guitar playing, so he called Jimmy up and said, “Hey, I want to meet this guy.” And so Jimmy called me over in Houston here and said, “Man, he really likes your stuff and wants to meet you.” And I’m like, “Okay, what kind of joke is this?” You know? Of course. Superstars don’t wanna meet people very often, you know (laughs) and so we were headed over to Florida about a month or two later and he came and saw us at the Five O’- Clock Club there, and after he saw us play he asked us if we wanted to play or do a few shows with the Allman Brothers in the places where they didn’t need a big support act to sell tickets. Because a lot of those places over in the South, and stuff, you know, they would sell out the amphitheatres without any help. They didn’t really need a big support band and of course we said, “Yes!” So then, a cou- ple weeks later, I was traveling around Florida still, in Port Charlotte, I remember where I was at when, we had pagers, I got a page from this friend of mine and he said, “Yeah, Dickey wants to talk to you.” So he called and then I called him back and he asked me if me and my bass player wanted to try out for the Allman Brothers because they were getting ready to make the changes War- ren and Allen because of their differences. And so he actually said, “I’m not trying to break your band up.” (both laugh) And then when he started telling me about it, I’m think- ing, “No, go ahead and break my band up.” (both laugh) But yeah, so I ended up getting to try out, my bass player didn’t get to try out, but I ended up trying out at the same time David Stoltz did. It was kind of a strange way to try out for a band. It was just Dickey and I and David Stoltz. No drummer. No Gregg. Nobody. Just us at his house. And we both tried out for it and of course Jack Pearson and Oteil [Burbridge] got the job a little later on. But anyway, I tried out for ‘em in ’97, I believe that’s when it was, and then when he split up with those guys in 2000 and wanted to put his own band together, he called me


and asked me if I wanted to play for him and kind of be a band leader. So that happened in 2000 and I played with him for a couple of years.


Yeah. You recorded a good album with him, too. Let’s Get Together I believe it was? Yeah. Let’s Get Together.


Cool stuff. Well, what caused you to leave that situation? Did it just worked out that way or is there a reason? Yeah. It was different things, you know. I think as an artist it’s hard to... when you’re playing with somebody like him, that’s a great thing. You meet a lot of great people when you’re out on the road. We went on tour with .38 Special and Charlie Daniels and we played shows with the Doobie Brothers but you know, you also yearn to do things that you want to do yourself.


Right. And you try to get back to building your own career and different things happen. I think that Dickey was striving to get back to where he was with the Allman Brothers and differ- ent things, but I mean, you know, we had a great time playing together. I mean, I’d still go out to see him. He’s not playing now but you know, I’d jam with him every once in a while and stuff like that so everything was all cool, as far as what we did. It was a great ex- perience, you know. I learned a lot from play- ing with a guy like him - how to just build big endings and big parts in songs, and he was so much about melody you know and every- thing. I hadn’t really been around anybody other than trying to just play the biggest, fastest solo to impress people, and he was more about building songs with melodies and things like that and he just really cared about that. I think that’s what people like about him so much, his melodic playing.


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