Allman Brothers Band founding member Dickey Betts and his band Great Southern have announced a live release due out in late April, Official Bootleg Vol. 1. The record will be released Apr. 30.
The new set features material culled from various live shows in the mid 2000s, including several never-before-released tracks. Nearly all the songs are Betts originals, including Allman Brothers’ classics such as “Jessica,” “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” “Blue Sky,” and more. The new record also features material from Betts’ solo albums and a couple of choice covers.
According to a sneak peek at the album’s liner notes published by the Herald-Tribune, “Grateful Dead enthusiasts will notice that ‘Blue Sky,’ originally from the 1972 Eat a Peach album, now opens with a rhythm recalling ‘Franklin’s Tower.'”
“I guess from listening to The Dead every now and then I remembered the riff and it was a good way to set the tone for that song,” Betts said in the liner notes. “The band, the drummers especially, tended to get too fast and kind of play too much like ‘Johnny B. Goode’ or something. And I was trying to get that real, like loping, feeling to it, so I started doing ‘Franklin’s Tower’ in front of it to kind of set the tone for it.”
2 Comments comments associated with this post
DB and Great Southern
April 25, 2021 at 3:00 pmI cannot wait, Love Dickey, I’ll definitely pick this one up, and would buy it for the last four songs on CD2 alone, ooooh yeah!
Am happy to send Dickey a few shekels for this.
“Play ‘Blue Sky’, play Dickey Betts” -B.Dylan
KB
April 26, 2021 at 10:21 am+1 man, +1.