As a direct descendant of rock ‘n’ roll royalty, one would think that Devon Allman’s journey to music would be pretty straightforward. Not so, he says. “I think it’s a common misconception that I was born backstage and handed a guitar, and taught the blues and it wasn’t that way at all. I had a really organic path to finding that genre,” he says. The son and nephew of Allman Brother Band founders Gregg and Duane Allman, Devon has made a name for himself in blues, creating his own band Honeytribe and later joining the group Royal Southern Brotherhood. At Ameristar Casino, he helped create the series “Devon Allman Presents Friday Night Blues,” and is a board member of the soon-to-open National Blues Museum. As he prepares to take the stage on Friday night in St. Charles, Allman, who attended Wentzville High School and still calls the area home, talked with SLM about finding his way to the blues, taking things slow, and playing music in a place where almost everyone knows your name.
Your family roots are planted firmly in rock ‘n’ roll. What was the catalyst that attracted you to the world of the blues?
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I kind of found the blues through Jimi Hendrix, actually. I started playing guitar when I was 13, and I loved all kinds of guitar players from metal to rock to alternative, and I had some Jimi Hendrix Greatest Hits record. The song “Red House” kind of jumped out and bit me. It was different than anything else. Everything else of Hendrix was pretty rock or psychedelic, but “Red House” was definitively blues. It just sounded more mysterious to me—a little darker, a little sexier. It just had more depth. I just tried to find out who Hendrix was in to, and then I discovered BB King and Buddy Guy and Curtis Mayfield, and that kind of opened the doorway to the blues.
Sadly, many of the people you just named are either very old—or no longer with us. Does modern blues have enough of a modern foundation today in order to continue growing?
I think the majority of blues lovers are 30+ for sure, but I think that there’s a lot more and more everyday of the younger generation that gets turned on to it just because, by proxy of there being so much crap on the airwaves. When you’re force-fed music that’s made with computers and people that can’t sing that get their vocals tuned, it’s pretty obvious that what you’re hearing is very manufactured. So I think some that people want to find something real—they want to find something organic. So I think there’s more young people listening. I think it’s a small tribe, but it grows every day. As far as people making the music, there’s people carrying the torch from Gary Clark, Jr, Tedeschi Trucks, myself, Joe Bonamassa, Samantha Fish, There’s a lot of people in line to keep it alive.
You have traveled all over the world playing your music —what, to you, separates St. Louis audiences from the rest?
It’s a trip! I’ve played 30 different countries. I’ve toured all year long, and St. Louis is the only place where I can look in the crowd and know just about everybody. So that puts a different spin on the dynamic. It’s a little more hectic [laughs]. It’s always fun, but it’s definitely a different vibe playing to a roomful of people that you know as opposed to just rockin’ out the randoms.
Was it hard for you to commit yourself to music as a career?
You gotta make a decision based on your desire and your passion. I actually was into acting all through high school, and really hot to trot on it. I was torn between theater and performing music. I actually went on tour after high school with my dad performing music to make that decision. When I saw the energy between the crowd and the band…I was like “I think I made my mind up here. I want to do music.”
You’re currently at work on your third studio album, but instead of heading into a 21st-century studio, you’re literally going back in time a bit. How will that change the process and style of your music this time around, and why change the process?
I go in February to Nashville. The studio is called Welcome to 1979. Everything in that recording studio was made pre-1979, so we’re not cutting to ProTools on a computer. We’re cutting to two-inch tape, and we’re using all the old gear to try and get a real authentic old-school sound. It’s definitely going to be difficult, because in the digital world you can do take after take after take…and you can just click a mouse and redo it.
Doing it this way…I think that’s it’s a fatter sound when you’re talking analog. When you listen to old records, they really breathe, and they’re really juicy, and they have a thicker sound. Everything from drums to vocals—and I always wanted to make a record that way. And by the time I started to make records, that way was pretty much gone. It’ll be cool. I think when you hear the record, especially on vinyl, you will hear an album that was made analog, mixed analog – you’ll be listening to it on vinyl which is analog, so that’s triple-A. It’ll be nice to have something just old-school.
Hear The Devon Allman Band on Friday, November 13 at the Bottleneck Blues Bar, and Saturday, November 14 at The House Pub in St. Charles. For more info, go to devonallmanband.com.
