Raisin' Hell in Macon: The Allman Brothers Big House!

DUDE: all i wanted for my birthday this year was to go raise hell in macon and go to the allman brothers museum, aka the big house. a big thanks to area.personality for making it manifest!!!!

I gotta admit, I had always thought of the allman brothers as "mom music". This is because my mom, Nancy, was always listening to them when I was a kid. For this reason I always wrote them off as "mom music", as children tend to do. I now understand that my mom just has great taste in music, and that the allman brothers fucking rawk and should not be classified as "mom music".

I'm not sure what spawned the interest in them. Surely had to have been some song floating through my head ending up on internal radio, and begging to be revisited. I know for sure that when I was in Denver to see Ween several years ago, we visited Wax Trax records and I totally picked up a sweet copy of the Duane Allman Anthology, pictured here with several other selections from that haul:

That turned out to be a total fucking SCORE, and went on to be on heavy, HEAVY rotation back at the Cave on Berean (my previous residence). Its a great album because not only do you have duane rawkin yer face off on the slide, you also have the likes of BB King, Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton (even though eric clapton has always seemed like an asshole to me), and of course, the sexy baby brother Gregg Allman. Please see the separate blog entry for HOW FUCKING FINE THE ALLMAN BROTHERS used to be. What a great album!

Well so then I reckon I went on some kinda southern rock binge. Dawg reminded me that we watched a bbc southern rock documentary together- who knew? here it goes:

That documentary is awesome and totally worth watching (again, and again, and again...)

So back to the big house: 

When you first walk in there are a ton of old concert and festival posters! This was super exciting for me because I don't just dig the music maaaan, I also really get stoked about gig posters. In particular I was stoked to see this poster from the 2nd  Atlanta International Pop Festival. I recently got this three part compilation album of music from both the Isle of Wight and the Atlanta Pop Festivals after hearing a live allman brothers track played on another radio program i like to listen to, Reeling in the Years, with your host Jeff, on Album 88. They are fucking killing it on there!

But this wasn't the first I'd heard of the pop festival. Nancy's sister, my aunt, Susan, had attended the pop festival, so I actually have a sweet (albeit sort of rotting apart) commemorative t-shirt! Its exciting to me because its like the Woodstock of the south. Who knew?

Here goes the pop fest poster, among others:

Here goes a gold record from Capricorn records, their label. We tried to go take photos in front of the abandoned studio, but it was getting too late in the day because we take forever to do everything.

 heres a sweet trunk in the big house:

u seen that before somewhere?? ;-)

here they go in a promotional ad for some pioneer speakers/soundsystem: bitchin.

here go they photos:

here goes duane looking amazing:

before they were the allman brothers, but after they were the allman joys, they were the hour glass. some record label shipped them off to the left coast to force them into some psychedelic bubble gum pop band. here goes that album cover at the big house:

id love to find me a copy of that one day! 

i LOVE talking about when they were the hour glass. talk about square peg, round hole! all. day. long.

here they go as the hour glass:

god! they just look uncomfortable in all that getup. who's idea was it to dress them up like that?? they still made slammin tunes tho, as evidenced here:

the museum is full of amazing ephemera- we seriously spent all day there, like until closing time. Our tour guide was a high school friend of dawg's, so he gave us the super exclusive, hella comprehensive, backstage VIP ultra tour- replete with more information than we could ever begin to process about the brothers, the band, their families, the roadies, the record label, the manager, the south.....and so on. i tried to pare down the amount of info to only the most pertinent but it was hard.

Here goes a check written to duane- who knew his first name was Howard? WTH?? Also here is his scratch book with lyrics in his handwriting **AWESOME**

Here is some crazy archaic audio formats of antiquity and of foreign lands:

here goes the house soundsystem, bitchin!!!:



Here goes the view from the window where Dickey Betts wrote Blue Sky:

ITS TOTALLY INSPIRATIONAL THERE i can totally see how he conjured that tune up there!!

here goes his handwritten lyrics (which is dated wrong, according to our fabulous tour guide)

Here he goes with his wife, Blue Sky. I am totally posting this because when I read about the song was about her I totally googled her and could not find her picture, but it is there at the big house, and now it is here, on our blog. She was totally pretty.

Probably the best part of the tour was when our tour guide told us about Dickey Betts and Blue Sky's wedding, and how she's all native and he's all part Cherohonkee or whatever, and so he had to kill a deer before he could marry her or whatever. Then he went on to tell us about one time when Dickey Betts totally slaughtered some cow with his bare hands on the side of the road all high on drugs or whatever. Badass! See, you just don't get info like that on any regular old tour!

Here is the shower the allman brothers showered in!...

...and the bath they bathed in....

...and the toilet they peed in!! (I peed in it too, now we are ONE)

[area.personality:  me too]

Here are some of those sweet hippy ass threads of theirs:

their clothes were made for teeny people of another distant era. they reminded me of the shit featured in this book native funk and flash with all that stichery witchery!

here goes that book and some fotos from within:

 that chick is my style icon.

Here is an excerpt from Duane's journal that's framed beside the bed in the room that was his. It makes me love him so much to read this- what a nice guy!! 

here are a few examples of posters and photos and such on display in the big house. there is seriously so much fascinating shit in there, you'll just have to go for a visit yourself if you are at all interested:

Here goes the front door- i dig all the bitchin stained glass!!

they have a MEGA merch booth/room (you know i got me a commemorative coozie, guitar pick, and tshirt):



here is a photo of us playing a replica of duanes guitar. and emulating his expression on the photo on the wall behind us (just realized im totally holding this like a sitar, WRONG):

Here goes dawg and her high school friend who gave us the super duper wuper detailed tour:

and here we go posed up in front the big house. wish the brothers could be here with us!!!

and here are some of the bricks in the little garden beside the house, totally cool:

and finally, here is a photo of my delicious Allman Burger from the Rookery. All their burgers are named after Macon musicians and Jimmy Carter. They also had beer battered fries and pitchers of Wild Heaven. HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY to me!!!!!!!!

I will definitely go back, because I wanna take Nancy. I also wanna go to the H&H restaurant where they used to eat, but its closed on Sundays (thats why we didnt go this time).

a big thanks to my DAWG for arranging our personal private super VIP tour of the big house. its exactly what i wanted for my birthday this year!!!

[area.personality:  You're welcome, Dawg!  I had a blast!  And yes, a super special thank you to my old buddy Jeromy from high school for giving us the most informative and interesting tour of all times!  I appreciate it so much!]