Duane Betts: Wild & Precious Life

Any given night in the Sarasota/Bradenton music scene might provide the opportunity to hear some distant vibration of The Allman Brothers Band. Even after all these years, side men from various iterations of the Gregg Allman Band, Dickey Betts’ Great Southern, or the Butch Trucks Band are still a wonderfully common commodity in the 941. 

From time to time, you get closer still with direct descendants of band members taking the stage: Berry Duane Oakley, Michael Allman, Kimberly Betts and the Gamble Creek Band, or Melody and Vaylor Trucks’ group, Brother & Sister. Sometimes, the roots extend a generation to include Dickey’s grandson, Grant, or Berry’s grandson, Sean.

There is the December revival at the Van Wezel each year, and three of the founders’ sons even briefly formed a band together, putting out a solid LP. In short, we are never at a loss when it comes to hearing echoes of the rock legends whose musical prowess remains stamped from coast to coast but surely looms largest in the South.

For my money, the most interesting of the ABB offspring has always been Dickey’s son, Duane, a top-shelf guitarist who forged his skills at his Daddy’s side during the late incarnations of Great Southern and the Dickey Betts Band. After paying his dues in several mid-level, touring rock and blues bands, Betts released his debut solo EP in 2018, the six-track Sketches of American Music. With the release, Betts proved he was more than a skilled guitarist, showing serious vocal and songwriting chops on tracks like Taking Time and Downtown Runaround.

Duane Betts. Photo by Zilon Jack

While Sketches hinted at massive potential, Wild & Precious Life is pure validation, a front-to-back blues-rock masterpiece that manages to pay homage to Betts' heritage without sounding the least bit derivative of his father’s music. Indeed, the album demonstrates that musicians have not stopped making that kind of music; you just have to look a little harder for it these days.

For its recording, Betts took an all-star lineup—including Johnny Stachela on rhythm guitar, Berry Duane Oakley on bass,  John Ginty on piano and organ and Tyler Greenwell on drums—into Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks’ Swamp Raga Studio in Jacksonville. The ten tracks were recorded on analog tape during live-in-the-recording-studio performances over just a couple of weeks.

Trucks lends his mighty guitar to "Stare at the Sun," while blues legend Marcus King lends his to "Cold Dark World," both of which are strong tracks that will surely appeal to six-string aficionados. However, Betts shines brightest on soulful ballads like the gutwrenching Colors Fade, which features backing vocals from singer-songwriter Nicki Bluhm.

The stellar opening track, Evergreen, captures what I’m beginning to think of as Betts’ signature sound. I instantly became so obsessed with Saints to Sinners that after less than a week, every device I listen to music on began populating it at the top of my suggestions.

Wild & Precious Life, which plays as an album in the classic sense of the word, proves that blues-based rock is alive and well. Furthermore, one gets the sense that at 46, Duane Betts is just beginning to come into his own. The album, which was released shortly before Dickey passed away, stands as a beautiful testimony to a special sort of generational musical craftsmanship that took place right here in our backyard.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is a novelist, as well as an editor and opinion columnist for The Bradenton Times. In addition to his regular Sunday column, he hosts our weekly podcast and does occasional theater, music, and travel reviews. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is available here.