The bluesy Southern rock — sometimes hard, sometimes sweetly melodic — of the Allman Brothers Band lives on in the Allman Betts Family Revival tour, which makes a stop at the Orpheum on Dec. 1.
This is no tribute show; it’s a carrying-on-the-bloodline kind of thing, with Devon Allman (son of Gregg) and Duane Betts (son of Dickey) on guitars and vocals. It’s also an offshoot of their regular gig, the Allman Betts Band, which features their own original music. (And the pair will be far from alone: Other members of the Family Revival include Tal Wilkenfeld, Larry McCray, Luther Dickinson, Cody Dickinson, Alex Orbison, Jimmy Hall, Jackie Greene, Ally Venable, Anders Osborne, and Sierra Hull.)
Devon Allman, 51 — who’s been playing guitar since he was 13, but did not grow up in the company of his father, whom he first met when he was 17 — recently took part in a relaxed and casual mid-morning phone interview from his home in St. Louis.
Boston.com: It’s only 10:30. Is this too early in the morning for a musician?
Devon Allman: You’d be shocked if you knew what time I got up [laughs]. I get up at 6 a.m. every day. My wife’s a doctor. So, when I’m home it’s totally not rock ’n’ roll hours.
Was music a big part of your life as a kid?
I listened to a ton of radio. My mom had a pretty cool vinyl collection. And I think, before you got into the computer age and the Internet, it was all so innocent. You were hitting your friends up, saying, “Oh, man! You got the new AC/DC record … what do they sound like?” I would spend the night at a friend’s house, and he would have a Frank Zappa record, and I’d say, “What is this?”
How did guitar come into your life?
I was a huge music fan by age 5. I was into vinyl and radio hardcore. While the other kids were playing with “Star Wars” figures, I was listening to Beatles records. I loved music. I couldn’t get enough.
When I was 13, I went to a friend’s house and saw a guitar in the corner. He picked it up and maybe played something by Def Leppard. He hadn’t been playing very long, and wasn’t very good, but it was the first time I ever saw someone play up-close. Despite what people think, I didn’t grow up with my dad, I didn’t grow up backstage, I didn’t grow up around guitar players. When I saw this kid, I thought, “If he can do it, I can do it.”
I went home and said, “Mom, I want a guitar.” And she was thrilled. She had tried for years to get me to try an instrument, and I always shunned it. But at that point, I was ready to give it a shot.
You inherited all of your dad’s guitars. What are you mainly playing onstage these days?
I went through my years of Strat and Les Paul, and for the past two years, my electrics have been SG. I’ve got a cherry Robbie Krieger model SG, and I’ve got a white ’63 custom. For the acoustic, I’ve got a beautiful white Gibson Hummingbird.
You’ve been in a band with Duane for a few years now. What was your reaction when you discovered that, along with your guitar playing skills, you also have terrific vocal harmonies?
We didn’t really know that early on, and in fact we’re still discovering cool blends with our voices. We went on tour together in 2018, after my father passed away. I said, “Duane, you come out and be the opening act. And then halfway through my set, I’ll bring you up, and we’ll finish out the show together.” So, we started this camaraderie, and that birthed the Allman Betts band. I think around the middle of that tour, we started realizing that our voices sounded cool together. I feel that we got lucky with the blend of our voices.
What’s the main difference between the Allman Betts Band and the Allman Betts Family Revival?
The Allman Betts Family Revival is a celebration of those who came before us. The Allman Brothers Band is no more, so this is our tribute to the catalogue that these legends wrote and left for us. It’s a way to push that forward and keep that music vital, to turn on new people to that old music, to let the old lovers of that music reclaim their youth and experience some flashbacks.
The Allman Betts Band is a band that has its own catalogue. We’ve got two records out and some world tours under our belt. So, the difference is one is paying homage to our fathers, and the other is us charting our own course. On this tour, the Allman Betts Band is the house band, so we’re also gonna dish up a little Allman Betts Band music.