"That light hasn't gone out yet" Representation, resistance, and what history teaches in hard times
Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture with historian Bob BeattyShow Notes
Episode Overview Sue Ferentinos and I have been friends for eighteen years. When I needed an editor for Play All Night!—someone I trusted, someone who came to the Allman Brothers completely fresh—she was the call I made. She gave me a sharp outside eye, a historian’s instincts, and the willingness to tell me when I’d hit it and how to make it better if I hadn’t. That collaboration shaped the book in ways I’m still thinking about. Our conversation picks up where that work left off. Our Crossroads Sue looks at the world the way I do—through history. We’re two historians rapping on the many ways the past carries meaning for, and belongs to, everyone. Our life’s work has been in the public sphere. Her particular expertise is in gender and sexuality, two topics very much underrepresented in history’s stories. We also each have extensive experience working with and for national professional organizations. We are also each editors. I hired Sue to help me with the final pre-review Play All Night! manuscript in spring 2021. It was a bonus that she knew nothing about the Allman Brothers. Her comments validated my work as a historian and also my writing. She pushed me to clarity that the book benefited from—most notably in my comparison of the Dead and the Allman Brothers on pages 109-110, which are some of my favorite passages in the book, a place where I really felt I said something I theretofore was unable to articulate. The Conversation You see the world more clearly when you finish a project like Play All Night. The book was the culmination of a thirty-year intellectual journey and my headspace changed for good and for the better.
I shared some insights I’d had since the book’s publication—particularly the gender implications of the band’s long hair as they toured the South in the 60s and early 70s. I wrote a fair amount in the book about the challenges touring as an integrated band of hippies, but it was not a core part of my argument by any means. The music was always my focus. But Sue showed me, through my own writing, that it is impossible to ignore how far the ABB pushed the envelope on this issue, and how influential it was to those around them. Southern men with long hair weren’t just flouting convention. They were triggering a specific kind of anxiety about gender roles, one that intersected at the crossroads of being integrated. The band were outsiders and outcasts as they toured because they posed a threat to the social order under which lay the ever-present threat of violence. From there we went deeper into Sue’s expertise. She shared how the 1950s were a period of moral retrenchment and traced how that set up the 1960s counterculture explosion that Duane and his bandmates were a part of. (Another area she pushed me on in my manuscript.) Young men weren’t just growing their hair long. They were rejecting the entire architecture of traditional gender roles their parents had idealized Our conversation moved to one of my favorite topics: public memory. Sue noted that historical markers don’t require people to opt in. They sit in the landscape, waiting. Sometimes someone reads one and learns something. We came around to the present. Sue spoke plainly about what she sees happening at the federal level—the effort to narrow the history the country gets told. Her argument was careful and clear: it’s not about avoiding controversy. It’s about telling real history, which is complex, which is contested, and which belongs to everyone who’s ever lived it. She closed with something worth sitting with. History taught her she wasn’t alone. Queer people existed in the past. Women existed in the past. So have immigrants. When she found their stories, it changed what she thought was possible. That’s the work—the accumulating evidence that people have always found ways through. As I often say, history is liberating. Resources Bob Beatty, Play All Night: Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East (University Press of Florida, 2022)
More from Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture with historian Bob Beatty
Episode Overview Woodstock alumni Gary Barrett (with a cameo from his wife Camille, also a Woodstocker) joins me at the Crossroads to talk about his memories of the festival. This is part 2 of my Woodstock series. Part 1 was Tom Pragliola. Our Crossroads Gary and I first bonded in the late 1990s over a shared love of the Allman Brothers Band. We were members of a 1,000ish member ABB listserv that contained an amazing group of people, some of whom, like Gary, have become dear friends. Our connections extend far beyond the ABB and into jazz, fatherhood, friendship, and all of the things that make life what it is. The Conversation Getting tickets. Gary learned about Woodstock on WNEW-FM and through the Village Voice. He bought tickets for Saturday only, figuring he’d buy Sunday tickets onsite if he needed to. Turns out he didn’t need them for Saturday either. The journey to Bethel, NY. Gary made the decision to attend late Friday evening, his friend Alan convincing him over a bottle of Thunderbird. They recruited Camille and a friend and left Budd Lake, NJ, before dawn Saturday, August 16. They parked at a stranger’s house, and hiked to the festival site. The crowd at Woodstock. Listen to Gary talk about his strategy for getting close enough to recognize Grace Slick, and far enough away from a potential collapse of a giant speaker tower. They fell in with a crew from Pittsburgh who gave them watermelon soaked in booze. Gary kept one strict rule: watch what anyone hands you. The music. Santana was a highlight. As was Canned Heat. The Dead put him to sleep, and he considered leaving for home when Creedence Clearwater Revival woke him and everyone else up with “Born on the Bayou.” Janis, Sly, the Who followed. On Sunday, Joe Cocker started the day and brought the heavens down. Gary’s memories of what followed are hazy. He remembers Johnny Winter, losing a shoe in the mud, and watching Jimi Hendrix from the top of the hill. Arriving home. Gary missed his Monday shift at the RCA warehouse and lost the job, two weeks before he planned to quit anyway. He and Camille both remarked how Woodstock changed them immeasurably.
This post offers several levels of goodness: a video from my conversation with Lamar Williams Jr., Dickey’s thoughts on composing, and a deep dive into my second favorite ABB instrumental, “High Falls.” Let’s start with that Dickey quote in its entirety. This is Dickey in 2017: In writing instrumentals, you have to decide what you are trying to do, and then see if you can make it happen. These are the mental tools I use to help guide me through, to find the proper direction for whatever piece of music I am working on. I used this approach for songs like “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” “High Falls” and “Revival.” Just like the use of words in the telling of a story, every note is of essential importance in crafting a successful instrumental. Here’s Dickey in 2002: I try to keep the audience firmly in mind. I like to imagine that they are right there in the room with me, listening to the piece of music as it progresses. This is one of my most valued considerations while I am developing a song. I’ll be thinking, “How will someone receive this? How will each element affect the person who is listening to it?” Keeping this concept in mind offers me a highway to follow, however intangible it may be. This frame of mind creates an ideal as to how I imagine the music will make the audience feel, and that ideal guides the creative process. A good instrumental will take the listener on a journey; the way I keep an adherence to the path of the journey is by staying aware of where the audience is being taken as the song progresses. And that is really the whole reason for writing the stuff in the first place. And here’s Betts in 1975:
In my decades of research on the Allman Brothers Band, I have unearthed very few Lamar Williams quotes. This one comes from Downbeat magazine, September 1974. This is from a recent Conversation from the Crossroads episode with his son, Lamar Williams Jr. Downbeat writer Ray Townley spent significant time in Macon with the band and produced a fantastic four-page feature in the magazine Jaimoe called Heaven-sent. Here’s Lamar’s full quote. Were you accepted into the band immediately? It was a thing of adjusting to their particular style of music. I feel that musicians are able to . . . if you have to play country and western, then you’re going to play country and western; if you’re going to play jazz, you’ll adjust to that. Now, you take cats who are not real musicians, then they’re hung up in one particular bag, a lot of other things they’re not hip to. What does “Southern blues” mean? Well, I can relate to “down home,” you know? Musicians who come up in the South, musicians who come up on the West Coast, the East Coast, anywhere. That environment affects their heads. In most cities you have a whole bunch of other static going on. Down South, living in a small town, Macon, you have a lot of time to put into it. You have a lot of time to check out other stuff, to check out a lot of stuff in your head. The whole South is laid back, that’s where atmosphere comes from. What is the ABB’s special quality? It’s a religion. For instance, I can feel just blah, but when I get on that stage, there’ll be so much energy flowing from the other five cats that they just lift me in a real strong spiritual way till I don’t know how tired I am. It becomes a real strong spiritual thing to get to the point where the six cats on that stage, their job is to produce a sound, the Allman sound. But I don’t think it can be put in any particular category. We play the first and second numbers, all that time we’re feelin’ each other out, where everybody’s head is. As it goes up, everybody gets into a thing with each other. I can feel incredible vibes on that stage. Earth School I cited my dude Richard Josey’s concept of life as “Earth School” as an example of what Lamar is talking about here. It is the concept that learning doesn’t end with formal schooling. We should be constantly learning and remain open to the possibilities of life. Here’s Richard on Conversation from the Crossroads defining Earth School. Lagniappe Tedeschi Trucks Band “It Ain’t Fair”>“Dreams” Beacon Theatre, 3/2/24 Here’s what I mean about Alecia Chakour on “It Ain’t Fair” with a bonus “Dreams” tacked onto the end. I was there for this. Yes, I wept. 🍄🍑MERCH🍑🍄 Ad for ABB’s March 1971 run at Fillmore East
Episode Overview A few months ago, reader/subscriber/paid member J.D. Seem and I sat for a discussion on Matt Zako’s City’s Backyard podcast. Our conversation focused on At Fillmore East at 55—how the road-hardened band finally captured their live sound on their landmark album. In memory of J.D. Seem We recorded this in July 2026 and before I edited this episode, I learned J.D. died suddenly at age 61. J.D. led the ABB tribute band Faster Things and has been an important part of my Allman Brothers family. He supported Long Live the ABB from the very beginning. Godspeed my friend. “Time goes by like hurricanes…And faster things” Our Crossroads There’s three folks in this conversation: me, J.D. and host Matt Zako of The City’s Backyard podcast. All of us are music lovers to the utmost degree. J.D. and I connected directly on our love and reverence for the Allman Brothers Band. The Conversation This was an Allman Brothers Band history lesson through the eyes of two dyed-in-the-wool ABB fanatics. Our main topic was the 55th anniversary of the release of At Fillmore East, the record’s story, and the myriad connections we have to the album. * The risk. It’s 100% live (zero overdubs). The record succeeded in part because of great playing of great songs by a great band. Recording live was a risk, as was releasing a live album by a semi-unknown band who’d yet to break into the marketplace. * The recording. Tom Dowd’s recording makes the room sound alive. The band is well-rehearsed from hundreds of live shows and hours of rehearsal. At Fillmore East was the embodiment of the band’s image as the People’s Band. You can feel the energy of the band and audience. * The promotion. Band manager/record company owner/booking agent/music publisher Phil Walden fought his partner, Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, on the final product. First, on the decision to issue a double album. Second, his campaign to sell the double album for a single album price. 🍄Play All Night! Duane Allman & the Journey to Fillmore East🍄The origin story of a landmark album. BUY PLAY ALL NIGHT Lagniappe Here’s J.D.’s band Faster Things on “Hot ’Lanta” Brought to you by the paid members of the Long Live the ABB community. 🍄🍑MERCH🍑🍄 Jimmy Carter reppin’ the ABB July 4 weekend 1976. Ad for ABB’s March 1971 run at Fillmore East. Here’s the original ad—with Johnny Winter at top of the bill.
Episode Overview You know it’s gonna be a great conversation when the assignment is to listen to the Avett Brothers in preparation for an interview. The Avett Brothers, Scott and Seth Avett with bassist Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon have been going strong since the early 2000s. Tim Mossberger Avett Bros Archivist has been along for much of that journey as the band’s unofficial archivist. They are one of my ABBsolute favorite bands of the century. Like Tedeschi Trucks Band, they are a group that carries a vibe that always (always) brings me joy. Our Crossroads Tim and I share a love for a band that extends well beyond just listening to the music. My passion for the Allman Brothers Band led me on a 30+ year research journey, culminating in Play All Night. Tim’s love of the Avett Brothers has provided fans of the band with an extensive setlist archive and fan community at https://db.nov.blue/. We’re also students of southern music and culture. The Conversation Tim and the Avett Brothers. Tim’s Avett Brothers obsession began with a review of A Carolina Jubilee in No Depression (remember magazines?). He connected with the honesty in the band’s songwriting and no-nonsense approach. And cited Dickey Betts—“We were no different from our audience except we were a band”—in explanation. (He quoted me quoting Dickey in Play All Night. Yes, that’s kinda surreal.) The Avett Brothers. Tim gave a great rundown on the band’s long career: from teenagers playing acoustic music, to rock/punk, to adding Bob Crawford on upright bass and Joe Kwon on cello, to the group’s decades-long collaboration with producer Rick Rubin. Avett Brothers archivist. Go to https://db.nov.blue/ to see the fruits of his labors, a collaboration with the band’s fan community. Tim’s in the credits for May It Last, the incredible 2017 documentary about the band. But as Tim says, the project is a collective effort that relies on the community for photos, videos, and stories. Follow Tim’s newsletter Avett Bros Archivist. Fan communities. This is my sweet spot, an area I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about. Like Tedeschi Trucks Band (and the ABB before them), Avett Brothers fans are very much part of the experience. Tim and I agree that fans, not the band, are responsible for preserving a band’s history. The artists themselves are focused on the goal at hand: creating music. Upgrade to support the Conversation from the Crossroads.