Sydney’s The Basement is the home of blues and roots music during Australia’s Easter Bluesfest season. Each year one or two acts performing at Byron Bay play to the Basement’s smaller than usual audience and leave people astonished at the talent on display.
For example, in 2003 Robert Randolph played to a paltry crowd at The Basement where he and his Family Band succeeded in taking the room apart piece by piece. Randolph made many lifelong fans after the blistering set he delivered that Easter Monday.
The Royal Southern Brotherhood are a gathering of musicians from various parts of the US who formed in New Orleans just a couple of years ago. Devon Allman, son of Gregg Allman, handles guitar duties and provides gravelly lead vocals that showcase one aspect of the genetic link.
As the band walked onstage for their Basement show, one look at Allman revealed the clear resemblance to his Dad and his Uncle Duane. He truly has the blood of Southern rock royalty pumping through his veins.
This wasn’t the only ancestral bloodline to be represented on the stage. Lead vocals and percussion were handled by the 63 year-old Cyril Neville, whose New Orleans roots needed little introduction. His playing and singing on songs like the funky “Sweet Jelly Donut” was as fresh as a sip on a cold Hurricane cocktail.
Joining him on drums was the former The Derek Trucks Band sticksman Yonrico Scott. Scott proved throughout the night that even at 58, and having had open heart surgery in 2001, his engine was still running perfectly.
“Left My Heart In Memphis”, sung by Allman, gave he and his fellow guitarist Mike Zito a chance to do a slow burning groove. (Zito has a number of blues albums to his name that are well worth investigating for those inclined.) The harder edge of Allman’s guitar style with Zito’s more melodic playing made the duo work impressively well together.
The band noted that they hadn’t played together in a month, but an excellent lengthy solo couplet by Charlie Wooton on bass and Scott on drums showed no lack of practice. Jetlag was only noted in their eyes and that didn’t impact in any way on what the band delivered.
Although their original material was a tasty gumbo, the true meat of the set was in the classics they pulled out of the kit bag. The Grateful Dead’s “Fire On The Mountain” was a lengthy jam that gave a few Deadheads in the audience a chance to rattle those bones. That said, it might have started as a Grateful Dead number, but the chiming solos at the end bore more similarities to The Allman Brothers.
The closing songs took the room to another decade as Zito and Allman traded classic rock licks from Led Zeppelin to Aerosmith, before launching into an incendiary version of Elmore James’s “One Way Out”.
The final number was The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”, the audience identifying it from the very first notes. This gave Cyril Neville one last chance to show off his impressive vocals and provided an exceptional start to an Easter weekend of music.
Once again a rather unknown band in this part of the world proved they could win over a small but appreciative Basement crowd. The music might not have been anything new, but that’s not what people came for. They came to be transported to another time and another country, and The Royal Southern Brotherhood did exactly that.
