Video: Don Was Details Recording Gregg Allman’s Final Album ‘Southern Blood’ At FAME Studios

Next Friday Rounder Records will issue Southern Blood, the final studio album recorded by Gregg Allman prior to his death earlier this year at age 69. A preview of the accompanying documentary Back To The Swamp: The Making Of Southern Blood has been shared in advance of the record’s September 8 release.

Renowned producer Don Was is featured in the documentary highlight discussing FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama where he worked with Allman on Southern Blood. Gregg’s late brother Duane was employed in the 1960s as a session guitarist at the now legendary recording facility established by Rick Hall.

“It does sound like Muscle Shoals on this record,” Was states in the clip. “It sounds like that room. You can hear the reflections off the walls. But that means you don’t put a mic every two inches, that means everyone balances themselves and if it calls for it the drummer gets quieter in the verse and gets louder in the chorus – not someone brings the faders down later … so it’s a very natural organic moment that was captured.”

Featuring the Gregg Allman Band performing arrangements of songs by the likes of Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter, Lowell George, Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley and more, NPR Music made Southern Blood available to stream in advance of next Friday’s official release. Watch the “Recording At Muscle Shoals” segment of the Back To The Swamp: The Making Of Southern Blood below: