There's Only One Way Out, A Tour of The Allman Brother's "Big House..."

On our recent South Carolina trip we had the advantage of automobile travel verses our usual travel trailing so we were getting good gas mileage and making great highway time. We used this to good advantage by making a stop in Macon, Ga. to tour the fabled Big House where the Allman Brother Band lived and rehearsed in the years of 1970-1973. 

I've never been a fanatical Allman fan or anything like that. If you are any familiar at all with the story it's one of dizzy heights, tragedy and low points that would have buried lesser people but it's left us a legacy of good music. I own albums by the Allmans and maybe own even more by Allman adjacent artists, have played their tunes in bands and Cathy's first concert at age 15 was a 1974 show with the Allmans, The Eagles and Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen at the old Jeppensen Stadium in Houston.

I love museums like this that have all the instruments the musicians used to create the magic of their recording and performances and it was a special thrill to see them in the setting where so many creative things were born. 

Here's Cathy on the Big House porch. 

This is the room where the band rehearsed. The Bros were a big band with two drummers. Can you imagine how loud it was in here?

One of Duane Allman's Marshall Amps. 

One of Duane's amp cabs custom covered with a Wichita pinto bean sack. 

There were many instruments displayed. Some were the actual ones used by band members in the heyday but some were signature model prototypes made by the big guitar makers and modeled on the iconic instruments down to the smallest details. One thing I noticed is that all the instruments even those dating the the early famous recordings seemed it very good shape. Often in museums the instruments are worn and  reflect the life the musician lived with it and the hours it spent with in his or her hands. I know my personal instruments, which are just basic journeyman brands are showing some wear but there was quite a bit of info on the roadies who maintained these so it must have been very important to the band.  

Two Fender heads used early on by Duane Allman and Barry Oakley. They were later owned by Ron Blair of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Equipment moves around. In 1973 the band acquired some of the Grateful Dead's sound equipment and their old gear moved on to the band Grinderswitch. 

 Derek Trucks, Butch Trucks nephew who played in later versions of the Allmans and who's band we've seen several times had guitars on display. 

A Butch Trucks drum set and guitars from Gov't Mule, another Allman adjacent band. 

The Gold Top Les Paul is the guitar Duane played on the Layla album. The black is a gift from Clapton to Greg Allman. When I was a teen I sat in my room playing the Layla album over and over. That gold top is a million dollar guitar. 

They didn't just practice here, some of the band lived here. Cathy in Duane's bedroom. In the closet were the shoes he wore on the Anthology album in the fishing photo. There were a couple of children's rooms recreated from their memories of living in the house. 

This room called the Casbah, a room for music listening and relaxing. 

Heck with music on a phone. Sit right in front of the speakers. 

Right off the Casbah is the seven headed shower room. 

I forget who's guitar but for convenience someone wrote the tuning on a piece of tape and stuck it in the case. It's the same open E tuning I use.  

The kitchen where Dicky Betts wrote Rambling Man. 

Original gear case from the Live at the Fillmore album cover. 

Cathy in the backyard. 

They had a very nice gift shop. Lots of recordings and I didn't even look through the book section but I bought a couple of mushroom stickers and a hat with the famous Allman mushroom logo. I must have looked a little lost after all this wandering around in the house as I went to leave the shop cause the guy pointed at the exit door and said, "It Aint But One Way Out."

He had been waiting all day to say that. 

 

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Visiting South Carolina...

We made a visit to South Carolina to see Morgan Ali and kids. It was a good to see them and we got in a variety of activities. First there was the driving route there using our hybrid Toyoda which eats up the highway miles compared to the plodding camper tow we have been used to on many trips, there was a couple of different routes used so max sightseeing, we fished, we hiked, we grilled and ate home cooking, we watch the kid's soccer practice and sampled local restaurants.  

The grandkids are getting so big and so responsible. Nobody fell in the lake making this photo, not even Pop-Pop. 

This is an old CCC bridge built of local materials. Paris Mountain State Park is part of the Appalachian deciduous rain forest.

Me and Morgan fished Lake Hartwell which is just minutes from their house. I caught two very good sized Kentucky spotted bass and Morgan lost a couple that shook off at the boat so I count this as an almost fish dinner.  

Always a good feeling to fish with your son (or daughters) and score on an unfamiliar lake. 

One thing I see watching kids spots is that most of the time they are figuring out what to do. Sometimes watching pro sports I see guys doing the same thing. One of my specialties I have come to realize is taking a photo then cropping it up to make kid sports action look fierce. 

It was a very smooth trip and with gas prices slightly over $4 in some places along the way I was proud to be driving a Hybrid and hitting 47.9 miles per gallon. I think in the past I have achieved 51mpg but maybe I drove faster or need sparkplugs or something but the 31.2 gallon of gas used for 1831.3 miles to cross half the country and back is maybe just a little more than what the truck pulling camper uses for a beach trip. 

Traveling is great. 

  

 

Beach Fun and a Glamorous Camping Spot...

We are back home, at least for now after about 1700 miles and 10 out of the last 11 nights in the camper. This leg of the trip was down to Surfside Beach, Tx. which is one of our favorite places and also the location of a family beach house reunion for my son in law Tim's people, many from out of state and who we had met before at other family events. Their rental was just a short walk down the beach and they made us welcome at their communal meals. 

Instead of roughing it as we usually do on the free county beach with our solar power beefed up by generator use we sprung for the prime camp spot at The Breeze RV Park. We camped here about two years ago when we were still in the RPod Camper and many improvements have been made since then. In addition to the full hook up RV sites there are hotel rooms and I think some beach house property available to stay, beach buggy and jet ski rentals, a bar with kitchen and free continental breakfast, fire rigs, volley ball, cornhole, chair and umbrella set up, and a very attentive staff present to make sure things are going how you like it.    

We rented a beach buggy and the initial one they gave us, which was electric, slowed to an intermittent crawl way down the beach when I was giving Tim's family a tour. It gave his relatives a Texas tale to tell about the big hairy guy who stranded them but the Breeze staff saved the day replacing that cart with a brand new gas powered rig. 

I can tell I'm getting somewhere in life because I have grandkids to drive me around. Remember kids, first one to back the boat or the camper in the garages at home gets $100 prize but then they have to do it all the time after that. 

I did manage to catch a dinner of whiting that I turned into fish tacos. There is no size limit or restriction on Gulf whiting and they are a delicious eating panfish. I caught these on the first day while the water was still a bit green before the west wind turned it sandy brown and slowing the fishing. They were schooling right in the first gut close to the shore and I used a light rod with a tiny hook tipped with a pinch of shrimp. 

Generally there has been good beachfront fishing this summer and I am sorry to miss it but the lack of rain has made the sand loose with some of the beach entrances becoming a bit treacherous. I'm too old to be getting stuck and digging out, especially with a camper. 

There might be an October trip in the works but we will see. 

 

   

 

A Quick Travel Blog and Then Off Again...

We have been traveling and I am writing a quick blog to answer all your questions like where did you go and who is that woman in the closed beach area and so on. 

We have traveled to Kentucky for my cousin Carolyn and husband Doug's 65 wedding anniversary. It was a great party with great testimonies from their kids (cousins I'd never met) to their love, good food, music and fun. 

Along the way we camped in addition to our stay in Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. The total trip was a little over 1500 miles.  

All the parks we stayed were familiar places to us being we camped there before and in Kentucky at Lake Malone State Park we always see sister Margret and Kevin at their lake house which is right across from the state park swimming area. You can see the house and dock in the trees behind Cathy. I guess since we area back in Texas maybe Kentucky laws concerning the use of closed swimming areas no longer apply. 

We are not home long and depart for the beach shortly where the swimming areas are always open. 

This is a month for travel because with Mary off from work with the baby we have have some free time. More blogs soon. 

Fun With Music...

 Of course a grandkid is always up for honking on something around here but musical endeavors have been very fulfilling of late. 

There's been a new season of civic band rehearsals begin and in addition to the big time Temple Theater concert on Nov. 19 we have a small ensemble concert for various sub groups scheduled on Oct 29th in Hudgins Hall. Our polka band The Lufkin Brass will ride again with 2 or three numbers on that program. I am squeezing in extra rehearsals with the college band this week also just because it's fun. 

This past weekend I played a few jazzy numbers, folk songs and old spirituals at a birthday party Dr. Guessipina Bonner. Dr. Bonner is a member of our church, helps with SVDP, has a hand in preserving local history, is on the city council and is just generally a local good person of note. I was proud to play and the plate of oxtail, fried catfish, greens, field peas and cornbread I was paid with was on point. The event was catered by Bigg Boyzz  and I suggest you check out the spice line he sells. 

Finally one of the most rewarding musical adventures has been playing with the St. Patrick's Bilingual Children's Choir. We came into this job when one of the group leaders, Hugo who I worked with at the old papermill began cancer treatments that has limited his teaching of music to these kids which he was doing a very great job of. The other leader Maria was in one of our choirs when she was a teen so you can see while it may seem like we are doing something new this is just a continuation of long productive relationships in our community. 

The kids are playing guitars, percussion and flute so well under Hugo's coaching that all Cathy and I have to do is give some tips on things they need to know about presentation, basically getting stopped and started in an orderly fashion with a tune, setting up of music stands and music to be ready and just an occasional "thousand picks and patch cables" thing you have to know that no one tells you. 

I do have some good video from a rehearsal this past weekend we set to Hugo during his treatment stay in Houston but I'll get parental permission before posting. Here's an audio recording at this link to get the idea. 

Speaking of the parents of these kids they are a great group. They get the kids to rehearsal, help with set up and music distribution and do what they call "raising them right." This past weekend as always the group sings the old 14th century prayer, Anima Christi after Communion and we just used one 9 year old playing acoustic guitar for accompanist. I looked out and saw his mom crying because it was so pretty and because he played so well. I told her later my mom cried a lot when I played but it was because it was either tuba or what she called "honky tonkin'" songs.     

So say what you will. My brother says I will never get a job again after posting this and I say "good!" and this digeridoo rain drone is bringing a tropical depression ashore somewhere south of here. 

 

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This Made Me Sad...

I was driving down the main drag of town today and I spotted this old boat, motor and trailer loaded up and headed somewhere. I made me kind of sad because I'll bet it never sees the water again. 

That looks to me like some kind of late 70s rig. Not a huge boat compared to some bass fishing rigs you see these days but it comes from a time when they were starting to make the hulls a little more streamlined because people wanted to cover more water and the 80 plus sized outboard let them do it faster and safer. The after market trim fin on the foot indicates this was probably a heavy piece of fiberglass that someone tried to squeeze just a little more performance out of. I put one of those on a motor myself once upon a time. 

This rig makes me think of the good old days of bass fishing with my dad. Topwaters, spinner baits and redfins tossed up against logpiles. Since you didn't have a depthfinder all water seemed deep till the motor drug the bottom. A limit of bass was 15 till they cut it down to 10 and then they only had to be 10" long for to be a keeper and you hung them over the side of the boat on a chain stringer. We broke a few of those chain stringers, separating the links due to the weight of the fish we hung on there till we got smart and started chunking them in an ice chest. 

It was the good old days. The largemouth bass was not yet a holy fish receiving livewell supplements to keep him peppy for the tournament weigh in and a better preventive  maintenance healthcare plan than 99.8% of the planet and you better be sure he's alive when you throw him back. There were not $500 classes to teach me how to use my new depth finder. I can remember when I thought $10 was way too much to spend on a fishing rod. Boats were bought with cash instead of a ten year loan. 

Now before I sound like a get off my lawn baby boomer I know things are different and sometimes the things I know are not even valid anymore. Even though that old boat was suspiciously headed out a highway where one of those cash for scrap metal places is located people do restore these things. You don't see it much around here but I see vintage boats when I travel. That one might just need a good pressure washing, some fiberglass work and new hardware. Being that thousands upon thousands of outboard motors have been built for generations there are plenty of parts and occasionally I see old ones found new in the box in a warehouse or barn so finding the correct period motor in good running condition is not out of the question. It will certainly be easier to work on that my modern model which requires a trained mechanic. 

Hopefully this will be the outcome because it just makes me sad to think a boat won't see the water again. That means there will be people who won't be out on the lake, kids that won't fish or ski and somebodies old Pop-Pop will just be left remembering how things were.  

       

 

Dreaming...

 When I go to sleep at night my brain, my subconscious, or my other other self, whatever you want to call it or whatever it is goes to places I used to be 40 or 50 years ago. Maybe it's because I am old but a couple of nights ago I dreamed I was walking down old Press Road in Southern Nacogdoches County, Tx. 

They may have some blacktop on the road these days but in my dream it was a dusty, red dirt trail through pine woods and dotted with old country houses. I was walking in the hot summer time and I soon arrived at the old rent house where several friends lived and trudged up the driveway. As I arrived it suddenly became apparent to me that I was naked. 

My friends sat in old wooden chairs in the yard (this was the days before we all had bag chairs from big box stores) and I don't really recall particular people that were there. The people in my dream were just composites, familiar to me so much that I was comfortable to to be naked to them. 

There was one feature of the yard that was not there in reality but in my dream I saw a faint woods trail, wide enough for cars leading from the pine and oak forest behind the house around the edge of the property and joining the driveway at the main road. As my naked self approached the people in the yard a car and some foot traffic appeared on this dim, little used path. 

The car was old ragged and rusted. The people and it seemed to be all women in the car and on foot were also ragged and a bit rusted like people in old depression era dustbowl photos. I was ashamed of my nakedness and I lay down in the dry leaves accumulated under a strip of trees between the road people and the people in the yard. I lay facedown and tried to cover my shinny hinny with the leaves. It was taking a pretty big pile of leaves. 

Eventually traffic on the road subsided and someone directed me to an outdoor shower set up at the edge of the road. Somehow I had a green fishing shirt that I wear to the lake and camping and I wrapped it around my waist as I walked to the shower. This is the most recent photo I could find of the green shirt. Apparently I wear it playing guitar also. 

I was ready for a shower because I was dirty from laying in the leaves and summer time in the hinterlands of Nacogdoches County is a great place to discover yourself covered in ticks. Right at that moment another woman came down the road. She was younger, fair skinned and wearing a long ragged dress. She pointed out a plant growing around the shower area. It was like a green onion but with a large bulb at the end and two foot long green shoots for leaves. The woman said, "when we shower, we scrub with these."

For some reason this tip flared my temper with impatience. I told her, "I know that!" 

I woke up from the dream and sat on the side of the bed. It was about four in the morning and I needed to urinate. My stomach told me I should have just had two pieces of left over pizza instead of four. After I took care of my businesses I sat on the bed and thought about the dream. This is not unusual, to wake and have my mind get busy in the middle of the night over what it's been doing when I have not been actively driving it. 

As I write this it occurs to me that there are several people that lived in the old house on Press Road might read about this dream and I wonder if they have dreams also.