I've always been of that mindset - when you're writing tunes with people, there's a traditional way of chopping things up, and then there's the way that feels right. If people contribute, you hit 'em accordingly.
When things come up, you deal with them. However uncomfortable that is, let's have this discussion right now.
It's been a slow steady climb since my solo band got together almost 20 years ago. Me and my manager Blake were just talking about this, how every show has a few more people at it, every record has done a little better.
To be part of the Allmans for 15 years was a huge honor. I mean, it's a legendary band. I got to be around a lot of people and make a lot of great music.
When you do a different city every night, it's easy to repeat things. There are songs you want to play for people and get excited about so you don't always switch things up.
My earliest memories are of traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to visit my uncle and his family in Tallahassee.
My dad was a roofer; my mom worked in elementary school.
The tune 'All My Friends,' we recorded because our friend who wrote the song, Scott Boyer, passed way, and Gregg Allman had passed and he had recorded the song on his first solo record.
Well I've been playing an SG forever, and I've got some other vintage Gibsons I like to use in the studio.
It's always nice with two guitarists in one band to have some contrast.
When you're producing your own record, you do your best to be objective and take a step back from it from time to time.
I don't really love the guitar hero trip, anyway, so it's not something I'm actively searching for or after. I don't like what it's about.
Slide can sound like the most beautiful woman's voice.
Y'know, you can sit in a room, practise all day, learn your scales and blaze blues riffs: it's easy to hide behind that. But I think with the slide, it's a little bit tougher.
You hope to catch the band on a good night and you hope that it sounds good when you hear the tapes back, and you hope that when you mix it you still have the feeling that you had when you were onstage, but it seems like it never quite works out that way!
It was pretty surreal because The Allman Brothers' 'Eat A Peach' and 'Live At The Fillmore East', and the Eric Clapton 'Layla' record was the music I grew up hearing all the time.
I remember a festival we did in Denmark with the Clapton band where you suddenly realize it's an actual band - and you're on an equal stage playing music together.
You can remember almost every Elmore James solo by heart because he was playing songs. Nothing's wasted. Nothing's throwaway.
One of those Rolling Stone Greatest Guitar Player lists came out and there was no Albert King. That's impossible! There are 10 people on there who wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Albert.
I remember the first time hearing a recording from Minton's Playhouse; it was Charlie Christian and a young Dizzy Gillespie, and he was just the best musician in the room.
