In addition to buoyant guitar and pristine sound production (see the instrumental “Under the Bali Moon,” a playful groove that weaves between rock and jazz), “Wild & Precious Life” is a showcase for the evocative and largely affirmational lyrics cowritten by Betts and songwriter Stoll Vaughan. I mean, I don’t want to say he likes anything I do - I mean, he’s pretty honest about stuff - but he was really impressed with it,” Betts says. “Yeah, he really feels pretty strongly about it. “We’d come back (from Jacksonville) and we played him some of the stuff we had done and then, you know, his presence was felt.”ĭickey did offer his son a review of “Wild & Precious Life.” We were definitely bouncing ideas off of him,” Betts says by phone from his second home in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “He was not in the room with us while we were writing, but he was adjacent. He did have some indirect influence on the album. The album was recorded in Jacksonville in early 2022 in the Swamp Raga Studio of blues-rock power couple Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, nephew of Allman Brothers cofounder Butch Trucks.ĭickey Betts, born in West Palm Beach 79 years ago, still picks up the guitar around the house, but is happily retired, his son says. Some of the new songs were written in Dickey Betts’ Sarasota home, where Duane returns when in Florida. In Betts’ solos and duels with Stachela and guest guitarists Derek Trucks and Marcus King, it is impossible not to be reminded of his father’s shimmering glory with the Allman Brothers.īest examples include “Waiting on a Song,” a bright and hopeful, windows-down, Allmans-style road trip, and “Stare at the Sun,” a bluesy, anthemic rocker anchored by Trucks and a sturdy rhythm section. “Wild & Precious Life” is laced with Betts’ trademark guitar work - muscular and melodic, warm and beckoning - that seems equal parts nurture and nature.
“I always was a guitar player and I wrote some songs for the bands I was in, but I never really sang. Part of the process included developing more confidence as a vocalist. When the Allman Betts Band decided to go on temporary hiatus after its 2021 tour, Betts accelerated plans to record a solo album. In 2018, he released a well-received EP, “Sketches of American Music,” and he did two albums with The Allman Betts Band in 20.
at Radio-Active Records in Fort Lauderdale.īetts first put pen to paper on the songs that would coalesce into “Wild & Precious Life” during the early days of the pandemic, but inspiration has been collecting for years.Īs a teenager, he watched hundreds of shows on tour with The Allman Brothers Band, then played guitar in the shadow of his father in Dickey Betts & Great Southern for nearly a decade. Earlier on Friday, Betts will sign records and perform an acoustic set beginning at 5 p.m.
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