By TRB
If you are as great a musican as Gregg Allman, sooner or later, America will own you, sort of like it owns the Grand Canyon. Johnny Cash, Otis, Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly and many other legends have felt that heft, that expectation. The weight. You will be an icon whether you like it or not. Sometimes you can hear it, somebody putting all of themselves out there, almost dangerously. Someone who has been doing it for a long time. Meeting the unrealistic demands.
Gregg Allman more than meets them. The Allman Brothers front man has recently released his first solo album in 14 years, "Low Country Blues" (Rounder). It is a beaut, one of those albums that is so organic, so of-the-same-piece that to remove just one of the singles would change the feeling of the whole album. T Bone Burnett produced this one, which at times takes you back a lot farther than you've been in those years you've lived. Gregg's voice is the instrument here daring you to go all the way back some 80 years to sing you a blues number like Sleepy John Estes, "Floating Bridge." You are there and in the water, pulled from the water. Saved by a song.
And you understand that "Low Country Blues" is not like your standard-issue blues album. It's a journey farther back than most contemporary blues artists have journeyed. But then again, they don't have Gregg Allman's immaculate blues voice to take them there. There's Dr. John on piano, Doyle Bramhall II on guitar, Jay Bellarose on Drums and Dennis Crouch on acoustic base. And Burnett trying to keep as much dust on it as he can.
As usual he manages, and "Low Country Blues" emerges as certainly one of the best albums that will be made this year, maybe the best. "I'd rather be the devil than be that woman's man," Gregg sings sounding very much like he means it. These are the real "roots" of the music we listen to today. They are not sprinkled with studio magic or covered over in layers of electronic noise. Not this album. Instead they are exposed and all the secrets these old blues men knew are revealed in Allman's singular voice.
This album is like a relic, a new relic if such a thing can exist. Like the albums The Band made, it sounds like it came from a place that closed up a long time ago and everyone lost their opportunity to see it.
Then, suddenly, and wonderously, it is here.
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