Allman Brothers Celebrate 40th Anniversary of "Eat a Peach" at Inaugural Peach Festival

ThePeachMusicFestival.com

Over the weekend, The Allman Brothers Band performed in Pennsylvania at the inaugural Peach Festival, which commemorates the 40th anniversary of their classic 1972 album, Eat a Peach. The band headlined two of the three days at the event, which included sets from several Allman spinoff groups, including The Warren Haynes Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band and Jaimoe's Jasssz Band.

Percussionist Jaimoe says that the event is an important part of their “Year of the Peach” festivities. “[The Peach Festival was created] so we can turn on the people to [Eat a Peach] who wasn’t around in the last 30 years,” Jaimoe tells ABC News Radio. He added that the music from Eat a Peach has a timeless quality to it. “It’s still great music,” notes Jaimoe. “A lot of ***** when I hear some of that stuff, it’s like, if I didn’t know when it was recorded, I would think it was something brand new. There’s so much good music, it’s incredible.”

Guitarist Warren Haynes noted that the festival also celebrates the impact that Eat a Peach and the Allman Brothers have had on today’s musicians. “It’s great to see the camaraderie and the communal vibe [at the Peach Festival],” Haynes says. “Especially for [drummer] Butch [Trucks] and Jaimoe and [frontman] Gregg [Allman], who are original members, to see the influence that they’ve had on the music scene and that’s not going to stop anytime soon. That influence is going to go on for decades.”

During Saturday night’s headlining set, the band played almost every song from Eat a Peach, including a classic track that hasn’t been heard by fans in a long time. “We’ve actually started doing ‘Blue Sky’ again,” Haynes told ABC News Radio. “Which is great because we haven’t done it in many years and so bringing it back’s been pretty cool.”

While the band is winding down their summer tour, Haynes says that he’s looking forward to working on a new Gov’t Mule album, while Jaimoe announced that he wants to head into the studio next month to work on four songs for his second Jaimoe's Jasssz Band album. “When we finished doing Renaissance Man, there’s [four] tunes that we thought weren’t good enough so we just need to maybe overdub something on some of them or maybe redo them [for the next release],” he explained. “[Those songs were] a part of the last recordings.”