The sons of the Allman Brothers band members go on tour to honor their fathers : NPR

Honoring their fathers, the sons of the Allman Brothers band members go on tour during the Holiday season as the Allman Betts Family Revival.

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The Allman Brothers Band had a 44-year run that landed the group in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Now, two guitar-playing sons of the band’s founders lead the Allman Betts Family Revival Band. They’re on tour this month. The group came out of a father-son relationship in need of repair, as St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy Goodwin reports.

JEREMY GOODWIN, BYLINE: When he was 15, Devon Allman wrote a short letter to a man he’d never met – rock legend Gregg Allman, his father.

DEVON ALLMAN: It was like, Dear Gregg, I’m your son. I play guitar. I like Ozzy (laughter). You know, here’s my phone number.

GOODWIN: Devon only knew Gregg through stories from his mom, Shelley Winters, Gregg’s first wife. They split after Gregg’s brother and bandmate Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash and the backstage drug scene got darker. She went home to raise their child far from the rock and roll circus, and Gregg kept his distance.

ALLMAN: She just basically said, someday, you’re going to meet him. You guys are going to get along great. Be patient. It’ll happen.

GOODWIN: A week or two after teenage Devon sent that letter to his dad, the rock star called him up and invited him to an Allman Brothers show. So Devon met his father in the parking lot of St. Louis’ Fabulous Fox Theatre.

ALLMAN: I said, man, I got one question for you. And he goes, what’s that? And I said, what took so long? Fifteen years, man? And he reached in his wallet, and he pulled out the letter from six months earlier, and he unfolded it. He goes, I was waiting for this.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE ALLMAN BETTS FAMILY REVIVAL BAND’S PERFORMANCE OF THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND’S “BLUE SKY”)

GOODWIN: Now, Devon Allman spends much of the holiday season each year playing Allman Brothers songs, alongside Duane Betts, son and spitting image of Allmans’ co-founder Dickey Betts. Here’s Duane singing one of Dickey’s songs with the Allman Betts Family Revival Band.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “BLUE SKY”)

ALLMAN BETTS FAMILY REVIVAL BAND: (Singing) You’re my blue sky, you’re my sunny day. Lord, you know it makes me high when you turn your love my way. Turn your love my way.

GOODWIN: Duane got a lot more father-son time than Devon did. He played in Dickey’s solo group for a decade. Then Dickey Betts died last year. Duane says the Family Revival Band is a way to keep connecting.

DUANE BETTS: Music and family go together. I mean, that’s just sacred. There’s times on stage when I look over at Devon and we just feel it. We both know the spirit’s there.

GOODWIN: After their meeting outside the Fox Theatre, Devon and Gregg Allman built a warm relationship. But 15 years of absence left a mark. At age 27, a life change rearranged Devon’s perspective.

ALLMAN: I really got to heal those wounds by being a dad. Any anger or sadness that I had was really replaced by pity. Like, oh, being a father is the best thing in the world. Like, you miss this, man, you know? And I just – I felt so horrible for him that he missed out on that.

GOODWIN: That’s a tremendous amount of empathy that – I mean, you were the other end of that relationship. You were missing that, too.

ALLMAN: But I kind of got it back by being a dad myself, so it filled my cup.

GOODWIN: Gregg Allman died in 2017. Devon started the Family Revival Band not long after.

(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING ON DOOR)

ALLMAN: How we doing? Come on in.

GOODWIN: Hey, not bad. How about you?

ALLMAN: Good. Good to see you. This is Franklin.

GOODWIN: Devon Allman recently showed me around his home in St. Charles, Missouri, 20 miles northwest of St. Louis. At 53, he has the long hair and sandy-colored beard of his father. The house is full of rock history.

ALLMAN: The centerpiece here is Dad’s baby grand piano. He composed on it. Wrote some tunes for his final record on this piano. And these were Dad’s two main acoustic guitars. He would play “Midnight Rider” on the black guitar and “Melissa” on the tobacco burst. And I still use them on tour. And Duane Betts will play them, too, as well.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MIDNIGHT RIDER”)

ALLMAN BETTS FAMLY REVIVAL BAND: (Singing) I’ve got to run to keep from hiding…

ALLMAN: There are moments where it’s like, wow, you know, I can’t believe we get to do this. I’ll be singing “Melissa” to 3,000 fans in Beacon Theater, when I was, like, the forgotten kid, man.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MELISSA”)

ALLMAN BETTS FAMLY REVIVAL BAND: (Singing) Will you hide the dead man’s ghost? Or will he lie beneath the clay? Or will his spirit float away? Lord, I know that he won’t stay without Melissa.

GOODWIN: In his journey from the forgotten kid to musical torchbearer, Devon Allman says he and Duane Betts fill a spotlight he’d just as well step out of.

ALLMAN: Sometimes it’s super sad. I got to fight tears back ’cause, ultimately, we would just love to be on those chairs on the side of the stage, watching his dad do “Blue Sky” and watching my dad do “Melissa.” You know, we’re literally doing this because they can’t.

GOODWIN: Devon and Duane lead another band together, where they focus on their original songs. But even then, they break out a few Allman Brothers tunes ’cause it’s all in the family. For NPR News, I’m Jeremy Goodwin in St. Louis.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE ALLMAN BETTS FAMILY REVIVAL BAND’S PERFORMANCE OF THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND’S “MELISSA”)

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