Interview: Devon Allman 50 Concerts 50 States

Interview: Devon Allman See It All Tour

By Martine Ehrenclou

Devon Allman and Donavon Frankenreiter are making history. After releasing their EP Rollers in June of 2023, which Luther Dickinson produced, the rock & roll artists are attempting to break the official world record with 50 concerts in 50 states in less than 50 days with their “See It All American Tour.” The tour began August 5th and ends September 22nd in Southern California.

Son of rock legend Gregg Allman, Devon Allman is a superstar in the making. He’s a Blues Music Award-winning singer, guitarist, and songwriter who’s performed at the world’s biggest festivals and co-founded the supergroups Royal Southern Brotherhood and The Allman Betts Band, with 11 albums to his name. Together with longtime friend Donavon Frankenreiter, a professional surfer and now musician with over a dozen albums, they are currently on their “See it All American Tour,” performing collaborative sets with a four-piece backing band, and joined by guests Matt Andersen, JD Simo, Matt Costa, Davy Knowles, Jackson Stokes, and more.

Devon joined me by phone on the tour.

Rock & Blues Muse
Tell me all about your See It All American Tour with Donavon Frankenreiter. 50 shows in 50 states in 49 days is a lot.

Devon Allman
We’re on day 28. We’re in Fargo, North Dakota today. I think it’s an ambitious undertaking. It’s been done a couple times, but it’s never been done in less than 50 days, and that was the goal to break the record. It’s really good. We’re four weeks in, we’ve got three weeks left. And barring, knock on wood, any difficulties or any travel trouble with Hawaii or Alaska, hopefully on September 22nd we’re hoisting up a big victory cup and cracking open some champagne. This is the one-month mark into the tour and I’m shocked at how high the morale is within our band and our crew. The other people who have attempted this endeavor, they’ve done it solo acoustic and played coffee houses. Or like George Thorogood took a taxi cab. We are traveling with a full band and crew and production and a tour bus. It’s a real tour, so it’s a massive undertaking.

But I’m shocked at how high the morale is for everyone. Everybody’s in such a good place. When I visualize a day off, it seems like something that would break momentum and groove. I’m shocked that I haven’t craved a day off, which is really weird for me because typically, in my tour history of the last decade, I’d go out for three weeks and do five shows on and two days off and fly home, and be with my wife and my kid and cook my own food and kind of get that little semblance of normalcy for a couple days before I dive into the next five shows.

Rock & Blues Muse
Sort of a recess.

Devon
Yeah. It’s a nice balance. My wife comes out sporadically. My son’s back in college, they started back up, so he’s not going to be able to this time, but it’s all good. I get a 75-day break after this tour until the next one, so that’s two and a half months. It’s ample time to enjoy the beautiful autumn in Missouri.

Rock & Blues Muse
You must be having a lot of fun if you haven’t really felt the need for a break.

Devon
It’s so fun. I mean, we’ve got a film crew out with us too, and we’re documenting so there will be something on the back end of this, whether it’s a DVD, a documentary, or some kind of series. It’s been fun going to gather footage. We went to an avionics facility where they’re working on cutting edge electric avionics, airplanes that are basically drone technology, that’s going to be really crazy. It’s like the Tesla of airplanes. But at that airfield they had 1943 World War II fight planes, and we went up in them and barrel rolled and loop-de-loop, the whole thing.

Yeah, almost every day we try and take about two hours, Donavon and I, and go get some good footage of us immersing into whatever city we’re into. I think it’s been a lot of fun. If it wasn’t fun, it would feel like a grind.

Rock & Blues Muse
Tell me about your sets. Are you and Donavon performing the songs from your new EP, Rollers plus other songs from your respective catalogues?

Devon
Rollers is the backbone of the set, and it’s a really special record. It’s something we did pretty quickly, and it’s one of those things where you’re kind of getting through it and then it takes a little minute, and you look back and go, “Well, wow, that was really freaking cool.”

Rock & Blues Muse
It is though. It has a very unique sound. The title is perfect for it.

Devon
When we were listening back I was like, “Man, these aren’t rockers,” because back in the ’80 or ’90s, the big concern when you were a band was like, “How many rockers do we have and do we have a ballad or do we have …” You know what I mean? It was just funny to be like, “There’s no rockers here really, these are all rollers.” And that’s where it got the title.

And they’re very travel-motivated and travel-centric in their theme. And the lyrical aesthetic is like, this is meant to inspire people to go on road trips this summer. This is really a call to arms to inspire people to check off bucket list stuff. Go check out the Grand Canyon, go check out this amazing country. That’s why it’s “See It All.” Like get out there, see everything you can, drink it in.

The set hangs its hat on the Rollers EP, and then it takes a few songs from Donovan’s catalog and a few songs from my catalog, and that’s it. It’s a lot of fun.

Rock & Blues Muse
Did you ever at one point in this tour say, “What did I get myself into?” Or, “Maybe I made a mistake”? It is a huge undertaking.

Devon
(Laughs) I mean, I haven’t. And you got to know too, with 50 shows, a few of them are not going to sell so hot. You may not sell very much on a Monday night in Iowa, you might not sell very many tickets. So it’s a polarizing vibe to go from sold out 900 tickets in North Carolina to 100 tickets in West Virginia on a Monday night. These are arbitrary numbers but you get the idea.

We’re doing something that we feel is important. We’re doing something that’s historical. We’re doing something that shakes things up in our careers. When you get a little longer in the tooth, I want to continue to vary the landscape. I don’t want to just go on tour with my band every year. I want to collaborate with people. I want to put together projects. I want to put together super groups. I want to put together celebratory tours like the Allman Family Revival, where we celebrate dad’s music. I just always want to change it up.

Rock & Blues Muse
That’s cool. It keeps it pretty interesting for your fans.

Devon
Yeah, and for me too. I don’t want to go out and play the same show every night. I want to be inspired to stretch the framework of what we all do.

Rock & Blues Muse
So what’s next for you? I see you have the Allman Betts Family Revival in November.

Devon
The Allman Betts Family Revival is something that’s been happening for seven years. It’s a celebration of the life and music of my dad, and this year we’re rebranding to include celebrating Duane’s dad, Dickey Betts. I mean, I think it’s an important thing. Dickey is officially retired. This tour is between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s a really lovely time of the year for us to say, “Hey, we’re going to play the dads’ music.”

Rock & Blues Muse
That’s pretty cool.

Devon
And we’re going to invite our most talented friends to come along and bring these songs to life. What that also does is it opens up the rest of the year for us to do the projects we want to do and not feel like we have to play Allman Brothers music. It makes it really special. It’s ended up for our fans, for our band, for our special guests, for our crew, it ends up feeling like a big family reunion at the end of the year, and it’s become very special.
We’re looking forward to that. We’ve got some new cities this year. We’ve got some new artists joining us. All of the information is on Allman Betts Family Revival. We can’t wait.

Rock & Blues Muse
Are you going to continue to do any projects with Duane Betts?

Devon
Yeah, we just did a week of Allman Betts tour dates. I think there’s more of those on the horizon. We hit it so hard for a few years that we just simply wanted to go and concentrate on some other things. We were pretty burned out. And I had this idea with the Donavon thing and I did a single with Maggie Rose. I’ve got three different albums in the vault that I need to release next year.

But the Allman Betts Band is something that Duane and I can pick up and go, “Hey, we want to activate this and go do this for a month.” Or, “Hey, we want to go to Europe.” Or, “Hey, we want to go to Australia.” I think a lot of people misunderstood when we took a hiatus that we were over and it’s like, well, no, this is our project we can pick up whenever we want. So this summer we did six tour dates and they were phenomenal.

Rock & Blues Muse
I got it. You mentioned other projects, so what’s coming up for you besides the Allman Betts Family Reunion?

Devon
Next year’s got a lot of surprises. I’m not at liberty to say yet, but I try to keep it fresh. We’ve got some things that just haven’t been announced yet. But yeah, a lot of exciting stuff to keep everything rolling.

Devon Allman & Donavon Frankenreiter See it All Tour Dates HERE 

“See it All”