MUSIC

Gregg Allman on Laid Back Festival, gluten-free diet

Dave Paulson, dnpaulson@tennessean.com

We're just two minutes into our conversation, and Gregg Allman and I are on a topic that he probably doesn't get to discuss much in interviews: the benefits of being gluten-free.

"Your brain clears up," the 68-year-old southern rocker says. "You can add numbers quicker, and you can multi-task. I don't know, it makes you feel like you've really got a hold on things. Try it, that's all I can tell you."

How did we get here? Well, Allman has a traveling music fest that's coming to Nashville on Saturday — The Laid Back Festival at the Carl Black Chevy Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel — and there's more than live music on the menu.

In addition to Shovels & Rope, Brothers Osborne and other acts, they're promising to bring in a ton of top-notch local food. Allman has to mostly keep away from the offerings before he hits the stage ("you sing from your diaphragm," he explains), but for guests, he hopes "by the time you've left (the show), you've got a full tummy, and you've been rocked and rolled."

Speaking of rock and roll, Allman fell in love with it right here in Music City. He and his late brother Duane are two of Nashville's most famous musical natives. Before forming the Allman Brothers Band in Florida, the two spent much of their childhood at their grandmother's house in Nashville. Their lives were forever changed after seeing a soul revue at Municipal Auditorium with Otis Redding, B.B. King and other R&B greats.

The rest was history, and Allman thinks about his surreal past often when takes an outdoor festival stage. In 1973, the Allman Brothers Band played for an estimated 600,000 people at the Summer Jam in Watkins Glen, New York.

"You go out there, and there are people out to the horizon," he recalls. "That's a little bit disturbing (laughs). You have to really get inside yourself. You just have to play for the rest of the guys in the band, you know?..It was quite an ordeal, man. It was fun, but I've never seen so many people in my life."

Now that he's in "Laid Back" mode (he took the name from his first solo album), the stage is a spot where Allman's worries vanish.

"I've gone on before with an abscessed tooth, and as soon as you get on there and the energy from the people hits you, the pain goes away. You just play, and when you walk off stage 30 minutes later, Woo! Here it comes again...it's kind of like the land of no pain, you know?"

Gregg Allman headlines the Laid Back Festival Saturday at Carl Black Chevy Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel. Shovels & Rope, Brothers Osborne, Andrea Davidson, Levon, Gabriel Kelley and Jaimoe's Jasssz Band will also perform. The show starts at 4 p.m., and tickets are $20-$99.95.