From The Soul: Remembering The Allman Brothers Band’s Gregg Allman & Butch Trucks

Words by: Chad Berndtson

The late Claude Hudson Trucks, known to just about everybody as “Butch,” wasn’t one to hold back, in drumming, in speaking, in life. Of The Allman Brothers Band’s seminal At Fillmore East, he once noted, “I think [it] was the last truly honest, from-the-soul record that we ever did. There’s absolutely nothing in there but us playing music.”

The album of course took on a special, and some might say mythological, quality among Allman Brothers devotees, rock and blues fans (“Southern” or otherwise), just plain old music lovers, and even among dilettantes, who are at least glancingly aware of the album’s vast influence in much the same way a music lover knows of Kind Of Blue or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Exile On Main Street and that each of those documents is important in a way that transcends generational context.

In one frame of mind, At Fillmore East is bottled lightning: some of the finest blues, R&B and rock-based improvisational playing ever committed to tape. In another frame of mind, it’s bedrock; no other album save for perhaps the Grateful Dead’s Live/Dead has been so influential on the roots of the modern jam band scene, in which the ephemeral pleasures of improvisation are held in highest regard and where the live performance, above all, holds sway.

So why do I return to Butch’s “from the soul” comment and At Fillmore East now? Well, I had the occasion to write about the album after a fresh listen, roughly a year ago when we were aware Gregg Allman’s illness had taken a bad turn, and that Butch was going to continue to tour with an excellent band called Les Brers as well as his own Freight Train Band, and that the final, longest-running incarnation of The Allman Brothers Band (2001-2014) was, despite some posturing and the occasional rumor, probably done for. Of course, we didn’t know at the time that in 2017 we’d lose both Butch and Gregg in the span of four months. Now, they really are done for — any notion of The Allman Brothers Band and a return/reunion/what-have-you future is put to rest.

That finality of that cuts me deeply. I’ve been an Allman Brothers fan since middle school, meaning I’m young enough to have only known (at least in the live setting) the mid-1990s era on. I saw the mid and late-1990s version of the band often at Great Woods, not far from my Boston-area hometown. I caught them at festivals. I later dug deeper and discovered albums, bootlegs and lesser known cuts beneath the well-known radio hits, found my way to the mammoth “Dreams” boxed set from 1989, and finally — around 2000 — had my first taste of The Beacon Theatre residences in New York City, which became where I most often saw the band in the decade and a half hence.

I saw one show there in 2001, still not quite understanding the unbelievable significance of Warren Haynes’ return to active duty in the band. I picked up a few more, here and there, each year, and finally settled in for multi-night runs — the beloved weekday shows some of my most favorite — when I moved to New York City later in the decade. All those shows, even on the weaker nights, felt like seven-course meals — full experiences. The Beacon shows were like nothing else you could see from this era of the band.

I remember the first show I saw there that really made me feel the depth and intensity of what folks seemed to mean when they described At Fillmore East. It was March 21, 2005, and as Warren was fond of saying, “A very special night.” The Asbury Jukes horn section sat in — before that was kind of a regular thing — and so did Page McConnell, Matt Abts, Jimmy Cobb and Chuck Leavell, who drove the band through the first “Jessica” in four years, a magical moment not lost even on such a devoted, conditioned crowd. I was completely immersed in the ferocious jamming that night. I got everything Tom Dowd said when he described — referring to the Fillmore East from decades earlier — as a “rock ’n’ roll band playing blues in the jazz vernacular.” It felt like absolutely nothing there but them playing music. It was so fucking good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXj6VIgJtE

When possible, and when everyone was healthy, I saw the band at least four or five times a year in each of the nine years that followed, peaking at five of the majestic Beacon shows during the 40th anniversary run in 2009. I was there for Clapton, I was there for Levon and Larry and Taj Mahal, I was there for Phil and Bob, I was there for JB and Jimmy, I knew who Thom Doucette was and how cool it was to see him up there. The guests and the surprises and the razzle-dazzle was all fun.

But I also realized that same year that the guests were just incremental. I was comforted and nourished by the idea that I could count on The Allman Brothers Band — especially at the Beacon — to be a reliably good night, because they were there, and perhaps there’d be some friends and surprises. But they didn’t need them. There were still echoes of that even after 2014, when the band played their final shows. A little bit of that At Fillmore East magic had survived for decades, and still does.

Make no mistake: the magic outlives the band. The major ensembles with ABB origins, most notably Gov’t Mule and the Tedeschi Trucks Band, regularly play Allman Brothers Band songs. The ghosts of Butch and Gregg were deeply in the room during the recent Warren Haynes Christmas Jam, which began with a gorgeous guitar-and-ukelele “Melissa” and touched on the Allmans’ legacy often, including with a tribute set from a loose collection of alumni and family members called Les Bros. And right here at the end of the year, we have word that long-exiled brother Dickey Betts will play some shows again in 2018. There’s still plenty of “Allmans,” and it’ll come from other sources, in much the same way Grateful Dead music has thrived 20-plus years after Garcia. I never thought I’d be able to hear live Grateful Dead music in an insanely jammy, fully-amped-up way again, and then I encountered Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. Bands will play Allmans tunes and play them well until there aren’t any more guitars to tune.

But as springtime rolls around again, and the snow is melting, and it’s March in New York, there’ll be a part of us as diehard Allman Brothers fans that, as of now, really does feel over and out — that will yearn for that kind of “Mountain Jam” or “Whipping Post” or “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” and not get it again. The road goes on forever, but The Allman Brothers Band has finally gone on as of 2017. Rest in peace Butch and Gregg — we hear you everywhere, but no longer here.