Statesboro Blues: The Animated Videos

On October 28th, 2014, the Allman Brothers, after 45 years, played their last show at their “home away from home”, the Beacon Theater in New York City. The Allman Brothers were one of my favorite bands and a big reasons why I play music. The event had it’s share of media coverage so I’m not going to rehash the band’s history and such. What I will present are two very cool animated videos of one of their signature tunes, Statesboro Blues (both done by the  Brooklyn based animator Brett Underhill).
The first video is a “mashup” version of Statesboro Blues through the ages. Here, the ABB classic was assembled from different versions of the tune, from different decades and different lineups of the band. The multiple versions are synced together seamlessly and as a whole, the song maintains a wonderful flow. For fans of the band, the audio version of this alone would be a great listen but the accompanying animation raises everything to a another level entirely. The animated depictions of the band are historically consistent with their underlying music segments and the animation during the second solo section (starting at the 2:45 mark) is full of visual references to the Allman Brother’s mythology. There’s a peach truck, Elizabeth Reed’s tombstone, midnight riders and a bunch of other easter eggs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_%28media%29) for the ABB nerd. This was obviously a labor of love on the part of the animator Brett Underhill who “gets it”.  Over the closing credits of the video (with Little Martha playing underneath it), Brett states that the video was “created as a tribute to the Allman Brothers Band, past and present”. A fitting tribute indeed.

Based on the video above, the Allmans had Brett Underhill make another one for the release of The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings, a box set documenting the group’s legendary run of shows at the iconic NYC venue. Unlike the previous video, this one is based on a single performance of Stateboro Blues, in this case, the 3/13/71 Fillmore East late show (the classic version from At Fillmore East is actually from the 3/13/71 early set). This version has Pop Up Video like captions that provide tidbits of info regarding the the band’s history, background on the song itself and of the recording of At Fillmore East.
Enjoy the videos and remember the Allman Brothers Band.