Maybe I'm completely off base here, but have you heard of David Grisman? Bluegrass meets gypsy jazz, incredible stuff.

Oh god yes, that's certainly more heavy on the bluegrass than the blues but that kind of jam band format is certainly what I'm looking for, everyone is on display there, I'm definitely going to be digging into those guys. Thanks.

I thought about posting these earlier but figured they might be too bluegrass for what you had asked for. In light of Quality Cucumber's post, I might as well go ahead now...


Mark O'Connor, Tony Rice, Bela Fleck - "Freeborn Man"


Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Mark O'Connor & Edgar Myer Live on the Lonesome Pine Special HQ


Sam Bush Band ~ Romp 2013 (Full Set)

David Grisman covers a really wide range of styles, so maybe it would help if I pointed you to his material closer to your interests. The album that this comes from is basically Latin jazz:

Neon Tetra


These are more blues/ragtime based:

Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia


Beat Biscuit Blues


I only discovered him recently, so I'm not too familiar with his discography yet. He did stuff with Jerry Garcia, but most of what I've heard of that union is straight bluegrass.

You like virtuosity, blues jamming, and multi-instrumentalists? Some of Gentle Giant's output fits the bill.

Give this song a little while to get going:

Peel The Paint


Working All Day


Experience



This is a band made up of members of Deep Purple and Iron Butterfly, so it's basically psychedelic blues rock, proto metal. Lots of riffs, lots of prodigious music-making. Maybe not roots enough. Lemme no, k?

Captain Beyond

Well, there´s some great music piling up in this thread - plenty of worthy material to investigate, even if some of it is drifting away from the Allman Brother´s sound.

Psy-Fi´s post of the Mark O´Connor/Bela Fleck version of Freeborn Man reminded me of The Outlaws, who do a great version of it too:-



Another staple of the Outlaw´s repertoire was a song they wrote themselves; a ten-minute track when it first appeared on their 1975 self-titled album, here they are giving Green Grass and High Tides the full Allman Brothers treatment, a 23-minute-long guitar jam which sounds like what ? Well, to me it sounds like the Allman Brothers on a night when their playing was a little rougher than usual:-

Have finally come across a good reason to update this thread.

The Beau Brummels - Bradley's Barn [1968]

Recorded shortly after a significant dissolution in personnel, Bradley's Barn was the product of the two remaining members of the Beau Brummels, lead vocalist Sal Valentino and composer-guitarist Ron Elliott, being encouraged by their producer to head to Nashville in a sort of back-to-the-roots trajectory, similar to many other acts at the time, after experimenting with psychedelic rock on their previous release, Triangle. The results were so incredible that they decided, in tribute, to name the album after the studio, Bradley's Barn.

This album is a very good example of the sound I'm looking for in this thread. The vision of the producer wasn't to equate country, bluesgrass, and southern styles with simplicity, but instead to craft a sort of complex country guitar orchestra, a huge enveloping sound built of cascading southern instrumentation, while remaining mindful of rock / pop sensibilities and producing something catchy and approachable. The results are fantastic, it has so much of what I'm looking for, and startlingly good production for 1968. There are no weak tracks on this album, it's a total gem.

Thick acoustic instrumental textures, expressive and dynamic vocal work, fantastic production, earthy and mindful of roots but often ambitious in vision, intelligent songwriting front to back.

If EPOCH ever checks this thread again I think I may have something here with these guys:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1iiGNgznu0

They have some longer jams too.

Probably be another epoch before he does... :D

It'll be an epic epoch.

The ABB borrowed very heavily from the Illinois Speed Press, as did Skynyrd. The Allman Joys opened for the ISP on a string of shows in early 1969 and brought the ISP album with them to Jacksonville in March. I got this info directly from Kal David of the ISP and Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special. Look up two songs by the ISP, “Hard Luck Story” and “PNS” and you’ll understand.