071103 The Allman Brothers Band/nero, Ottawa, ON

On July 11th, 2003 I walked to Ottawa’s City Hall to see The Allman Brothers Band play at the Ottawa Bluesfest.  I remember it being a beautiful sunny day, and though this would prove to be the only time I would see The Allman Brothers at home in Ottawa I remember little about the show itself.

Not that I got drunk and forgot the show – I certainly don’t remember that happening, but I can promise that there’s no way I would have been standing outside on a summer evening with all of my friends listening to The Allman’s without having a beer or two.  I remember my vantage point, audience-right about twenty feet from the stage, and I can still see the blue sky above the National Defence building in the background.

Luckily half a lifetime of catching this band whenever I can has afforded me the opportunity to imagine the rest.  By piecing together snippets from a dozen other Allman Brothers concerts I can assure you that Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks spent the evening trying to outdo each other with their radically different but perfectly meshing guitar styles (for me it’s a battle that Derek always wins; man I love the way that guy plays the guitar) while Oteil laid down an undercurrent of brilliant bass playing that constantly flipped between subtle and unmistakeable.  The trio of drummers united into the sound of one (in part because Jaimoe hardly touches his kit) while one of the greatest soul singers of all time decided whether or not he was having an off night or not.

It all works out to an experience that inevitably lands somewhere between great and amazing, and though I have no recollection of my opinion of this show I’ll have to guess that I thought it was great, otherwise I’d probably remember it better.

Looking at the setlist online I see that Pinetop Perkins sat in on keyboards for a couple of tunes and the festival’s roving horn section The Texas Horns sat in for a song as well.  The set closed with In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed and they encored with One Way Out.

So all things considered: the weather, the location, the setlist…I don’t have to remember the specifics to know I probably had a pretty good time at this one, memory bedamned.

And here’s a little post-scripted sliver of memory worth adding: I had booked nero into Babylon for an Allman Bros. aftershow so I doubtlessly snuck a stack of photocopied handbills into the Bluesfest and spent at least part of my evening surreptitiously pressing 3” x 5” flyers into the hands of every tie-dyed patron I saw.  Always working, I tells ya.

Okay, one more PS and I’m out of here: I’ve spent an absurd amount of time trying to determine if I went to see The Blues Brothers the following night and if not, why the hell not?!?!  I saw them in 1994 and I’ll never forget it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I saw them a second time and if I did then July 12th, 2003 at the Bluesfest had to be it.  I’m such a huge fan of the movie, the band as a whole, and each and every musician involved so why wouldn’t I have gone?  I had a pass and everything!  The note in my ticketbook lists ten major acts I saw over the course of the festival that year, but it ends with a tantalizing and mysterious “& more” that leaves me hanging.  Surely the “& more” refers to lesser known sidestage acts.  Would I really have lumped The Blues Brothers into “& more”?  I doubt it.  

I figured maybe I had something else going on but there were no other concerts getting in the way and I checked nero’s tourdates and found that they were off until an American run two weeks later.  It was a Saturday so I wouldn’t have been stuck at work.  I checked Ottawa’s weather history and learned that there was a steady drizzle all day and evening on July 12th.  Would that have been enough to keep me away?  I hate to say it, but if I didn’t go that must have been the reason.  Which would be pathetic.  

But then again, maybe I did  go see them after all!  In my mind Paul Shaffer wasn’t there the second time I saw them, if I did indeed see them a second time.  Now I’m gonna google it…

…I couldn’t find the information per se, but I did watch a video of them performing at the SARSfest concert in Toronto just a few weeks later and I’m pretty sure there are none of the original band members on stage, with the possible exception of Bones Malone (there was only a fleeting shot of the horn section), and moreover this tour was called Jim Belushi & Dan Aykroyd’s Have Love Will Travel Revue, so it wasn’t even The Blues Brothers!!!

So yeah, it was probably the rain.