Tag: These Days

Last week I had a UK-flavored week…this week I’m going to have a southern feel.

Right before recording the Allman’s Brothers and Sisters album…Gregg brought a song in for the Brothers and they rejected it because it didn’t fit as well with them. Gregg wanted to expand and use the folk and the California vibe that he had. He thought…I’ll just make my own album. The Allman Brothers fully supported him in this.

In the sixties, Gregg and Duane were in the band Hourglass… Gregg roomed with Jackson Browne for a while. Gregg has stated that he picked up a lot from Browne on songwriting.  They kept that relationship for the rest of their lives. Gregg did this song that was written by Browne. He slowed it down and added some more soul to it and Jackson ended up changing the way he did it to match this live. The song was the B side to the biggest hit on the album, Midnight Rider. Allman would continue to play this throughout his career.

This song was on Gregg’s first solo album Laid Back released in 1973. He recorded this album while recording the great Brothers and Sisters album with the Brothers. He was also battling addiction brought on by the loss of his brother Duane and the passing of bassist Berry Oakley.

The song has a history dating back to the 1960s. Nico of the Velvet Underground recorded it first in 1967. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did it in 1968. According to Secondhandsongs the song has been covered 75 times!

Allman went on tour with Laid Back which included a string orchestra. The tour was a huge success and helped to chart the album at #13 on the Billboard Album Charts and #19 on the Canadian Charts.

Allman’s recording somewhat overshadowed Browne’s version and many have called Allman’s version the definitive version. Jackson Browne even alluded to that as well. Greg Allman and Jackson Browne covered it in 2014. Just my two cents…it’s hard to beat Allman’s voice and his soulful feel.

Jackson Browne: Gregg Allman was one of the most gifted singers of the last fifty years. We became friends in LA in the late sixties when he and Duane were in The Hourglass. He was a blues singer first, and he was so natural, and so soulful, that when he sang songs that were written in a major scale, he found all the most soulful and expressive passages through those changes. It was just how he heard it. That’s how it was with my song, These Days. He slowed it down, and felt it deeply, and he made that song twice as good as it was before he sang it. I got to speak with him in the week before he passed, and I got to tell him how much his music and his friendship has meant to me. He recently recorded one of my early songs, Song For Adam, and he and Don Was sent it to me to sing on, and I did. That song, the way he sang it and where he sang it from – at the end of his life – well, he completed that song, and gave it a resonance and a gravity that could only have been put there by him.

Jackson Browne Version

Allman and Browne…I kept the quick bio and interview with Don Was in at the beginning.

These Days

Well I’ve been out walking
I don’t do that much talking these days
These days-
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to
I’ve stopped my rambling
I don’t do too much gambling these days, These days-
These days I seem to think about
How all the changes came about my ways
And I wonder if I’d see another highway
I had a lover
I don’t think I’ll risk another
These days, these days
And if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
It’s just that I’ve been losing so long
I’ve stopped my dreaming
I won’t do too much scheming
These days, these days
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten
Please don’t confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them

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