A healthy musk of cheap aftershave, beef jerky and Jack
Daniels wafted through the rafters of The Ridgefield Playhouse on May 24th.
In the crowd, a coterie of tattooed and mustachioed pranksters intermingled with
some of their more buttoned-up baby-boomer brethren, to fill the 500-seat
capacity concert hall and await the arrival of their man, Dickey Betts and his band, Great
Southern. There was hardly a face in the audience under thirty, and likely
many of these folks had been around with Dickey in his heyday, watching him go
note for note with Duane Allman as they tore through the outer boundaries of
rock music with cathartic and driving dueling leads. Though he is now estranged
from The Allman Brothers Band, Dickey’s licks have not missed a step, and his
six-man Great Southern ensemble is with him the entire way.
Opening up the show with “Les Brers in A Minor,” Betts
exchanged fluid and flawless leads with Andy
Aledort, while another Betts (son Duane), chipped in with the rhythm. From
there the band went into Allman staples “Statesboro Blues” and “Blue Sky.” The
great thing about hearing these songs live from the man who wrote them is that
they are vastly different from the way they sound on the studio albums. Dickey
owns these songs, and consequently, he can play them any way he pleases. While
his critics complain that he performs a “greatest hits lineup” from night to
night, his masterful instrumental work is as prevalent as ever on these
improvised renditions of legendary tunes. The next song, “Get Away,” a Great
Southern original, broke free from the Allman-dominated setlist, and finally Duane Betts got a chance to show off
his lead guitar skills, deftly moving his fingers along the fret board and
sustaining notes that drove the crowd into a frenzy. A fantastic “In Memory of
Elizabeth Reed” closed out the first set, and here we got a chance to see
drummers Frankie Lombardi and James Varnado collaborate with bassist Pedro Arevalo in a rhythm and
percussion jam. Shortly before this, the elder Betts defied the venue’s no
smoking policy and lit up a couple of cigarettes mid-solo. This was to the
chagrin of the linebacker-like ushers who had threatened to throw out a couple
of cigar-smoking rogues from the orchestra section only moments before.
The second set meandered away from the familiar Allman
Brothers catalogue. Some of the most enjoyable moments came during a loosely
structured 12-bar blues jam, where again Aledort and Duane Betts took
freewheeling turns along the pentatonic scale. The evening climaxed as the
opening chords of “Revival” began to ring and resonate through the walls of the
small, former high school auditorium. At this point, a slew of Dickey Betts
fanatics young and old, high on cheap booze and electrified blues, bum-rushed
the stage as if they were witnessing southern rock’s second coming. The energy
pulsed at full tilt for the remainder of the evening, and by the time the band
tore through its fiery “Rambling Man” encore, a smiling Dickey looked out on
the crowd and breathed out a thoroughly exhausted and well-deserved sigh of
relief.
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