Allmans, Outlaws open SPAC with ordinary show

by Steve Webb, The Knickerbocker News, June 22, 1981

Pairing the instrumentally exquisite Allman Brothers Band with the rowdy country rockers the Outlaws provided the Saratoga Performing Arts Center with a solid, if ultimately unexciting opening concert for its 16th season.

The pair joined forces to draw 10,751 persons, a figure lowered by rain in the Capital District that afternoon.

The show was one of those paradoxes. The Outlaws played a competent, even skillful set of its hits. Bass guitarist Rick Cua said that since the show was being broadcast live to 67 radio stations across the country, he and the other members were probably more careful about each note, but less physical. Which worked for them, giving the crowd a much better show than a Palace Theater audience received last February.

The Allman Brothers also played a competent, skillful set of hits. But from a band that has offered this area some of its best live music in recent years, that competence wasn’t enough.

The band premiered two songs from its next album, titled “Judgment” and set for July release. Of those, “Things We Had to Do” had a strong funk element, with organist Gregg Allman getting able support in his lead vocals by new harmony singer Keith England. (The band is preparing some “drastic changes,” drummer Butch Trucks and guitarist Dickey Betts explained after the show, which will include England and Carolyn Brand joining them as background vocalists.)

The other songs, “The Heat Is On,” had a kind of rockabilly/Ennio Morricone feeling to it, and featured some of Betts’ strongest vocals of the night.

The rest of the show had its strong moments: An exchange between pianist Mike Lawler and Betts in the instrumental section of “Blue Sky” that had been missing since Charles Leavell left the band in 1975 the chief among these.

But for the most part it was a very standard, perhaps streamlined set. Trucks said the band has noticed a burnout effect its 2 1/2-hour sets were causing on its audiences, but this particular stripped-down version might have gone too far the other way.

Views: 7