short version: go buy this now.

long version: i was not aware that gregg had been working on an album while he knew his time on this earth was a known quantity, namely about nine months. released last week, i have listened to it all the way through three times now, and i can confidently tell you that it is a must add for the music collector that has at least a passing fancy in the allman brothers.

‘laid back’ was gregg’s first solo album, and many consider it to be a sort of eulogy to his brother duane. he does a version of jackson browne’s ‘these days’ that is one of my favorite songs, period. in many ways this is a bookend to that release and gregg’s life. this album ends with browne’s ‘song for adam’, and jackson duets with gregg. if you listen closely, you can hear gregg choke up in the last verse. they broke for the night, intending to come back the next day and get a better take, but they never did.

recorded at the legendary fame studios in muscle shoals alabama, and magnificently produced by the great don was, gregg uses his nine piece traveling band to lay down ten tracks that define his life and career. almost all are cover songs, chosen by either the material, the artist, or both. dylan’s ‘going, going gone’, lowell george’s ‘willin’, garcia/hunter’s ‘black muddy river’, willie dixon’s ‘i love the life i live’, to name but a few. the only allman penned tune (cowritten by guitarist scott sharrad) is his tribute to life on the road, ‘my only true friend’.

as the liner notes and other source material make clear, he knew that this would be his final musical statement in life. he was actually making final approval of the mixes on the evening of his death. knowing this background, and being a huge fan of his work for forty years, i will readily admit that this curmudgeon’s eyes get a little moist at each repeated listen. he poured his heart and soul into every cut, and i think it is one of the finest things he has ever done.

what an interesting album. you may only know jerry douglas as a household name if you are a big bluegrass fan. hailing from warren, ohio, jerry is by far the world’s greatest dobro player. there really isn’t a close second. in his 45 year career, he has played on 1500 albums and won 14 grammys. he is perhaps best known as a sideman for alison krauss and union station. on this one he mashes progressive bluegrass, bebop jazz, gritty blues and all kinds of other genres into a captivating melting pot.

“…a flintstones rumble, with fred in the driver’s seat and charlie parker as his passenger.”

dave rawlings’ third album is a collection of 10 original tunes (half cowritten with gillian welch). but if you didn’t know that upon a first listen, you would think that there were a healthy dose of covers of old folk songs compiled here.  the song and lyric structures are simpler than his last release, by design, and the overall rootsy feel is adequately rounded out by a backing crew comprised of gillian, willie watson, ketch secor, and taylor and griffin goldsmith from dawes.

ten songs clocking in at 39 minutes, david admits that part of the impetus for putting out more material is exposing some songs he has been working on while waiting for gillian to finish her next release (her most recent, ‘the harrow and the harvest’, came out in 2011). standouts for me include ‘airplane’, a string backed lamentation about the freedom one might have if you had your own. ‘yup’ is a hilarious tale of the devil and a farmer’s wife, followed up by ‘good god a woman’ – an almost gospel tinged take on creation, with the good lord saving his best work for last. ‘guitar man’ seems in some ways a tribute to neil young. you can hear at least a dozen classic neil style chords. or, to take it one step further, it often sounds like early wilco channeling neil. but that’s me, listen for yourself.