Tribute - A celebration of the Allman Brother Band at the Visualite Theater

Tribute - A celebration of the Allman Brother Band is an octet that hails from Atlanta, Georgia and made the drive up I-85 last yesterday to perform an evening of classic southern rock bluesy jams in Charlotte.

The first obvious thing I noted upon looking at the stage set up for the performance was the sheer amount of percussion: 2 drum sets and an array of hand drums and various other percussion elements set up next to the bass.

Now as a brief preface of my relationship with the music here. I grew up listening to classic rock and southern rock. The Allman Brother’s hit’s were included in the radio mix that I was familiar with in my youth. More recently I did have a casual listen to “Eat a Peach”, I’ve listened to selections from Syria Mosque, About half of Bear’s Sonic Journal’s Live at the Fillmore East, Some of the 8-9-03 live show recorded at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheater in Charlotte, and probably the one I should have listed first but wanted to annoy folks, I have listened to the entirety of “At Fillmore East” from 1971. I enjoy listening to the Allman brothers. I have not had a full in depth exploration of their catalog and do not claim to be an expert of their music.

Now walking in I had pretty low expectations. My friend had sent a message about going 2 nights before the show. I checked the tickets and read a little about the band, tickets were cheap only $15 in advance. So I figured watching some guys jamming would be a neat way to spend a Saturday night. I didn’t expect much from them given the cost of tickets. But I was still anticipating an enjoyable experience and my first concert of the year.

Door were at 7:30, the band was billed to take state at 8:00 and actually took stage around 8:30 to a pretty packed house and the fun began.

If I were to say that my expectations were exceeded and blown away that would be an understatement. This group is phenomenal! The performance was not flawless, there were some technical hiccups with the band miming to the soundboard operator to resolve some mixing issues, one of the guitarist fled the stage briefly mid-song at one point, and later dropped his pick mid solo and managed to still stay in the solo while receiving the pick from the other guitarist (which was a pretty amazing display of how in tune with one another these guys are.)

The band did 2 sets and an encore. The first set was about an hour and half, maybe a bit shorter. Heavy blues jams, fewer songs that I recall hearing on the radio. The second set was about an hour and had more of the hits you would hear on the radio only extended. The encore was about 10 minutes.

Overall this was an phenomenal show. The band was so very tight and together and really did reproduce the sounds of the Allman Brothers Band. Some notes I made were:

Sometimes the dual drumkits would do a syncopated rhythm thing where they would be playing different parts that compliment one another yet couldn’t be performed by a single drummer with the limitations of having only 2 arms and 2 legs. Or at least that is my assumption, I am not a drummer and from what I’ve seen drummers are usually very skilled at hitting a lot of things in time quickly. I would have liked a bit more of the hand drums in the mix, they were a bit hard to hear and overpowered by the rest of the band at times.

The guitar players were another duet that was very fun to watch. They would play off one another in a call and response style where one would solo and the other would play small short licks an octave lower that helped reinforce, accent, and echo parts of the solo. I saw both guitarist do this over the course of the concert. The guitarist that was playing slide quite literally ran out of neck several times in the show, at one point he appears to be playing behind the pickups.

Speaking of guitar necks, the bass has a big one and the bass player used all of it. I don’t believe there were any frets not used over the course of the night on that instrument. This was one of the few times I’ve seen a bass player play as high up on the neck as often. I can understand why his arms would be tired after all that movement.

The keys are something that I usually try to pay attention to as I like pressing buttons and making noise and trying to do that in orders that make pleasing sounds to mixed success. The keys didn’t disappoint, the player didn’t have an elaborate set up just a single keyboard but he was at home “tickling the ivory”. There were times that the keys were hard to hear in the mix, however thankfully the organ parts were able to pierce the veil of sound for solos.

I cannot find words to accurately describe the singer. He was able to get the gritty soul sound that is needed to perform the music but he is also dripping with charisma. During the non-vocal parts while he was on state he would help highlight the other band member with dance, or show praise by kneeling.

Overall, the concert was great and a wonderful way to start my 2024 live shows. I found out after the show half this band is in a CSN&Y tribute band and will be returning in a few weeks. I will be getting my ticket for that show soon.