The young man sitting in Ardent Studios on a cold Memphis afternoon has his head in his hands, listening intently to a playback of a song called “Salvation”. He is feeling every note, every rise, every sensation that comes from this rerecorded version of a Honeytribe fan favorite. His head bobs here, his fingers glide out a note there and an occasional chill crawls down his spine. This is good and the man is pleased.
Devon Allman has done something unprecedented in a world increasingly paranoid of stolen music. He has taken his fans on a ride through the recording of his new album, SPACE AGE BLUES. Using Facebook as his personal webcam, he talked to his fans, played snippets of tracks being recorded and scrolled out lyrics for everyone to see and feel, long before the actual CD had been pressed and released. His fans were able to have the intimate feeling of actually being let in on something special.
And if Honeytribe is anything they are a fan’s band. I first met them in Nashville in 2009, after photographing a show they did on a slow Sunday night at a downtown club called 12th & Porter. They were fun, electrifying and totally at ease with their fans, who called up to them song requests in between greetings and salutations and blistering guitar solos. It was an atmosphere of sitting in your living room listening to some great music with a group of your friends who happen to be a lot more talented and cooler than yourself. It’s fun and it’s exciting.
Devon, along with his bandmates George Potsos on bass and Gabriel Strange on drums, were personable and attentive to each and every fan that wanted a minute of their time. They answered questions and explained song meanings and basically just hung out. Devon gave his total attention to whoever was beside him that night. Never once did you feel he would rather be somewhere else with someone else. He makes a connection and you become a fan for life.
Being a progeny can either help or hinder. It is a road traveled by many offspring of musicians. It can be a hard one on the soles of their feet. But Devon Allman is not one to complain nor is he one to ask for favors from his father, Gregg Allman. This is all Devon. His fingerprints are all over his every recording, his every concert, and it’s especially apparent on the band’s new CD, which will be released on October 26.
Honeytribe has tripped the light fantastic and taken the blues, rock & roll, and a bit of homespun St Louis muddy water and brewed them together into something vividly entertaining. The soul of Allman runs deep within the grooves and it should make him famous.
Calling from New York City on a recent Monday afternoon, Devon was full of enthusiastic vivre about his new album and being a man on more than a rock & roll mission.
Hi Devon, how are you?
I’m hanging in there (laughs).
Well, thank you for taking some time to talk with us at GLIDE. So why don’t you tell us about the new CD.
You know, it’s been a long time coming. We’ve had four years since the debut [TORCH] so it’s nice to get this out there for our fans and hopefully make a few new ones. I spent a lot of time on it. It was like 12-14 hour days. And I got a real budget to do it and if I wanted a string section on it, I got it. And we had Huey Lewis play on it and everything fell into place for it. It’s really special to me.
Why did it take so long between the two Honeytribe CDs?
I think because at the end of the day, I don’t make records for suit and tie guys. You know, it’s art. I mean, can you imagine somebody standing behind like Picasso and saying “Come on, buddy, let’s get that thing done. We got to sell that thing”. Art is art. Sometimes it takes a little longer. I didn’t want it to take that long but, you know, it’s not like we were making the album for four years. We weren’t. We were on tour. We were touring the world trying to make new fans. But when it came down to it, it took forty days. You know the songs had to come. The vision had to come. And it finally did.
Did you have most of the songs already written or when you knew you were going into the studio you started getting them together?
Most of the songs were within the year. “Space Age Blues” and “Salvation” were the first two songs I had for the record. And I kind of needed those so I could hang my hat on them and kind of have a vision for how I wanted everything to sound. You know, I kind of needed an anchor point. So once those two were written, everything else fell into place. So those two songs are about a year old. One song was about ten years old that I kind of had in the arsenal for awhile and that was the piano song “New Pet Monkey”.
So why didn’t you put that on the first album TORCH?
I don’t know. It didn’t fit the vibe, I guess. You know this record is a bit more exploratory, it’s a bit more spookier. It’s got a definite night time vibe to it whereas the first record had more of a daytime straight-ahead in-your-face feel. I’m very proud of the record. The first one was like very exciting, full of fire first record. This one is more about working on composition and arrangements.
How did you get Huey Lewis to come in?
It’s crazy. We were making SPACE AGE BLUES at the same time he was making a record and I met him by the coffee machine. I described the record to him and he just thought it sounded so cool. He came into the recording room where I had had 2500 purple Christmas lights hung to get this space age vibe. And he just thought it was so cool. And HE asked US. He’s like “Man, I sure would like to be on that record”. I think he realized that there’s something special going on and I was really grateful. He was a total gentleman and he played his ass off.
And you had dubbed the studio “The Mothership” right?
Yea, it’s got all the lights and when you walked in it was pretty impressive and he just thought it was super cool. And he wanted to be a part of it. And I’m glad he was.
So why did you pick Ardent Studios in Memphis?
That’s where I made TORCH and there’s a certain comfort zone there. I know the room, I know the sound, I know the people, I know a few good restaurants (laughs). Just something about it that is just special. I mean, a lot of my heroes made records there. “Cheap Sunglasses” by ZZ Top. Just all kinds of great stuff.
Now you did something that a lot of bands don’t do, which was literally bring your fans with you while you recorded this record. You put clips up on Facebook and little snippets of what you were doing everyday in the studio. What made you do this?
I wish I could say it was some brilliant marketing move (laughs) but really I just wanted to bring the fans along. And what I realized was how many people geek out and watch all the extras on a DVD of their favorite movie? A lot of people. I know I do. But what if you could go on your TV or computer and get that stuff as your favorite director or your favorite actor was making the movie. You would feel a part of the process. So essentially that’s what it turned out to be. It was like putting all those extras in the “making of” before the album is ever released. So once I got the positive feedback, I made sure that I posted one snippet every single day that we were in the studio. Before you know it, all these people feel connected to the album. They’re watching it get made. They’re watching it be assembled. And that turned out to be a really great thing. And it made everyone want the album even more.
My favorite song on the CD is “Endless Diamond”. I have loved that song since I first heard that guitar riff when you posted it on Facebook. So can you tell me a little more about that song?
Oh cool. The riff was just kind of luck, you know. It’s kind of a thumb trick, where you play the low note with your thumb and then the answer riff with your fingers. It’s a technique used a lot by Hendrix and John Frusciante. I never really played like that in my life. I just tossed it around and stumbled onto that riff and it kind of stayed around in my mind and I was doing a lot of, you know, kind of esoteric reading. I was reading some of this Eckhart Tolle like THE POWER OF NOW. And that book kind of tripped me out on the fact that you’re not your mind. You are your essence, your being, your feelings, your heart, your soul. You know, your mind is just a computer. And sometimes we all get lost in our minds. We compare things and we overthink things and analyze things. And that song “Endless Diamond” is just about the fact that our time on Earth is just one of many stops on our soul’s journey. We are the endless energy that always will move on. So that’s kind of a deep answer but it’s pretty much the whole basis of the song.
Well that’s what makes you so interesting as a songwriter. You don’t just write the bubblegum songs. You have a conscience in your music. Is it easier to write like that instead of the little poppy love songs?
I don’t know, I can’t write that crap (laughs). I mean, I just can’t. I try to resonate on a level that’s just real and meaningful. It’s not to sound like snobby or anything like that, it’s just like I would cringe if I sat down and wrote some bubblegum thing. I just write what I’m feeling and maybe there’s people out there that are feeling the same thing.
Why the “Sir Duke” song? You have all these songs in the universe and you pick an old Stevie Wonder song to cover on the CD.
It just moves me. I just thought it would be a cool challenging thing and I’m a huge Stevie Wonder fan and I’ve always wanted to put cover songs on the record that kind of nod to our heroes and that’s definitely one of them. It was really a blast to do, to kind of breathe a different kind of space funk life into that song.
You have a couple of instrumentals on this CD and one of them has this really Siamese like middle-eastern really cool vibe to it.
The final cut on the record is called “Insh’ Allah”, which in Arabic means “God willing”. Like they say that throughout the day all the time. Like you know, “I’m going to meet my brother for dinner, insh allah” – God willing. If nothing comes in the way of it, I plan on doing this or that. Which is an interesting aspect of their spirituality, if “God wills it then I will do it”, which is an amazing way to approach your life. So the modality on the guitar on that song is a bit middle-eastern so it kind of lent itself to that. I spent some time in Egypt and around the pyramids and I’m into all that crap (laughs). So it’s definitely come into my world a little bit. The other instrumental is “Bleu Est Le Vide”, which is French for “blue is the void”, which has to do with Yves Klein the painter. He was very much into static solid colors, primarily blue. He thought it was the color of infinity and his whole mode of thinking about color kind of transporting you into the ether, the nothingness, is pretty killer. That particular instrumental kind of reminded me of that kind of foreverness.
The artwork on the CD is very different, very cool. Who is the artist and where did you find him?
Lamar Sorrento. He is a Memphis native. If you go into any House Of Blues in America, a lot of those paintings are Lamar Sorrento’s. He is definitely very well known. He painted the cover for TORCH. And he is a good friend of mine and he painted this cover. It’s interesting that you pull up these aspects because even though SPACE AGE BLUES has it’s own vibe and totally different than TORCH, there are a lot of linear connections and those linear connections are the same guy painted the album cover; there’s a band instrumental with a name that isn’t English. Like we had “Mahalo” which is Hawaiian, and now we have “Insh’ Allah” which is Arabic. There was a solo instrumental acoustic piece “511 Texas Avenue” on TORCH and now there’s “Bleu Est Le Vide”. There was a cover song by a soul artist, Bob Marley, now it’s Stevie Wonder. These were direct things that I wanted to keep for this album so that they were connected in those regards. So it’s interesting that you pulled these things up because those are all the linear connections to the last album.
Do you think of yourself as an intellectual? Have you always been interested in all the different religions and philosophies or is this something that has come later in your life?
You know I’m not a stuffy type that wants to put my pinky in the air and talk about the virtues of monotheistic religions. I just like to think and I like to learn. So if that makes me an intellectual, yeah, I guess so. I’m a geek, I like to learn about things. And the things that interest me are core things like religion and science but also the fringe stuff like conspiracies or aliens or cosmic … it’s everything.
Can we talk about your band a little bit? You have George Potsos on bass and Gabriel Strange on drums. But originally your band was bigger, is that correct?
I started the band in 1999 and it was a seven piece. And it’s been a five piece, it’s been a four piece and right now it’s a three piece. But that’s just because that’s how I want it. I mean, it could easily be a four piece next month. It’s just whatever I’m feeling at the time. Luckily being the pilot of this craft it’s always up to me. It’s a bit insignificant really, when you get down to it. It’s kind of whatever I’m feeling at the time. Thankfully, I have that artistic license, you know.
Now you guys are always on the road. You must be tired (laughs)?
Totally (laughs) … I’m kind of always tired, you know. I chill out, I come to New York City, I chill with my girlfriend who keeps me grounded, keeps me sane; I just try to keep it real.
Now you’ve talked about New York City and Egypt, so when you tour do you ever get to spend some time just actually visiting the city you’re in?
(laughs) I had an hour in Rome. I had an hour in London. It’s limited but, yeah, a little bit.
Do you get recognized?
Depends on where we’re at. Sometimes in New York, Florida, but for the most part, no. I mean, obviously we’re not the Jackson 5 (laughs).
About your live shows: I saw Honeytribe in Nashville last year. It was a small crowd but you guys rocked like it was a packed house. Is that what you always do, give that 110% no matter what?
You have to always bring it. 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, number one. Number two, you never know who is in the crowd. We played a show in Savannah, Georgia, a year and a half ago, and there was forty or fifty people, something like that, on a Tuesday night, and you’re thinking, “Argh, I’m tired, I don’t give a shit”, but one of the Senior writers for “Rolling Stone” was there. So it was a good thing we played our asses off, you know.
You know how the economy is. Unfortunately, fans now have to pick and choose which shows to spend their money on to go see. How do you feel about this and has it affected your shows?
It’s affecting us for the good, because of the fact that the $50-$100 concerts are on the decline, then the $10-$20 concerts are on the up. And our average ticket price is $15 and our sales are up. So thank God that people don’t want to buy the $70 ticket but they’re buying the $15 and that’s us (laughs). So we’re actually seeing the opposite side of that.
So have you been playing some of the new songs live? Do the fans know them?
People already sing along to “Salvation” and stuff. It’s been going well. I’ve held back about half the album live so that when it comes out we can kind of have a whole brand new show. But we’ve been playing “Space Age Blues”, “Salvation”, “Dangerous”, “Insh’ Allah”, about half of it. It’s been great. Our fans are killer and they love the new stuff.
Tell us about your encounter with Les Paul a couple of years ago.
You know it was a night in New York and I just wanted to meet the guy and I shook his hand and I had my guitar with me because we had a Honeytribe show later that night uptown. He saw it and he said, “Hey, you want me to sign your guitar?” And I’m like, yeah, you’re like the ONLY guy on the planet I would LET sign my guitar. And he signed it and handed it back to me and he goes, “I’ll bring you up on the fourth song”. And so I got to play with him that night. And it was like five years of guitar lessons condensed into five minutes. I was incredibly humbled and felt like such a student. It was great, like one of the best experiences playing that I’ve had in my life.
I hear that you like to run.
I’ve been running about a year and a half. I try to log about fifteen miles a week. It clears the head, you know, keeps me sane. I hope to do like a rock & roll marathon next year, it’s my goal (laughs).
And the tattoos on your arms are very unique. May I ask why you chose to have them done in sanskrit?
I chose sanskrit because it’s the first language ever on Earth, that we know about anyway. And that just kind of struck me as cool. It’s a precursor to Indian and Arabic, and it says “blessed transforming student of the universe and music”, and that’s just kind of how I view myself. Just always trying to learn and evolve as a musician and as a human being. Sanskrit looked cool and it being the first language on Earth kind of took it to it’s lowest denominator, which I think is cool.
Last question: How would you describe the music of Honeytribe?
Just organic heart and soul blues rock. It’s like what we grew up on. I always tell people to take a third jam band, a third rock and a third blues. We have some soul in there and we have some jazz in there. It’s kind of an amalgam of all that stuff.
Devon Allman’s Honeytribe are always out on the road somewhere so check them out if they come to a town near you. And don’t forget about the new CD, SPACE AGE BLUES out October 26.
