This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 24, 2013 - Tomorrow night, Danny Liston will play guitar and sing for The Brothers, a seven-piece, all-star band dedicated to playing the music of the Allman Brothers. The group will likely perform to an enthusiastic assemblage at The Pageant, where the audience will expect the songs of the famous live album “At Fillmore East” to be played entirely. While not coming in order, all those crowd-pleasing songs will, in fact, pop up during their set.
The evening, for those onstage, will mean a nice, well-earned paycheck, but also a way to bond with friends known for decades, brought together by a shared passion for performance.
“The thing is, all these guys really, really do love this music,” Liston says. “It’s not like we’re there, standing on the side of the stage saying, ‘OK, it’s time, let’s get this done.’ This group is genuinely psyched about doing this stuff. And the more we play, the more we’re able to add our (styles) into it. When you have great songs, you don’t want to screw with them too much. But with these guys, who genuinely love the music, I enjoy playing and rehearsing as much for the hang time as for the music portion of it. … you can really tell that we enjoy being together.”
While the group was crafted, in large part, by guitarist Steve Pecaro, several members of the band have been pulled together over the years, through a variety of creative projects. Perhaps most notably for our purposes is that bassist Dickie Steltenphol shared many a stage with Liston as a member of Mama’s Pride.
Because of his long history as a solo performer and member of Mama’s Pride, the move into a tribute situation has puzzled some of Liston’s friends. In response to one of them, he responded “Oddly enough, I don’t look at it as a cover band. Of our whole set from ‘Fillmore East,’ there are five songs that Gregg Allman wrote. A lot of the rest are songs by Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters. They’re really blues classics. But we’re all guys that grew up listening to this stuff. You don’t expect to get a record deal doing a commemoration to another band.
We did our first show last year at The Pageant. Then we did a show at House of Blues in Chicago and drew 800 on a Wednesday night. We were real happy with that. We played the amphitheatre in Alton in front of 3-4,000, and played at the Wildey in Edwardsville. It only holds 300, but it’s a great theater and we really enjoyed playing there.”
That Liston and Steltenpohl are playing these Allman Brothers songs isn’t without a little bit of coincidence. That’s because, in a true bit of rock storytelling, Mama’s Pride once toured with Gregg Allman; essentially, they were the Allman Brothers band for a short stint.
“It was 1979,” Liston says. “We ended up Gregg Allman’s backing band for three months. We were stranded in Daytona. He needed a band. We needed a way out of Florida.”
In playing the music of the Allman Brothers, the boys found their way back to St. Louis and, after a while, life beyond Mama’s Pride.
Pride, reborn
A few years back, the director of the Webster University Film Series, Mike Steinberg, and I worked on a documentary about St. Louis’ classic rock past. The initial idea was to focus on three bands: Mama’s Pride, Pavlov’s Dog and Head East. Since the third group had deep ties to St. Louis, but wasn’t completely homegrown, we shed that group from the focus. And once editing commenced, Steinberg suggested a radical change: splitting the doc into two bits.
The Pavlov’s Dog story was primarily told through the eyes of guitarist Steve Scorfina, dubbed “Old Dog, New Trick.” The Mama’s Pride half of the DVD, “The Pride of St. Louis,” checked in at 30-minutes and focused particularly on Danny Liston, who co-founded the group with his brother Pat and several close friends from the South Side.
At one point, Steinberg took a second job, moving to Missoula, Mont., where he became the creative head of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Co-producer Jon Scorfina and I were left in St. Louis to pick up odd shoots, ones that helped fill in gaps.
On some occasions, I went out on these assignments with Jon, or even Mike, when he was back in town. At other times, I was out on my own, operating the camera and (sometimes) forgetting to turn on the microphone. That happened once when shooting Liston on a painting job. (Though he heads up a painting company, he, too, is often alone on jobs, tackling homes and businesses all over the metro area, from a base in St. Charles County.) I got useful video, but blanked out the interview, through sheer forgetfulness and discomfort with the gear.
But that moment was mitigated by two things. For starters, Liston’s about the most-unflappable guy you’d ever meet; there was little he was unwilling to discuss on-camera. And he was also willing to have those discussions anywhere.
At the time, he and his wife were running the Winghaven location of Seamus McDaniel’s. He was painting. And he was in constant demand as a performer on Saturday nights and Sundays, when he’d take his music to churches of various denominations, spreading his faith in locations I’d never seen, or experienced.
At that same time, Mama’s Pride had sprung back into action, playing an annual show in December, and spotting in another show, or two, over the rest of the year. These days, Mama’s Pride is somewhat back in a mode of autopilot, the group able to pull together a show in the matter of few rehearsals, pulling from a catalog that includes their two signature albums from the ‘70s, as well as some later cuts and choice covers.
In some respects, The Brothers have been falling into the same pattern, with “routine” being a good word.
“For us, the beauty is that the show changes every time we play,” Liston says of The Brothers. “We’re gelling as a band. We probably needed three months before our first Pageant show. Now, we’ve got it down with 10 rehearsals, which include learning new songs. And this time, we’re spending a couple thousand dollars on a liquid light show, doing the whole psychedelic thing. We’re putting acid in the water. Everyone’s tripping by the third song, yahoo! Only kidding about that. We’re not going to El Monstero-size, but we’re trying to create that atmosphere.”
Double dipping
Liston also says that shows with The Brothers allow him to promote his own new release, “God Used Mississippi,” which he recorded with noted producer Jim Gaines last year. He split time between Memphis, where he employed a team of crack session players, and St. Louis’ Music Creek studio, where he employed Brothers’ cohorts Steltenpohl, Percaro and keyboardist Harold Draper.
“The new album,” Liston says, “was recorded here and in Memphis, at Ardent Studios. I guess it’s got a southern rock, blues-rock kind of vibe to it. Ten, all original tunes. We’ve done a limited edition release here, but I’m working with a marketing guy out of Atlanta and doing an official release in springtime. I’m using The Brothers show to sell some product. I don’t want to let those opportunities go without hawking some CDs. So the shows are multi-beneficial.”
The title track, he says, comes from a very personal place.
“My mother came from Yazoo, Mississippi,” he says. “When I was a kid, my mom, brother and I would catch a train to Mississippi and visit relatives. I didn’t know all the story when I was a kid, but I knew my dad had a little problem with the drink. I couldn’t tell why my mom’s personality changed so much when we were there, but it’s because she got to get away from the craziness that was here. It was always a great bonding time for my mom, my brother and I. The southern hospitality just oozed from these people, you have no idea. I told a relative that God used Mississippi to help us. And that phrase kind of stuck with me. That’s basically the basis of these songs. I didn’t even know there were bad times, but I always knew the good.”
Liston says it was a treat to record with a seasoned, veteran pro like Gaines and great just to be in Memphis, a town he enjoys more than the industry hub of Nashville.
“It’s my third time working down there at Ardent,” Liston says. “You look at the walls and it’s a who’s who of rock’n’roll and blues. It’s a great place to work and it’s so down to Earth. There’s no pretentiousness. The thing I love most about Memphis was hearing all the stories. I’m like a kid in a candy store there. The pace is very smooth and laid-back.”
And here’s where a classic Liston moment comes into play. When the guy speaks of unpretentiousness, it’s coming from someone who lives the word. Let’s allow Liston to finish the story.
“When I was there, it was the 50th anniversary of the studio,” he says. “The interns were sent out to paint this huge atrium in the studio. Well, I’m a house painter. And I hate mixing. I can’t honestly tell a very decent mix from a great mix. So they went out and got me a good brush and a good cut pot. I went into the atrium and painted that while the interns worked on the mix. Then they’d come out and invite me in to listen and I’d say ‘I like this, I like that.’ There was no ego involved. I’m not ‘the talent.’ I’ve been to Nashville and I’m not knocking their whole scene, but a lot of folks I came into contact with there say things like ‘the talent.’ What an arrogant thing to say. I’m not ‘the talent,’ I’m the guy that gets to play the music.
“I just dig the vibe in Memphis. If feels good for a kid from South St. Louis.”
Thomas Crone is a freelance writer.