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On June 23rd, 2006 I drove to Niagara Falls to see The Allman Brothers at Fallsview Casino. It was my first time visiting Niagara Falls since I was a little kid – like, single digits young – and only my second Allman Brother’s concert in a decade.
Way back in the ’90’s I had seen the band in Toronto and found the show quite lacking. I swore off the Allman’s after that show and indeed didn’t see them again until they played at the Ottawa Bluesfest. That set showed me the error in my ways so I was happy to grab tickets when these Niagara Falls shows came up.
That said, I was still wary enough to have only purchased tickets for the first show of their scheduled two-night run.
Four of us checked into a cheap motel and hit the main drag. If you’ve never been there: Main Street Niagara Falls looks a bit like an amusement park; there’s a big Ferris wheel, a wax museum, the Burger King even has a giant King Kong inflatable on the roof…and at the end of the strip rumbles the largest waterfall (by volume) in North America.
Of course this was my first time at the casino too and you know, it looked pretty good. The gambling floor had an upscale swank similar to the upper crust of the Vegas monstrosities but it was small enough to be easily navigated, and surprisingly roomy.
Still, I resisted the tables for now and went in to the show. The venue was shockingly nice, and our seats up in the balcony put us surprisingly close to the stage.
The show was just downright fantastic. Early on they played a song I was hitherto unfamiliar with: Woman Across The River, and it remains the highlight of my memories from this concert. Turns out it’s a Freddie King song that the Allman’s had recorded on their last studio album. I got my hands on that album soon after this concert and the studio version is pretty awesome too.
Matter of fact, at this concert I bought one of those Instant Live recordings, a three-CD set of the concert I had just seen that could be purchased ten minutes after the show ends. I used to listen to it a lot and that Woman Across The River got me every time.
The rest of the show was equally fantastic, with tunes like Midnight Rider, a super-long run through In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, their standard amazing take on Van Morrison’s Into The Mystic, and the show closing One Way Out, yet another cover song that might as well be an Allman Brothers original.
The show was so good m’lady and I agreed that we should poke around for a cheap pair of tickets for the next evening’s show after all. With that in mind I hit the tables, playing roulette (as was my habit at the time) using a system based solely on my own, highly-developed Spidey senses.
I took a momentary break from the action to find m’lady and tell her that I was up several hundred dollars and would be happy to spring for a pair of tickets for the next show when I bumped into Derek Trucks. After congratulating him on being part of such a great concert we quickly got on to the subject of gambling. I thought I was doing pretty well but Derek was up nearly a grand playing poker, and he was really excited about it too. He kept saying stuff like “The cards I’m getting are amazing,” and “I can’t believe I’m up nine hundred dollars!”
After a few minutes we both got back to our respective (and lucrative) tables. Somehow we met up again a bit later, just as we were both calling it a night. I think he walked away up about $1,600 while I had won about $500 or $600. Not a bad encore to an already great evening.
Todd Man Out 