Concerts

Get your fill of blues, rock, and roots with Devon Allman Project and Samantha Fish Band in Beverly

Allman and Fish will coheadline The Cabot on March 19.

By Blake Maddux

2 minutes to read

Beverly’s Cabot Theatre was originally booked to host The Allman Betts Band on March 19. However, namesakes Devon Allman and Duane Betts – sons of The Allman Brothers Bands’ Gregg and Dickey, respectively – announced via a January 25 Facebook post that that their group will be on hiatus until the sixth annual Allman Family Revival concerts happen in November and December.

Perhaps there is more to the story, but I think that they are worth taking at their word when they cite “3 years of album making, non-stop touring, song writing, globe-trotting, COVID dodging, etc.” as the reasons for the decision.

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Therefore, The Cabot’s stage will now be graced on the same date by co-headliners the Devon Allman Project and the Samantha Fish Band.

Following the 2016 death of his mother (Shelley Jefts) and that of his father the following year, Devon Allman hit the road with the Devon Allman Project in 2018. Accompanying them as the opening act was Duane Betts. Unsurprisingly, perhaps inevitably, the two clicked and decided to join forces. Upon doing so, they called upon Berry Duane Oakley, the son of the Allman Brothers Band’s original bassist.

Thus, the Devon Allman Project was The Allman Betts Band in its embryonic form. The Cabot date will be one of numerous East Coast show at which the Project will include veteran blues guitarist and singer Larry McCray and Jimmy Hall, whose band Wet Willie gave fellow ’70s Southern rockers the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd a run for their money. (Hall has also been a solo artist and recorded with many rock, country, and blues musicians.)

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Samantha Fish released her first album, “Girls with Guitars,” in 2011. Since then, she has topped the Billboard Blues Albums four times – most recently for three weeks last fall with “Faster” – and won more than 20 Blues Music, Independent Blues, and Best of the Beat Awards. She also appeared on Devon Allman’s 2013 album “Turquoise,” on which the future tour-mates played Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty on a cover of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

Obviously no one buys a concert ticket hoping or expecting the bill to change. In this case, however, it’s fair to say that those who initially paid to see The Allman Betts Band got an upgrade (and I say that with absolutely, positively all due respect – which is a lot – to the other members of that group).   

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