That might not be quite right, though one notes that the first show where Jimmy Herring took the stage in the spot formerly occupied by Dickie Betts opened with a twenty-minute Mountain Jam, a track that had been notable by its absence from the setlist over the preceding couple of years. Herring was supposed to be a temporary substitute for Betts, and when he failed to return, with Herring required elsewhere Warren Haynes came back on board, where he remains to date. It’s a consistently good, if definitely under-recorded fit.
Much of the interest since the early nineties has been centred around the annual multi-night run at New York’s 2900-seat Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that dates back to 1989 and produced the contract get out release Peakin’ at the Beacon CD, the Live At the Beacon Theatre DVD and 2004’s One Way Out, which, close to a decade later, remains the band’s last official release of contemporary rather than archival material.
There are, however, numerous Instant Live releases, sound board recordings offered for sale at the end of Allman Brothers concerts, with every show from all tours since 2007 recorded live on multitrack equipment and mixed and available as purchased downloads through ABBLive.com. CDs are available through the band’s merchandise outlet Hittin’ the Note.
Most recent activity has taken the form of the annual Beacon run, followed by the band’s own two day Wanee Music Festival at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida and a limited number of tour dates, though the individual members have their own side projects to fill in the rest of their time, most notably the Tedeschi Trucks Band (Derek trucks and his missus), various Warren Haynes outfits including Gov’t Mule and the Warren Haynes Band, the Gregg Allman Band and Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band.
Variations to that pattern included the cancellation of the Beacon run in 2008 due to Gregg Allman’s hepatitis C treatments, and the switch of venues for the 2010 New York run to the uptown United Palace Theatre when the Beacon had been booked for Cirque du Soleil, but the band were back at the preferred venue in March 2011, playing their 200th show there on March 26 that year.
There’s also the 2013 release of Skydog, a seven-CD box set of Duane Allman performances, released with the help of his daughter, Galadrielle Allman, and its impending arrival has been largely responsible for the recent purchase of Beginnings and the appearance of this entry in the Little House of Concrete Music pages.