Devon Allman has been riding a wave of success with Royal Southern Brotherhood, a band that debuted last year with their self-titled studio album, which has subsequently produced a flurry of worldwide touring and attention. That recent accomplishment has allowed the guitarist/singer/composer to finally create a solo album, featuring an eclectic mix of rock, blues, soul, and a whole lot of charm and heart. Essentially, after over a decade of work as an artist trying to define his own path outside the shadow of his famous father, Gregg Allman, the man has suddenly found himself straddling two artistic paths, which both provide the outlet to explore his own talented voice. Turquoise, the debut solo album, created during a rare-Royal tour break, is an excellent 11-track work, consolidating the musician’s artistic strengths, while managing to sustain a consistent theme of purpose, creativity, and soul-searching throughout its entire sonic journey.
Jambands.com sat down with Allman to discuss his recent success with the Royal Southern Brotherhood, and the story behind the debut solo album, too, which also features his RSB bandmate Yonrico Scott on drums and percussion, and Myles Weeks on upright and electric bass. Allman is an intelligent and perceptive conversationalist, with a refreshing and mature outlook, that helps engage the listener on several levels, something that can be said about his recent work, as well, which, along with the decade-plus odyssey of his band, Honeytribe, help define a unique artistic vision—famous son, or not.
RR: I was pleasantly surprised with your debut solo album, Turquoise. Not that I was surprised that you could pull it off, but that there doesn’t appear to be a weak track at all. It is a very consistent work with a lot of heart and variety and some fairly moving material, as well.
DA: I can’t thank you enough. That’s music to my ears because when you’re in there making a record, you’re so close to it that you don’t know. There might be some things that are moving you, but you don’t know how it’s going to be taken, so I appreciate that.
RR: Besides the fact that it’s your solo debut, is it your most personal work to date?
DA: I think it’s always been part of me to open up, but I would say that, yeah, it’s pretty to-the-point and transparent and you know what’s making me happy or making me sad, so, yeah, I think it’s definitely my most personal work.
RR: Why do you think, at this particular time, you were able to create this album?
DA: I don’t know. This wasn’t something that was planned out. It wasn’t like, “oh, it’s time to make my most personal thing.” I think that I’m at a point in my life where a lot of the goals that I had initially set for myself, in terms of personal and business and career, I had hit, so it was kind of like a big breath of fresh air: I know who I am; now, I am ready for the whole next set of goals. There’s a lot of different vibes going on in there from celebration to melancholy. The one thing that really hit me was this blues theme of home that runs through the record. At the beginning of the record, I’m young and ready to run out the door—“get me out of home.” And then, by the middle of the record (laughs), I’m saying, “I wanna come home; that’s the only thing I want more than anything in the world.” So, just like anything, I think we’re all a product of our years and our experiences and our decisions. I’m just at a real good place.
RR: You mention the passage of time in a few lyrics, and it also plays a part in the continual theme of the entire album. Did you think about that when you were sitting down and going through the construction of Turquoise?
DA: I did not, actually, so it’s funny how some very basic elements of our lives like our home, or our home base, and time, our currency of life, end up being the strongest themes on the record. I think that that makes sense—those are common denominators for anyone to relate to, so, yeah, man, it’s a real life record, I guess.
RR: You’ve worked with groups in the past, and with one that has recently exploded onto our scene, so when did you decide you wanted to create a solo album?
DA: I think having been under a good bit of healthy pressure to come to the table with my best songwriting to be included for the Royal Southern Brotherhood record made me really dig and go, “O.K., I want my songs to stack up next to Cyril Neville’s without there being any kind of dip in heart or quality. That means I have to bring the most pure version of myself and my stories that I can to the table.” I felt like I did that with “Left My Heart in Memphis” and “Nowhere to Hide” that I brought to the Royal record, which I completely wrote myself. They weren’t co-writes. As soon as I heard the playback on those, it gave me the confidence to think, “You’re not just an aggressive blues jamband. You’re a writer, too, and you really ought to just take your next turn, and turn down the writing path, and really put your best foot forward in writing songs.”
Clapton did that in a certain juncture in his career, and I’ve really started to want to mirror, not the stylistic, but the career moves that somebody like Clapton took. Obviously, he’s an amazing, world-class player, but he has these amazing records in his discography. I just decided right then and there. I had the confidence—these personal or laidback songs of mine? They need to be magnified into a whole album.
RR: Confidence is the key word, and you mentioned that Royal may have provoked you into that feeling in a very positive way, which also circles back to what I felt about the solo album—there is confidence on the songs; you are telling a story in an unrushed, patient manner, and it sounds like a record you want to spend time with. How much confidence did you also gain from touring with the members of RSB?
DA: Well, any time you shake up your house, you’re going to have new perspective and you’re going to see other people’s takes on approach and touch and things of that nature. When I went from being a quarterback for twelve years to being an equal member of a team, it definitely makes you look over your shoulder at your brother and say, “Oh, that’s cool; that’s a nice approach.” And that can be from anything from a tempo thing to a feel to a touch to a groove. I think we’ve all effected each other in a very positive way.
But the confidence thing is, I don’t know, you play in the sandbox for ten years, and then somebody says, “Oh, we think you’re good enough to jump onto the beach,” and you do it and nobody’s kicked you off yet—this is good. (laughs). There’s a bit of, for sure, validation there. “All right, this is a side of me that I need to start believing in; it exists.”
RR: Let’s discuss two areas: the genesis of the solo album and the importance of Jim Gaines in the production of Turquoise.
DA: Sure. I’ll touch on Jim Gaines first. I was a fan of Jim Gaines for the last 20 years. I’m a record geek. I know what Jim Gaines did before I ever stepped into a studio with Jim Gaines. I probably knew his discography better than him—meaning: he’s a rock star in my eyes. So, when I walked in and made the record with him with Royal Southern Brotherhood, he just became like an uncle to me. He was like the cool football coach that you wished you had because you had the asshole one. He would absolutely dig in and find your strengths and magnify them. He was very, very good at that. The comfort level working with him was instant. As we were wrapping the record, I told him that the whole idea of the Royal Southern Brotherhood family from a musical and a marketing and business sense was that we would put out Royal records every year and a half to two years, but in the interim, we each would drop solo records. We have such a cool working relationship and I love him like an uncle and he agreed right then and there: “You call me and we’ll make time and we’ll make that record.”
I’ve got to say that it was very unconventional. I was wrapped up in touring the world with Royal, so I wasn’t at home in the studio cuttin’ demos, and sending them off to the label for approval and management for helping me mold the ones that were chosen for the record or the producer. In fact, my record label, Jim Gaines, and my management company were all quietly—they later revealed to me—really freaking out. They had heard nothing of what was going to be on this fucking record. They started to show hints of it, and then I started throwing them a couple bones just because I didn’t want to totally freak them out, so they heard a couple demos the week before I went in. They at least knew the area that I was going. That wasn’t by design. I wasn’t trying to be deceptive. I had no time. There was just no time to do this. I had in my head the songs that I wanted to do. I hoped and prayed that they’d come out good and that there was some kind of cohesion, some kind of linear thread that would tie it all together, and thank God that there is because that wasn’t by design either. Thankfully, I think that all these little babies make a nice family, and that’s the Great Creator right there. Anytime, you’re going to have Yonrico Scott play drums on your record and Jim Gaines producing it, you’re headed (laughs) in the right direction right off the bat.
RR: Had you ever been to Bessie Blue Studio?
DA: I had not. It’s a home. It is a farmhouse. The Amish were going on their horses right on the street that it’s on. It’s a trip. I have nothing against the Amish; it’s just a trip. It’s in the middle of nowhere. When we first pulled up, I looked at my girlfriend and said, “Oh, shit. Really? I mean, like really ? We’re supposed to find vibe in this house?” Again, it was nothing against the area or the house, but it just seemed like your grandmother’s house. I walked in and I picked up a guitar and the first night I got in at 8pm and I sat down with Jim and (laughs) showed him all the songs we were going to do, which is just insane of me. He should have had all those songs a month beforehand. But we sat on the couch and I pulled out an acoustic and played him all 11 tracks. We tweaked some arrangements, and we cut a chorus off this song, and we did a little surgery—we spent about three hours of pre-production right there the night before. And we woke up the next day and started cuttin’.
RR: They are complex tunes without appearing that way. I’m surprised…well, maybe I’m not…it appears that you were in The Zone. The tracks sound produced without having that vibe that a producer was hovering over them.
DA: Yeah. In that pre-production, we did not micro-manage. If a song felt like verse/chorus/verse/chorus, the song was verse/chorus/verse/chorus. We decided on how we were going to end them. We decided if a middle A was strong, if we were going to repeat it. If we were going to do a double-long guitar solo, he wanted to do a short guitar solo on “Homesick.” I said, “Screw that. Everybody does that; it’s so safe. It’s a catchy as hell song, let’s let it have a double-long guitar solo. Nobody does that anymore,” and he was like, “You know what? You’re right. Let’s do it.” It was little moves like that. There was no micro-management over each and every measure at all, so that’s where you are getting that sense of organic arrangements. They are very organic.
RR: I feel the arrangements, as a whole, are very tasteful—percussion is introduced, and then brought down, the vocals are on point, and everything appears complete. No song appears like it needs anything else, so that impresses me. A couple of key songs were recorded with Royal guitarist Mike Zito, as well.
DA: The two co-writes with Mike were totally different animals. The first one being “Don’t Set Me Free,” I told him I really needed a Stones-y, Tom Petty song near the front of the record, and we were sitting in a band condo on tour in Pennsylvania, and we just started dicking with guitars. He came up with a two-chord change, and I said, “That’s it; that’s great,” and, literally, by the fourth pass of him playing this, twenty seconds in, I wrote the little recurring lead that’s over it. [Allman hums the riff.] The country bends in the beginning of that that go in and out of the whole song—I said, “That’s something.” Then, within a month, all the vocals and lyrics and everything found a home. That was a true co-write.
“Strategy” was a totally different thing. I was four days from going in the studio, and [Mike Zito] sent me “Strategy” on an e-mail. He said, “Man, I was cleaning out the garage and I found a CD. It’s five years old; maybe, it works on your record.” I called him up and asked, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Man, the wife made me go out and clean the garage and I found this CD and it’s a demo of this song I wrote called “Strategy.” I said, “O.K.” He said, “Check it out. It’s got a real cool vibe to it.” I played it, and it wasn’t complete by any means, but it was enough of a germination to go like, “All right,” and I called him, and asked, “Hey, man, do I have the liberty to really do surgery and add a chord and add a whole verse and arrange it myself?” And he said, “Man, do whatever you want with it. It’s just sitting there.” It was really wild.
RR: You almost want him to go back to the garage and see what else is in there—for his own sake, at least, as a guitarist.
DA: (laughter) “You know what, Zito, glad you cleaned that garage.”
RR: I noticed that you said in the liner notes regarding “Strategy” that the “moral of the lyrics is…relationships are like plants…water them daily.” Like the rest of the album, it goes back to what I was saying at the beginning of our conversation, this is obviously your most personal work, and that sentiment is matched by the lyrical quality of the songs on Turquoise —the songs hit me in the chest where I live.
DA: Yeah, I think the transparency can kind of hit you. Just being real, man. Here it is—just kind of shooting it out there. I’m glad that it’s hitting you. That makes me feel good because I’m with you—I really have to search out there, man, to find stuff that really hits me, and if that’s doing that, that’s great.
RR: Transparency is a good word. I have to go back to the opening track, “When I Left Home,” where Luther Dickinson guests, and I thought how perfect his guitar sounds with your vocals—right out of the box, there is an honesty, which sounds like something you may have heard before, but you really haven’t quite yet. That’s a great union right there, so I am curious how you got Luther involved.
DA: Well, it’s funny because I knew his father from farting around at Ardent Studio for 20 years, and he knew my father for opening up for him for 20 years, but we never knew each other, which is just a crime. So, the second ever Royal gig was a private party in Colorado, and it was Royal and North Mississippi Allstars. Royal went up there and did its thing and got done and this long-haired freak comes up to me and he’s like, “Dude, I never knew, and now I know. Now, I know. ” And I was like, “Who are you and what are you talkin’ about?” (laughter) He said, “Man, I’m Luther.” I was like, “Oh my God.” It was dark; I didn’t really recognize him. I said, “Dude, why don’t—,” and he said, “Man, you’re a bad ass and the band’s awesome.” I’m a huge fan of Luther’s and I think I was as bold in our first day of knowing each other where I said, “Man, I would love to have you on my solo record, on just _one _cut. Just come, and do your thing, and just rip it up,” and he said, “Man, call me anytime.” He came out to Ardent, and we just had a bromance and talked about all the music we loved and had a bunch of laughs. I just remember that session being like the most fun you could ever have. It was great, and he killed it, and he was humble and sweet and just amazing.
RR: Since we are talking about guitarists, I have to segue into Tyler Stokes, who co-wrote a song with you, “There’s No Time.”
DA: Yeah, “There’s No Time.” I’m actually Tyler’s producer, so I’m producing Tyler’s debut EP this year, and we were going through the tunes and I heard “There’s No Time.”
RR: And you said, “I’m taking that.”
DA: I said, “Hey, man, do you want to be a published writer? This will really fit my record. I don’t want to step on your toes; you can always put this out as you see it, with your vision on it, later, and, heck, that might have more people listen to it because I did it, and we could cross-pollinate here and make a cool little deal.” He said, “Hell, yeah.”
Again, he gave me liberty on it and let me make it my own. He’s a 19-year old virtuoso from Springfield, Missouri, and the only reason he’s not out there playing to a thousand people a night is because he’s in college. So, we’re going to get him through college the next two years while we’re working on everything—the voice and the songs and the recordings. He’s very much under my wing, so I am looking forward to seeing his career blossom. He’s got a band called Delta Sol Revival. He’s great.
Devon and Samantha Fish on set of the “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” video shoot
RR: Perhaps it is an obvious choice to me, but I would like to know why you chose now to cover the Tom Petty track, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” which features an incredible duet with Samantha Fish on vocals.
DA: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she is so awesome. I have actually had the idea of updating that tune for a decade. In other bands I’ve been in, I’ve had like the local, hot chick singer come sit in with the band and do that song—not all the time, but a couple of times. It has kind of been in my wheelhouse for a while. I was always waiting to play that card for the right moment, and this seemed like it because I really wanted to use Tom Petty as one of my blueprints for this record—three-chord songs, real honest, real catchy, but soulful. That’s a very hard thing to do at the same time. And I thought, “This is it.”
Sam is my friend. We’re on the same record label [Ruf Records]. We keep the same hours. We like the same shit. We’re just really good buddies. I hit her up about it, and she said, “Oh my God, I’m the hugest Tom Petty fan.” I said, “Grab your iPhone and an acoustic when you get a moment and just sing me this song. I want to hear you sing this song because I know that you don’t do the Stevie Nicks thing. I want to hear the Samantha Fish thing doing this song.”
And she did it, and I thought, “What?!” It was the most amazing thing because it was just so real and so seductive and sexy. Damn. The moment that I saw Sam—just like Susan Tedeschi was labeled the next Bonnie Raitt, I think that Samantha Fish is the next Susan Tedeschi, who will become the next Bonnie Raitt. She’s in that line. Her voice is way beyond her years, and I think she just absolutely murdered the track in a good way. I think it was a nice little nugget to put out there. The idea was that this song could be so much bluesier if we slowed it down, made it a little sexier, and that’s what we did.
RR: I love the way the album ends with two rather melancholic yet moving pieces, which I find to be both very beautiful. Let’s talk about the acoustic instrumental, “Yadira’s Lullaby,” which is the penultimate track on Turquoise, and then, I’d like you to describe the writing process behind the final track, “Turn Off the World.”
DA: “Yadira’s Lullaby” came from the fact that I was given a cigar box guitar as a gift from a fan. I’d be on tour, missing my girlfriend, and I would Skype video chat, and I said, “Hey, babe, this fan gave me this really cool cigar box guitar.” I sat there on Skype, and I played her this little lullaby to put her to bed, and it just became a thing. I wrote it on the spot right there, it stuck with me, and I started playing it live. That was my gift to her, and I’m just really happy it stuck. It was kind of an enchanting, very simple melody—nothing fancy—but it has a little vibe and character that is all its own.
“Turn Off the World”…(laughs)…it’s really funny, man. I’ll try and condense this story as much as I can. I had ten songs ready for the record. The bass player [Myles Weeks] called me from a hotel and said, “Hey, man, are we done with basic tracks? If we are, I’m going to head home and drive back down.” I said, “Yeah, man. We listened down to all the tracks and they sound great. Have a safe trip.”
So, he got on the road, and ten minutes I got a text message from my manager: “The label wants to make sure that there’s 11 tracks on the record.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” He said, “No. Is there something wrong with that?” I replied, “I was going to do ten like a record from the 70s.” He said, “Oh, no, man, they’ve got to have 11 tracks, around 43 minutes, blah blah blah blah blah.” I said, “O.K.”
I had this little thing and Jim Gaines reminded me of it. It had no lyrics, no melody, and all it had was a Middle Eastern, beach-y recurring riff. Yonrico heard me play it again, and he said, “Yeah, man, let’s just go cut that.” We went in there, we came out a half hour later, and that was cut. Then, I went back in and I played the bass on it myself.
RR: I suppose this is a bad time to ask about the impact of the bassist on Turquoise.
DA: (laughs) Yeah, right. It’s crazy. I just sat there with Yonrico, and I pulled out a Sharpie and a legal pad and we arranged it really fast, and sometimes, that’s when you’re best work comes—when you’re not blocking it with negativity filters. We sat there and banged it out, and then, he split like an hour later. He was on the road back to Atlanta. “Turn Off the World” became this joke because Jim Gaines knew that I didn’t have that at all coming into the session, so every day or so, he’d be like, “Hey, you’ve got that song done?” (laughter) I said, “No, I’ve got nothing.” It came to me at the very, very last second. I played bass, I wrote the lyrics and then sang them and it was like, “Wow, that just kind of spilled out of nowhere.” It’s really kind of weird—the label wanted 11 songs, I had 10, and…the funniest thing was that I had scheduled making a record, I had schedule five days to cut the basic tracks for the record, and I scheduled it to where when I left on the fifth night, I would drive from the studio to Nashville airport, get on a plane, and go down to the island of Curacao. That’s why that song is steeped in I want to feel the sunshine on my skin…I want to wash off this rock ‘n’ roll —that’s, literally, what I was doing, and when I came back from the trip to Curacao, I was telling Jim Gaines, “Oh my God, Gaines, it was beautiful. The water was just perfect turquoise.” And, then, my eyes got real big, and I thought, “All right—well, that’s done.” It all just came together, man. It wasn’t ever planned. This was just all serendipitous.
RR: I do want to give a shout out to Myles Weeks who did some great work.
DA: Killer bass player. In fact, the reason why I had hired him to do the record was because I had envisioned the record being all upright bass. He brought it, and “Key Lime Pie” features it, and it’s amazing. We tried it on a handful of other tracks and it just didn’t fly. They were really screaming for a traditional electric bass. Kudos to him for trying it, and we really gave it hell, but it’s nice because “Key Lime Pie” has its own little vibe because it is the only one with the upright bass.
RR: Tremendous spot right about now because you have two projects, which are really strong, going on at the same time. I assume you will play some selected solo dates, when you can, in between all the Royal Southern Brotherhood gigs.
DA: Yeah. Once we got out on the road with Royal for the first couple months, we all realized that Royal is not the side project. That dynamic flipped. Royal is the main project, and when you have time away from Royal, you tour your solo thing. I’m very excited about my first ever solo record. I also invested a lot into the Royal world. I committed to it, so that comes first. We have tour dates all year, four trips to Europe, Australia, summer festivals in America, and we’re going to do all of that, but when there are a free eight days, or a free 14 days through this year, I’ll be out supporting Turquoise. (laughs) I’m going to be double dizzy all year long.
RR: I need to ask you—currently on hiatus, what is the status of Honeytribe?
DA: A lot of people have been asking, and I’ve been getting a little hate mail, and, literally…just because I’m not using the Honeytribe name, or personnel…it’s on hold. It’s not over. I didn’t say it is dead. It was time for me, after 12 years touring the world with the same project, the same framework, the same vibe, to go: “I need to shake things up in my career; I need to strive for different things.”
And Royal was the perfect thing. Royal got me to the level where I could make this solo record. I had to take that step, to take this step. So, everything is for a reason. I wouldn’t be surprised if—definitely not 2013 or 2014, but 2015—you don’t see, maybe, a return to a nice big blues-y guitar riff record from Honeytribe.
RR: Well, for me, 2013, it is indeed a pleasure to hear the music that is being made, and I am content with what is happening with where you are at right now. I’m excited for you this year.
DA: Thank you. I really appreciate that. That means a lot to me.
