The Allman Brothers Band - Presse non Francophone

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Mince je n'arrive pas à mettre cet article correctement sur le site...

Vous pourrez le retrouver ici

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The Macon Telegraph
30 octobre 1971
Allman Brothers Leader Dies In Cycle Accident

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The Macon Telegraph
1er novembre 1971
Private Services For Duane Allman Today

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Rolling Stone n°96
25 novembre 1971
Bandleader Duane Allman Dies In Bike Crash

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[Tontonjimi]

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Rolling Stone n°106
13 avril 1972

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Un article de Butch Truck sur DUane : ici

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Une interview de Butch Truck. Quelques belles infos.

Butch Trucks: Beacon Bound

For the past few years, The Allman Brothers Band have used their annual residency at New York’s Beacon Theatre to celebrate important moments from their rich history. But for the first time since 2009, The Allman Brothers Band will enter the Beacon with some new, originals. The Allman Brothers band singer and organist is in the midst of a creative renaissance after recovering from liver problems stemming from Hepatitis C. As founding Allman Brothers band drummer Butch Trucks explains below, Allman is “is in the best shape he’s probably been in for decades” and all eyes are on the group’s 45th anniversary in 2014. Shortly before heading to New York from his Florida home, Trucks discussed The Allman Brothers Band’s upcoming Beacon run, his Rock Roots Revival event, the future of Moogis and his long-awaited return to Madison Square Garden’s stage.



Let’s start by talking about The Allman Brothers Band’s upcoming Beacon run. The last few years have celebrated different anniversaries (2009 marked the band’s 40th anniversary, 2011 honored At Fillmore East and 2012 emphasized Eat a Peach ). Does the band have any overarching themes for this year’s shows?

I know that Gregg is in the best shape he’s probably been in for decades. He’s finally got his liver squared away—all the medications are balanced out, he’s getting his strength back and, along with that, his motivation to write songs. The word is that he’s got a bunch of new songs ready to go, and that right there in itself is something we haven’t had in a few years. So I’m really looking forward to the run—we leave on Wednesday [February 20] to go and rehearse, and I’m really looking forward to going there and seeing what Gregg’s got in the can. I am excited about what he’s put together for the Beacon that’s new and that people haven’t heard before.

Do you know if these are songs Gregg worked on by himself, with Warren Haynes or with another collaborator? Both of the new songs written for his 2011 solo album Low Country Blues were written with Warren.
Actually, I really don’t know. I just got an email from Gregg a couple weeks ago—and it’s not something he does very often—so you know something special is going on. You could just feel it in the email that he was beaming. He said, “I got all these new songs ready to go, I can’t wait. See you guys in New York.” That just made my day—it made my year and maybe the next three or four years.
[Ed note: During Allman Brothers Band rehearsals it was revealed that these new ABB songs are new Warren Haynes originals that he’s since shared with Gregg and the entire band]
Every Beacon run has featured some surprises. Last year you brought back mini-acoustic sets at the start of ever second set during the run. Where did that idea originate from and do you plan to revisit that concept this year?
That’s something that comes and goes, I don’t know. It kind of pops its head up every few years and I like it—I love it, ‘cause it’s the only time when The Allman Brothers are playing that I get a chance to take a break. In a normal show, I’m the only guy who’s never able to get off of his drums. I’m there for every damn song and I love it when they do those acoustic sets—it gives me a break. But at the same time, there’s nothing like the Beacon.
It’s something that’s inexplicable. I get there and after the third or fourth show, I’m exhausted. I’m 65 years old now but the first show is always exciting because I haven’t played in a while, and I have all this energy built up. The next night I have to come up and grit my teeth, and look at the blood blisters I’ve got on both hands. By the third or fourth night I’m just exhausted. It’s a lot of energy playing those three hour sets and playing as hard as I play—driving the band like I do. So I get to the show, feeling like a 95-year-old man and then I’m looking at those three steps I have to walk up to the drum riser, and it looks like Mt. Everest. I get up there and I get the drums set up. We start playing and about halfway through the first song something happens, and I’m an 18-year-old Superman.
I’m not kidding. With this band, it has been consistent. I mean, every single night. We don’t have bad nights anymore. I get up there and for three hours I’m just riding high and just riding that magic and music with the level of intensity we play.
How do you feel the Beacon compares to a normal Allman Brothers Band show at this point?
You can feel it—the energy and the audience is part of what causes that because it’s a very intimate setting and they’re right there. They’re involved, whereas when we’re playing the big sheds the people are all the way off in the distance and it’s hard to get any communication going. But at the Beacon, being at the same venue every night for a long time, you just have the feeling that we’re much freer to get up and try things that people have never heard of before. When you are only playing one night [in a city] you’re kind of stuck with having to play the greatest hits. You’re coming through for one night and then you have to do the greatest hits and move on. It just makes the Beacon a special event; it’s something that I know is going to end one day, but I hope it’s not anytime soon.
Speaking of the Beacon, what were your personal highlights from last year’s run?
Well, another thing I love about the Beacon is that every night is different—every night is totally different. One night we may start out playing “In A Silent Way,” the Miles Davis tune, and then it lays down a mellow groove and a feel for the whole evening. Then, the next night it could be just the opposite and we’re up there just pounding and jamming and blowing the roof off the ceiling. Last year, we had Bill Evans [on March 16] and we just jammed and jammed and jammed. If we ever add anyone to The Allman Brothers, he’s it.
The year before that we had Dr. John, and that’s a huge change in style and where you’re going and everything else. But also so much fun—it’s what I love about the Beacon, you never really know what’s going to happen. For the last 10 or 12 years [since the band’s current lineup has been together] it’s been consistently good every night—we don’t have bad nights anymore. Obviously there are some nights where it’s just through the roof and there are the nights where we may have to work a little harder but it’s still good. Before [that] it was like 75% of the time the shows were embarrassing, and we pulled out of that. I just love it, I can’t wait. I’m just counting the days. We start rehearsals on Wednesday to work up those songs of Gregg’s and you know. We’ll see what comes out for this run.
What is an Allman Brothers Band rehearsal like at this point? Do you focus on newer material, run through the back catalog or work on different types of improvisation?
I can’t think of a way to rehearse that we don’t do. Bottom line, it gets down to what the song is. Gregg wrote “Midnight Rider,” and that is a “song.” It has a very definite structure and there’s not a jam there. And then on the other hand you’ve got “Whipping Post” or something like that where only 10% of it is song and 90% of it is jam. So, you have to take every song for what it is and if it’s a song that should be structured then we work very hard on developing an interesting structure so we won’t get bored with it. If it’s one that has a jam, then that’s easy. We just learn the song and then let it go.

Another event that you are involved in outside the Allman Brothers this year is the Roots Rock Revival. It is an instructional fan-friendly weekend featuring you, Oteil Burbridge and the North Mississippi All-Stars Duo. How did you come up with the idea for this weekend and what will your role be onsite?
I came up with the idea. I went up to this place called The Full Moon Resort up in the Catskills last year. A friend of mine had come across it, and he and I went and spent two or three days up there. I think what’s left of King Crimson was doing a similar type of event and it was totally different from anything I had ever seen. Luther and Cody Dickinson from North Mississippi Allstars, Oteil Burbridge and myself are the basic skeletal band for the weekend. We are going to play every night and have different people play with us. Marc Quinones has agreed to come play with us and we are trying to get several other people, too.
We are going to have different workshops during the day. The first day I’ll be giving a drum workshop—a master class or seminar—and then the next day Cody will give one. Maybe the next day Cody and I will do one together with two sets of drums. And then Oteil will be giving a master class on the bass, and Luther will be giving a class on playing on the guitar and songwriting, the things that he excels in. Every night we’ll have a concert for everyone up there.
[The four of us] haven’t played a whole lot together, and we were wondering when we’d get time to rehearse. Then it occurred to me that these kids who are coming might really enjoy is to see how it all happens. So what we’ll do is have a rehearsal during the day for the show we’re going to play that night and invite all the kids at the camp to come watch the rehearsal—they will get a feel for how the whole thing works and how it operates. Also, we’ve got our manager coming in to give a talk on how not to get screwed in the music business. I’m serious.
There are all kinds of things we are going to do. I mean, right now we’ve got a general idea of what we’re going to do but it’s a long time until June, and I’ve got the whole of May off. What I’d really like to do is to get people coming to our website and start getting people joining in on the conversation, telling us what they would like to see. Someone might come up with an idea and say, “I’d like to see you do this.” And we will try to come up with a workshop where we explain how we do that.
One thing I want to do is put together anywhere from a 1-3 hour talk about Duane Allman in the early days of the Allman Brothers, complete with a Powerpoint presentation with pictures and videos that people have never seen before. I’m talking about things that we’ve been holding back that we won’t put on the internet but that we’ll use in this type of situation. We’re only going to sell like 100 tickets because we don’t want this to feel too—we want everyone to feel like they’re part of an intimate setting.
Part of what we’ll do everyday is hang out with all the kids. The one thing they have at this camp is a gourmet chef. The way this Full Moon Resort works is they make his money by doing weddings on the weekends, and then do these rock and roll camps during the week. So they need a gourmet chef for the weddings, and he’s kept around for the rock and roll camps.
So this is a rock and roll camp but you’ve got fine china, silver and everything else. They serve gourmet food for breakfast, dinner, lunch and munchies. We’ll all be hanging out, we’ll all be eating with everyone that comes in. We’ll be hanging out and talking to them and interacting. They call it “beyond backstage,” a way of coming and seeing how it all works. You can’t do it by going to concerts or even coming backstage. We’ll be there together for 24 hours, and we can cover a lot of ground in that much time.
In the past few years, the whole rock and roll fantasy camp idea has really moved to a new level…
Yeah, I think people will be really blown away by this, I really do. I think this is going to be a lot of fun and these are going to be diehard fans who are really, really interested in knowing all there is to know about The Allman Brothers. They’re going to learn a helluva lot they don’t know at this camp.
Have you had a chance to listen to the new Duane Allman box set Skydog that’s coming out?
No, no I haven’t. I have not received a copy yet. I mean of course I’ve listened to it—I’ve played on all the recordings—but I haven’t heard the box set and I’m really, really looking forward to getting a hold of it and reading what Galadrielle [Allman] has written about her father. I’ve had several conversations with her about Duane and she’s brilliant, brilliant—I mean she’s just like her dad, smart as a whip. This is her exercise—or whatever you want to call it. It’s the way she gets to know her father. He died when she was an infant so she never got to really know him.
He was such a spectacular human being and she knows that, but now she wants to know what made him so spectacular. And she’s finding out—I’ve had a couple of long conversations with her and I’m curious to see what she came up with. Apparently, she wrote quite a long piece that’s part of the package.
She’s kept a low profile for years but I remember seeing her in photos with The Allman Brothers Band at last year’s Grammys when you received the Lifetime Achievement Award.
She’s a brilliant young lady and I know that what she writes is going to be spot on and I just can’t wait to read it.

Shifting gears a little bit, do you plan to show this year’s Beacon shows on Moogis? I know you are streaming Wanee in April.
No, Moogis will not be at the Beacon this year. The Beacon is just such—there are so many obstacles to overcome there, and we’re retooling what the model looks like. We kind of jumped right into the toughest place you could go in taking a brand new idea—a brand new business model—and Jumping right into the New York City unions and New York City police. I mean, they’ve given us more hell…last year after like a week of our truck sitting out there the police came by and made us move the truck like 7 feet.
Pretty much we had to break down the whole damn thing and reset it up. I mean, it’s just too much damn trouble, and it’s way too expensive. We’re really, really focusing on getting Wanee up. More than that, Moogis was never intended to be strictly an Allman Brothers website. The model is to cover all of the music business. We’re going to start with jambands, and obviously I’ve started with The Allman Brothers for obvious reasons, but I think we’ve done enough at really pounding away at The Allman Brothers. We’re working hard on setting up the business so we can start bringing in other bands, especially some of the young, new, really hot bands that just have nowhere to go for exposure. I think one of the most important things we could do is to give those bands an actual audience. There’s streaming going on all over the internet but mostly they’re bands that are already established.
If you want to see a new band you pretty much have to go wallow through YouTube, and if you get lucky you might stumble across something. What we’ll do is put people to work going out and finding these young hot bands and putting them up on Moogis. Ultimately…there’s a few things we have to get done and they’re coming together, but hopefully in the next few months we’ll be able to get it up to where every night of the week you’ll be able to go online for a live concert. Either an up and coming band or an established band. Once we get rolling we’ll move on to say jazz or heavy metal. I know that if this is going to work then we’re going to have to have the jamband music only in a jamband site because jamband fans don’t like rap. They don’t like country music, they don’t particularly like heavy metal music—and vice versa.
So what we do is get the jamband site up and going and you log onto Moogis and go to the jamband part or the heavy metal part or the country part. Typically, I’d like to get every genre of music that makes sense included and make it a part of Moogis. I want Moogis to be a place to hear music. I want to hear live concerts—to hang out and talk with your friends or enemies or whatever about how great your band is and how much their band sucks. I see Moogis eventually becoming the Facebook of the music business. It will be a community site where you can come and it’s loaded with content, and it’s content that’s being provided by us, whereas Facebook is provided by the people that are on there. I get the feeling that people are getting bored by Facebook.
Facebook has definitely made it hard for fans or particular bands or styles of music to interact with each other with their new designs.
Music is just an integral part of the human condition: you gotta have it, you gotta have it. The radio stations are gone, and the internet, well there’s some music there but there’s no new paradigm, you know? There’s nothing that has stepped up to take over what the radio stations used to do and what record companies used to do; the radio stations are gone. There are a few scattered things going on online, like iTunes and Pandora. But Pandora’s not even video, it’s like a radio station on the internet.
The best way to see music is live. We’re putting a way for people to see live music and be on the other side of the world. If there’s a band you want to see, then just tune in to Moogis and watch them and if you like them then the next time they’re near you then just watch them.
Moving back to The Allman Brothers Band, you mentioned that The Allman Brothers Band is playing The Garden during Crossroads. If I am correct, it has been over 20 years since you played MSG.
You know, I think you’re right. It was actually before The Allman Brothers got back together [one of two shows the band did in 1986]. It was Halloween night—I remember, I took my kids trick or treating in Manhattan. Funny. But it was called a Countdown Against Crack and Bill asked us to come play and when Bill Graham asked us to do something, we did it. I wish he was still around to ask us now, but he’s not. I’ve been to the Garden a few times myself since then—I went to see Derek [Trucks] play with Clapton there and it was amazing. It’s a fun place to play. Madison Square Garden has quite a history. So that’ll be fun and not only that, the cause is great and Clapton’s a great guy and the lineup of people is astounding.
The Allman Brothers Band’s touring schedule has been sporadic in recent years. Do you plan to tour this summer?
Well, this summer I’m going to be spending June and July in France. Derek has quite a heavy tour he’s doing with Susan [Tedeschi]. So in the middle of the summer there won’t be much Allman Brothers. We’ve got a tour booked August/September, and I think they’re putting something together for November. Next year will be our 45th anniversary so I think there’s going to be a lot of Allman Brothers touring next year.
Finally, given that Gregg has some new songs in the works and next year is the band’s 45th anniversary, do you think you might start working on a new album?
Yeah, I think we might—we just need to get the 40th anniversary [live album] out first. We’ve been pounding on people for four years. We recorded that thing in 2009 and here it’s 2013 and it’s not even out yet.
What does the 40th anniversary live album include?
It is from when we did the Beacon for the 40th anniversary. That’s when we had 67 guests show up, including the two nights with Clapton. We played our first show at [Florida’s] Jacksonville Beach Auditorium on March 26, 1969 and we kind of mark that as the beginning of The Allman Brothers Band. So on March 26, 2009 we didn’t have any guests.
For our first set, we did the first [self-titled] album, beginning to end and the second set was [our second album] Idlewild South, beginning to end. Then we came back out for the encore and played “Statesboro Blues” which you probably know is the first song on At Fillmore East. As far as I’m concerned that night was the best playing we did that whole run. It is so tight, I mean it is just roaring, and Gregg’s in great shape and sings great. We got a really, really good video editor that took what Moogis did and made it really nice. It’s been remixed, audio-wise, and it’s a first rate DVD, it really is. It’s coming out really soon.

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whaou merci !

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Je n'arrive pas à le mettre en forme. Problème de souris au taf... Je le rendrais plus agréable à lire ce soir.

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