NOLAFUNK And Live Nation Presents The Devon Allman Project featuring Walter 'Wolfman' Washington and Fred Tackett, (Little Feat) plus Special Guests Tab Benoit and Samantha Fish, at The Fillmore/New Orleans, Friday, May 6. Show: 8:00pm. tickets: $39.50-$69.50. Info: (504) 881-1555 or visit http://cncrt.ly/TheFillmoreNOLA
Devon Allman’s life reads like that of the quintessential American troubadour. Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the singer-songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, and producer spent his early years dividing time between the Lone Star State, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri. Raised by his mother, Devon began playing music as a youth. He was 16 when he first met his father, Gregg.
Gregg invited Devon on the road with The Allman Brothers Band, during the group’s Dreamstour in the summer of 1989, where he first met ABB progeny, Berry Duane Oakley and Duane Betts. On many occasions, Devon would sit-in with the Brothers, often performing “Midnight Rider” alongside his father. Included among the many musical heavyweights Devon would join onstage throughout his career are Les Paul, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Billy Gibbons, Gov’t Mule, Blackberry Smoke, and Lukas Nelson.
He founded Devon Allman’s Honeytribe in 1999, recording two albums and touring the world intermittently over the next decade. In 2011, Devon paired with Cyril Neville to form Royal Southern Brotherhood. The supergroup released a trio of albums, won a Blues music award, and culminated their world tour with an appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Concurrently, Devon was cultivating a prolific solo career, issuing Turquoise in 2013 and Ragged & Dirty (2014), garnering widespread critical acclaim as well as top Billboard positions, including #1 on the Blues chart for 2016’s Ride or Die.
In 2017, Devon assembled the Devon Allman Project, commencing a 2018-19 world tour with Duane Betts as a special guest. Following that successful run, he and Betts announced the formation of the Allman Betts Band, reuniting with Oakley and recording their debut album at the famed Muscle Shoals studio..
Tab Benoit, respected Louisiana-based blues guitarist-vocalist and storyteller extraordinaire, has launched an ambitious 2022 Spring-Summer National Tour.
Benoit is renown throughout his thirty-plus-year career for his passionate environmental activism. To that end, he performed two nights in his hometown of Houma, Louisiana at the 16th Annual Voice of the Wetlands Festival. He also appears prominently in the IMax motion picture Hurricane on the Bayou, a documentary of Hurricane Katrina's effects and a call to protect and restore the Wetlands, and produced a CD to help restore that state's Coastal Wetlands. Benoit was inducted into the Louisiana Folklife Center Hall of Master Folk Artists in 2020.
One of the most impressive guitarists to emerge from the rich Bayous of Southern Louisiana in recent time, Tab Benoit’s guitar tone can be recognized before his Otis-Redding-ish voice resonates from the speakers. He doesn’t rely on any effects and his setup is simple. It consists of a guitar, cord, and Category 5 Amplifier. The effects that you hear come from his fingers.
Over the course of her career as an award-winning artist, singer/songwriter/guitarist Samantha Fish has brought extraordinary power to her self-expression, capturing her inner world in combustible riffs, visceral rhythms, and spine-tingling vocal work. On her new album Faster, she joins forces with superproducer Martin Kierszenbaum (Lady Gaga, Sting, Sheryl Crow) and imbues even more intensity into her electrifying brand of blues/rock-and-roll. With Fish accompanied by legendary drummer Josh Freese (Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails, The Replacements) and bassist Diego Navaira of The Last Bandoleros, the result is a singular body of work both irresistibly galvanizing and emotionally raw.
The follow-up to 2019’s Kill or Be Kind (Fish’s Rounder Records debut), Faster came to life at the famed Village Studios in Los Angeles, where she and Kierszenbaum uncovered new possibilities in her captivating sound. “Kansas City played a major part in bringing us together: I was born and raised in KC and Martin has some familial ties. Shortly after being introduced last year, we had a conversation about making an album,” she recalls. “His track record was perfect for what I wanted to do with this album, which was to expand into different genres while retaining the roots I’d built in the blues world.” Revealing her affinity for North Mississippi blues heroes like R.L. Burnside and wildly inventive iconoclasts like Prince, the album ultimately embodies an unbridled energy true to its emotional core. “The whole record has a theme of taking charge and taking the reins, in a relationship or in life in general,” says Fish. “I really thought that after 2020 I’d end up with a really dismal, bleak album, but instead, we came up with something that’s fun and sexy and so empowering.”
