lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: duane allman

2014-01-20: amy ray going down the country road, the chicago tribune:

"i didn't figure out that duane was gone until about seventh grade," she recalls. "when it dawned on me that the main guitar player of this band i loved was gone, it was so sad for me. it was a big moment, understanding what loss meant in a bigger way of the world. i thought, 'wow, he's never going to play anything else. all we have are the things that he's done.'"

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2015-02-27: amy ray of indigo girls, song facts:

songfacts: one of the songs that doesn't really fit stylistically on the album is "duane allman." is there a story behind writing that song?

amy: oh there is a reference to the angels weeping, i have to say. but i couldn't help myself, i had to throw that in there.

but i love southern rock, and i love the dixie chicks and that kind of thing. stylistically i can hear some production on this like the dixie chicks do.

i started the song, then it went a whole 'nother way. because when i started jamming on it with my guitar player and drummer, i was like, "oh, this is a southern rock song." because my first recording of it, this acoustic demo that's got all these harmonies on it, that's totally like dixie chicks or indigo girls, even. but i didn't really want it to go that way, so i jammed on it with the people that i was making the record with, knowing that they would pull it off. and they did, which is awesome. because it really ended up being what i wanted it to be in that it's about duane allman. i wanted to strum it up to the southern rock soul that i felt.

i'm a big allman brothers fan. i was especially a duane allman fan when i was a kid. i'd been listening to them for a couple of years when i was really young before i realized that duane was dead. it's not something that had occurred to me.

so that was kind of a moment, kind of like when you realize jimi hendrix is dead when you're a kid. when you're in third grade, you don't know. you're listening to music, you don't know who's alive and who's dead. you're just listening to music.

so it was a wake-up. duane was a virtuoso, and his death left a big hole.

but it occurred to me because i was talking to this friend of mine who is in and out of addiction. we were talking about that, and then we were talking about music, and i was thinking about what it is to have this hole inside you that nothing will fill. and it's just like being an addict.

so i think it's also this thing where you lose someone significant in your life or you lose something in your life and nothing ever feels the same, and you constantly go back to that place. it's like, this is the hole in my heart. i've never been able to fill it with anything and it was left by this. there's different musical people in your life that left that hole, and duane allman has certainly been one of those for a lot of people, me included. you are never quite going to be the same without him.

so it's a metaphor for all the things that you feel like you lost or you'll never be the same without. i just call it filling the god-size hole, and he's made the god-size hole.