Gary James' Interview With The Allman Brothers Band Tour Manager And Photographer
Kirk West



There's a new Allman Brothers Band CD, well, actually four discs as part of the release titled "The Allman Brothers Band, Fillmore West, '71" The CD set captures The Allman Brothers at Bill Graham's Fillmore West in 1971. Kirk West had a big role in putting this project together and then getting it released. Kirk West not only photographed the band over the years, but spent a considerable amount of time as their tour manager. Kirk West talked with us about this newest CD set and his friendship with The Allman Brothers Band.

Q - Kirk, I did not realize The Allman Brothers had their own recording company. When did that happen?

A - Well, it was put together I guess about fifteen years ago. (2004) Maybe a little bit more. When we started to put out these archive releases they formed that rather than use Epic (Records) or Universal (Records).

Q - Why did The Allman Brothers crew members, Twiggs Lyndon, Joe Don Petty and Mike Callahan save the tapes that you used to put this "Fillmore West '71" release out? Had you not stepped in to do this project, would the tapes have disintegrated?

A - Well, the thing about it is that all through the mid-'80s I started looking for tapes. I was working on a project after the band had broken up in '82. I started to gather information and data to do a book. I was living in Chicago and The Allman Brothers didn't exist as a professional entity at that time. Dickey had his own band. Gregg had his own band. Jaimoe and Butch were out playing. I started going to other people's houses. I spent a couple, three weeks at Dickey's house, helping him build a garage. Anyway, I was traveling all throughout the South. I spent time with band members at their homes and I'd copy stuff, articles, magazine pieces, photographs and tapes. I started copying everybody's tapes. Back in the day, back in the original era, the band didn't have a lot of money. They didn't have somebody like Owbley that was a millionaire acid manufacturer. The Grateful Dead had a guy who spent all his money building a P.A. system and recording all the shows. Well, The Allman Brothers didn't have that. They didn't have a benefactor. Tape was intermittently recorded. Generally speaking they would make tapes just to hear how they sounded with no future purpose involved. "How did the show sound tonight?" Mike Callahan, who was the original sound man, recorded most of these tapes back in the day, but he'd give 'em to Duane (Allman) after the show. Duane would come back and say, "Man, I've got to hear that tape. Give me that tape." Duane, like a lot of hippies back in the day, they would just give stuff away. These tapes would scatter. There was no central organizational catalog keeping tapes. So, sometimes the roadies would end up with 'em. I found a bunch of stuff at Gregg's mom's house in the '80s when I was searching. Dickey had a lot of tapes. Butch (Trucks) didn't have many. Then there was all those fans and ex-girlfriends or ex-wives. So, I did a whole thing of trying to copy. I didn't take a tape. If you had a tape at your house I would unload my car and copy it. I wouldn't take it away from you. I would just copy it on site. So, I'd come home from these trips from the South with more shows, earlier stuff. And some of 'em were badly taken care of and some were very well kept. So, that all started to come together. In '88, Polygram Records, which was The Allman Brothers' label at the time, put out the Eric Clapton "Crossroads" box set. It was the first of its kind in the Rock format, and it did really well. The same guys at Polygram decided to do The Allman Brothers box set. I got involved in that because I knew where a lot of tapes were that they didn't have. I knew where all this stuff was and I had copies of it all. So, I got involved in that thing and they got back together in '89 to promote that green, box set and then they stayed together. They reformed and signed to a new label. So, I spent the '80s and a good bit of the '90s tracking down and gathering tapes and creating a tape archive that was pretty extensive. During the late '70s into the '80s a lot of this stuff was done on high end cassettes, some reel to reel stuff. There was a whole lot of different formats. With technology evolving the way it did, we were able to take and transfer these old reel to reels to a digital format at the time, which was supposed to be a permanent format. As technology got better, the type of tapes changed and hard drives and all this sort of thing evolved. Every quality transfer or storage transition, we'd upgrade everything. But we didn't have to go back to the original master tapes because we had developed digital copies of everything.

Q - Did you know your way around the recording studio to put this CD set together?

A - Well, I'm not an engineer, no. I'm more of a producer. If it plugs in or has knobs, I don't do that very well. (laughs) But I know how to make a good pot of coffee and know when something sounds good. (laughs)

Q - That's very important!

A - Yes, it is. I learned that from Tom Dowd. It wasn't out of indifference. It was just out of a reality that the early band didn't focus on that. They didn't have somebody in charge. So when I got deeply involved with the band in '89 as an employee, rather than just a dedicated fan who contributed to their career, I made sure that every show was taped in any kind of format we could. Sometimes we'd tape it in three or four different formats. That was where the current and ongoing tape archives developed and then it was just a matter of trying to piece it all together in the early days.

Q - They needed a guy like you in the early days! The Allmans played a big show back in '73 I think. I don't suppose a tape of that exists somewhere.

A - At some point there are other projects that are in the works. We've got some '73 shows we want to put out, and then a couple of '71 shows. Then there's some more recent stuff, maybe from the '90s when Jack Pearson was in the band. So, there'll be a whole series of things developed in the coming years.

Q - In 1971 you were a twenty-year-old counterculture entrepreneur.

A - Correct.

Q - What does that mean? Were you involved at all in the music business?

A - No. I was a light weight, reefer dealer. (laughs) That's why I call it counterculture entrepreneur. And I was a photographer. So, I had access.

Q - You were a photographer then before you met up with The Allman Brothers?

A - Yeah. I always took pictures of my life prior to music. It was drag racing and prior to that it was model cars. I always had a little camera and took pictures of my life. Then my life became concerts and music.

Q - Were you taking photos of national recording acts in concert?

A - Yeah. I started pointing camera at musicians in about '68. I got good pictures of Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention, Country Joe And The Fish, Pacific Gas And Electric and The MC5. So, although I saw The Allmans a dozen times before Duane died, I never took one picture of them. I didn't start taking pictures of The Allman Brothers until '73. I had seen them at Atlanta Pop, Chicago, San Francisco and they were my favorite band.

Q - Would I have seen any of your photos in magazines back then like Hit Parader or Creem or Circus?

A - No. My stuff started hitting the magazines in the later '70s. I was getting good at shooting, but I hadn't figured out how to sell yet. It wasn't until about '77, when I moved back to Chicago from Florida, that I met some guys in Chicago that had a good little concert photography co-op. It wasn't a business, but it was a lot of photographers that loved to shoot music. They formed a local co-op and I got involved in that. It was an outfit called Photos Reserve. Everybody had their own little field of interest. I really liked Blues and old Country. Another guy liked gaudy, Alice Cooper and KISS kind of stuff. Another guy liked to shoot Jazz. So, we all had our little areas that we loved and we pursued it. In '77, '78 is when I figured out how to make a living at it.

Q - How did you get to know The Allman Brothers Band?

A - Because I had pockets full of reefers. You get to know a lot bands that way. (laughs) In '74, '75, '76 they were a huge band that had all kinds of levels of security and roadblocks to access. When they broke up in '76 they all went out and played littler places, clubs, small theaters. Less staff members. So it was much easier to get access after the show, before the show. So it was in the late '70s, when they got back together the first time for the Enlightened Rogues tour, I started working for Capricorn Records, doing photography for them, shooting Marshall Tucker and The Allman Brothers and Dixie Dregs and Sea Level. I was living in Chicago and I was like the Capricorn Chicago photographer. Whenever somebody came through town they'd need a record store photographer or something, I was the guy. I went out on the road with them for the first time in '79, all through the '79, '80, '81 era, before they broke up the second time. I was a go-to photographer for 'em. Bands don't hire a photographer full-time. I'd go out for a week or a few days or a weekend. Something like that. Yeah, we got close. We got tight. Then they broke up again.

Q - You've been described as a "tour mystic." What's that?

A - (laughs) Originally they called me the tour magician. I was the Assistant Tour Manager starting in '89. I didn't like the word Assistant. I did much more than assist. The little itinerary that management would put together for each leg of the tour; in front of the itinerary would be everybody's job title and their e-mail address and their phone number. One time management asked me, "What's your job title?" I said, "I'm the tour magician." "Tour magician?" I said, "Yeah. I pull rabbits out of hats and make ass holes disappear." They liked that and they started putting my job title as Tour Magician. After a few years Red Dog changed it. He said, "You're the mystic. You're the tour mystic." Not a magician, a mystic. That kind of stuck.

Q - At that point you were on the road with The Allmans for how long?

A - The whole time. We'd go out for three or four weeks at a time and then come home and take a couple of weeks off and go back out. I did that from '89 until I retired in 2010.

Q - Did you get to know Duane Allman?

A - No. I didn't get to know him. I was around him casually, passing joints backstage. I was young. They were older. They were three or four years older than me. When you're nineteen or twenty, that's a long time. These guys initially were my heroes. The fact that I could just be around a bit was important and impactful to me. So, I didn't really know Duane or Barry (Oakley). I was around them, but I didn't know them.

Q - One song I didn't see on your CD set was "Little Martha". I don't know if that had been written by 1971 or not. Did Duane play that on stage?

A - No. Before Duane died it was only put down as an acoustic track, him and Dickey. Later, Barry added a bass track to it. But no, the band never played it live until they got back together sometime in the '80s, or '90s, excuse me. As the band re-grouped in '84 they started to play it through the P.A. at the end of the show every night. They'd play the album track. I think about 2000 when Derek and Warren were in the band together after Dickey had left, they actually started playing a live version of it periodically in shows. But, Duane never played it (on stage). There's no tape of him playing it except on the "Eat A Peach" album.

Official Website: www.KirkWestPhotography.com

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