and Temptation is a Gun. The first is another tale of Gregg’s struggle with drug addiction with an explanation of why he had the problem in the first place – took a little trip to keep from going insane, spent the rest of my life on the all night train. The other three songs are cautionary tales about the dangers of women and rowdy behavior [as HE sees them]. Dickey threw in Mean Woman Blues [sung by Warren] and No One To Run With, a Bo Diddley-style lamentation that friends from long ago are disappearing. All in all it’s a very good album. What is interesting are two songs that didn’t make the album – Rocking Horse and The Same Thing. Rocking Horse is a Warren Haynes original [written with Gregg, Allen and Jack Pearson] that the band had trouble getting down, and The Same Thing is an old Willie Dixon/Muddy Waters tune the band had similar problems with. By the time they went out on tour to support the album, they had worked out the kinks in The Same Thing and played it for us to hear.
All Night Train
Sailin’ ‘Cross the Devil’s Sea
No One To Run With
So there we were - another album, another tour. We saw them again at Merriweather Post Pavilion in 1994. Here's the setlist:
August 26, 1994 - Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD
Sailin’ ‘Cross the Devil’s Sea / Statesboro Blues / Blue Sky / The Same Thing* / Change My Way of Living / Soulshine / Seven Turns / Midnight Rider / Jessica / No One To Run With / Back Where It All begins / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed / One Way Out / Whipping Post
*Duane Betts, guitar
So with another tour came another album – the Second Set I had been awaiting for years. The madness to their method became clear to me – they’d have two sets of new, old and really old songs that flowed together as a single work. If you put the first two sets together, the concept works [save for an acoustic Elizabeth Reed]. The standout track [IMHO] is Warren Haynes’ Soulshine, which is sung by Gregg. It is better than its studio counterpart from Where It All Begins.
An Evening With the Allman Brothers Band – Second Set:
Sailin’ ‘Cross the Devil’s Sea / You Don’t Love Me / Soulshine / Back Where It All Begins / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed* / The Same Thing / No One Left To Run With / Jessica
*Acoustic – same version as was on the limited edition IRSA set
The Same Thing
Soulshine
Once again Carol and I got to see the Allman Brothers on tour that summer, but this time it was with a twist. Back then I heard through this “new” thing called the Internet that the Allman Brothers were beginning to mix up their sets. They wouldn’t be playing the same songs in the same order night after night, so we decided to get tickets for shows on back-to-back nights. That’s the only time we’ve ever done that. As you can see for yourself below, we weren’t disappointed.
July 30, 1995 – Nissan Pavilion, Bristow, VA
Don’t Want You No More -> It’s Not My Cross to bear / Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More / Ramblin’ Man / Good Clean Fun / Sailin’ ‘Cross the Devil’s Sea / The Same Thing* / Southbound* / Soulshine / End of the Line / Stormy Monday / Back Where It All Begins / Jessica / Hoochie Coochie Man / One Way Out / Whipping Post
*Chris Anderson on third guitar
August 1, 1995 – Classic Amphitheatre, Richmond, VA
Statesboro Blues / Midnight Rider / You Don’t Love Me / Blue Sky / What’s Done Is Done / Soulshine / The Same Thing / Dreams / Change My Way of Living / End of the Line / Back Where It All Begins / No One To Run With / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed / One Way Out / Whipping Post
At the Nissan Pavilion, we heard the best version of Southbound we would ever hear [and we’d heard some damn good ones up to this point]. Chris Anderson [now of The Outlaws] joined the Brothers for The Same Thing and Southbound. When it was time for the three guitarists to trade solos on Southbound, we were all transported to another plane of consciousness. I’m not a big fan of God, but during that performance there was definitely something otherworldly happening. After seventeen minutes, both the band and the crowd were exhilarated. The only word I can find to describe what I heard is “amazing.”
Rocking Horse
Mule
Stormy seas were on the horizon for the Allman Brothers. They toured, but after Where It All Begins they stopped recording. I don’t know why this happened. It could be they had trouble with Epic as they had with Arista. It could be that Gregg and Dickey couldn’t see eye to eye on things. Whatever, the reason, it happened. And when that happened, Warren and Allen got restless, fed up and left the Allman Brothers after the Beacon run in March 1997. Their mission was to concentrate on Gov’t Mule full-time. They left the band and didn’t look back.
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