No one can bring the house down quite like Devon Allman. With his soaring guitar licks, unique vocals that straddle the border between blues, rock and country, songs that touch upon the pulse of zen positivity and real deal life and love situations, Allman can rock hard, rouse up a crowd and become your best friend all within the span of a two hour concert. There are not many musicians out there that can do all this and not get lost in their own ego but Allman does it effortlessly.
Allman is a believer in the power of real music. With only guitars, via himself and Bobby Schneck Jr, some bass and drums courtesy of Steve Duerst and Anthony Nanney, the music he brought to the Lava Cantina stage in Baton Rouge last week was passionate and full of crowd-connecting hymns. With a set filled up mostly by his own tunes, it proves that not all non-superstar bands have to fall upon covers to meat up their concerts to please the crowd in front of them. What this young man had to offer was good enough to have them cheering, dancing, singing and calling for more. “You have to always bring it,” Allman told me during his first interview in Glide in 2010. “Even if ten people came, they paid their money, they came to get lost from their world for a couple of hours and you always give it. Always. It’s always about the people.”
Allman has been having lots of success these last ten years. His band Honeytribe recorded two well-received albums, Torch and Space Age Blues, before Allman joined up with Cyril Neville in the New Orleans all-star group, Royal Southern Brotherhood, which also featured Yonrico Scott, Charlie Wooten and Mike Zito. His two solo records, 2013’s enlightening Turquoise and 2014’s more bluesy Ragged & Dirty, continued to show Allman’s musical growth and spiritual maturity. “I try to resonate on a level that’s just real and meaningful,” Allman assured me in 2010. “I just write what I’m feeling and maybe there’s people out there that are feeling the same thing.”
Opening his set with an instrumental jam that was a sneak peek into what lay ahead, Allman took the bull by the horns and foot-stomped through “Can’t Lose,” “Could Get Dangerous,” “Mahalo,” “Back To You,” “Midnight Lake Michigan” and a killer version of the title track to his most recently released album, Ragged & Dirty. The covers he did incorporate into the show included ones that have been with him for a long time – “No Woman No Cry” and the Allman Brothers’ “One Way Out” – and newer ones – The Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” from R&D and a mighty fine version of Clapton’s “Forever Man.” Allman and his band also played the teasing game before jumping into his final encore song, playing snippets of “Whole Lotta Love” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” before kicking into a rip-roaring “shortest version of this song ever” “Stairway To Heaven,” featuring Schneck unleashed to just soar on the electrified soloing Jimmy Page made famous. This young man has a very bright future ahead of him and Allman is letting him shine several times during his shows.
A major highlight was when Allman lit into his R&D instrumental, “Midnight Lake Michigan.” Humming on guitar as if in a blues trance, Allman brought the song to a new emotional level. Taking the opportunity to touch the people that were feeding him as much energy as he was giving out, he walked through the crowd, slapping hands and stopping to play in front of individuals, giving them that extra special treat all of us secretly wish for. Allman believes in being up close and personal, encouraging everyone to always come up to the stage, he himself stepping away from the microphone and singing with nothing but his lungs during “No Woman No Cry” as he edged even closer to them. It was a fun moment amongst many, where the fans were a part of the show and not simply observers.
And this is why Allman is hard to beat when it comes to putting on a live concert.
For more of the interview with Allman: Live photographs by Leslie Michele Derrough
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