‘laid back’ was gregg allman’s first solo album, and arguably his best. he admitted as much himself over forty years later in his autobiography, ‘my cross to bear’. in 1972 he was still struggling with losing his brother duane in a motorcycle accident the previous october. playing music with the allman brothers band didn’t seem to be helping, and he was drinking a lot. they were beginning work on their album ‘brothers and sisters’ when gregg approached them with a song he had been working on for a while called ‘queen of hearts’. the band turned him down, telling him ‘because that song just ain’t saying nothing’. rebuked, he began to explore doing a solo album instead and started putting together a team of musicians who matched the material. one of those was 20 year old keyboardist chuck leavell, who had played with dr. john previously and opened for the allman brothers. he would also come to do some session work on the aforementioned ‘brothers and sisters’, and eventually joined that band as well. once that album was finished, gregg headed into the studio in march of 1973, and things progressed rapidly. the whole process proved to be cathartic for gregg, and all witnesses to the sessions remember that he was in a happy place while recording. the overall groove was different than the abb sound. he told his producer that he wanted it to sound ‘real swampy, with the image of moss hanging off the trees, alligators and fog, darkness, witches and shit’. the first cut is a different take on his tune ‘midnight rider’, and that set the tone for the whole thing. that was followed by ‘queen of hearts’ and its unique time signatures. a few songs later he covers jackson browne’s ‘these days’, maybe my favorite song on the album. it certainly has one of my favorite lyrics of all time when he pleads at the end ‘please don’t confront me with my failures, i’m aware of them’. that line doesn’t work on mrs. redeyegin, unfortunately, but not for lack of trying. it ends with a funky version of the traditional ‘will the circle be unbroken’, accompanied by local gospel singers and virtually the entire staff at capricorn studios as backup singers.

originally released in october of 1973, it went gold almost immediately. the allman family just did a rerelease in august, remastering the original eight songs, adding alternate versions of those same songs, and then adding a second disc of 18 offerings – various outtakes, demos, and live performances. the liner notes are fantastic and provide significant context to the recordings. if you are not familiar with the original, or if you are familiar and wanted to explore more of the history about it, i can highly recommend picking this up.