Part III of the Dickey Betts interview continued from the November/December
2003 issue of Musicians Hotline.

Having been a long time Allman Brothers fan, it was a thrill to get to interview Dickey Betts. My big sister Jody was the first person to get me to listen to the Allman Brothers, playing Eat A Peach and The Fillmore East albums for me. Then on June 8, 1974, we got to go see our first real concert. My parents allowed each of us to bring two friends to the concert. So my mother, father, my sister's friends Barbara Seel, Tammy Chandlee, myself and my friends, Liz Sawyer, and Mark Needle got in to my dad's Chrysler Newport and off to Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City we went. Dickey is now touring with his own band and is playing better than ever. He was a great interview, telling me a lot of the secrets of his guitars, equipment and the scales that he uses. Instead of being tired at the end of his tour, he seemed to want the tour to never end. He loves his music and has a great time making people happy. He did mention that One Way Out is a fun song to play. I think it¹s a fun song to listen to. How about adding it back to the set list? Next time Dickey Betts and Great Southern are in your town, don¹t miss the show. At the end of the interview, Dickey said how he loves his fans and that they seem like they are all a bunch of his friends. Then he thanked me for doing the interview and told me that he would love to have me stop up on the tour bus so he can check out some of my guitars. I¹ll see you next time you are back in New Jersey.

BG Do you think your leads out, or do they just come naturally while you are playing?
DB Oh no I don't think them out. That's the last thing I want to do. I think one of the best expressions that has come along lately is to describe a lot of these kind of bands as Jam Bands. I mean that's really what we have all been doing for so long. Southern Rock is a great way to describe a certain bunch of bands, but it didn't really have much to do with the music.

BG It's just where you grew up
DB Yes, they are all influenced by a little country, a little jazz and some urban blues. Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers are totally different sounding bands. The Jam Band thing explains it a lot better. We always used to try to call it progressive rock.

BG When I look at the Allman Brothers, it is almost one of the biggest mismatches that shouldn't have worked but did. The two drummers have totally different styles, I never would have thought of putting them both together.
DB To me it does make sense. Butch was the real pile driving freight train kind of drummer, where as Jaimoe would put all the nice colors and effects in around Butch. Actually Duane and I weren't as different as one might think. We both had the same idea about playing. We just went about it differently. He had a totally different tone than I did, but we both had the same idea about how to get a song across.

BG How did you put your harmonies together?
DB We play a 1-3-5. Usually Danny plays the third over me and the horn plays the fifth under me.

BG When you and Duane were playing you were one of the first bands to put the harmonies together like you did.
DB There were a lot of bands that had two guitar players in them, but I think that the Allman Brothers really used them playing at the same time together more than I had seen anybody else do at the time.

BG Usually it was one rhythm and one lead guitar, where you both played the leads together.
DB Like Jerry and Bob Weir, one would play rhythm and the other one would play lead whereas Duane and I, or really the band even before that the band Second Coming, you know we had two guitars in that band with Berry Oakley, myself and Larry Reinhardt. Actually in that band, Reese Weyman played in that band and he went on to play with Jerry Jeff Walker and Stevie Ray Vaughn

BG They came out with a second signature guitar for you, the red one. What specifications did you give them for that one?
DB Well see what happened, my '57 I loaned it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a couple of years and when it just sat there, the paint, you know that metal flake oxidized so terribly that it had this green squish looking stuff all over it. It didn't have anything to do with the Hall of Fame it was just when the air starts getting to the Nickle metal flake that they put in it, it starts to turn to this putrid looking green. I took some real light 0.015 grit almost like steel wool and tried to get it out, but the more I messed with it, the worse it looked, so I just took it down myself. I just took it down to bare wood and refinished it myself using nitro cellulose. Then I took a belt buckle where you plug it in and I put a concho where the toggle switch is and Gibson saw it and they loved it so the decided they wanted to make another guitar.

BG Do you play the red guitar that Gibson made for you?
DB Gibson gave me two guitars, a red one and a gold one. I play both of those and I leave the '57 at home now. Well, it's almost 50 years old now. I tell you the custom shop guitars that they are building sound so good. Actually, I play the gold one more than I play the red one, because it sounds better.

BG Could it be because they scarfed the back of the red one?
DB I asked them to scarf the back for me. Real friendly (Laughs)

BG Do you think that might be the difference in the tone? The missing wood?
DB I don't think so. It could be, but it sounds better than my '57. You sound like you're a guitar player. You can take five vintage Fender Stratocasters and five vintage Les Pauls and they can all sound different. It's just how the wood happens to turns out.

BG Do you like big necks or little necks?
DB I like a medium sized neck. Not the real big baseball bat neck.

BG Did your Gold Top have a big neck?
DB With my original Gold Top, Gibson said that they think they ran out of Les Paul necks and put a SG neck on it. It has a real thin neck on it, but on the ones that they make for me, I have them put a thicker neck on it. The neck that is on my '57 is kind of like the neck that you would get on an ES-335. I just don't use a lot of effects and I try to get my amps biased just right. I always have them put a little more treble into those Marshalls than they come with. You know. Try to find a good piece of wood.

BG What do you have done to the amps?
DB They just bias the tubes and tune it with a little more treble. I don't beef them up or anything.

BG So they are totally stock?
DB Yeah. Totally stock. Like I said, the cabinets aren't stock, they have JBL 120's in them.

BG Didn't you cut half of the backs out?
DB You know sometimes I do cut just one third out of it like a twin amp. The ones that I am using now do not have the backs cut out. For outdoors you don't want to do that. You want solid backs. If you are playing a club or a theater, it's nice to have the backs cut. Actually Jerry Garcia turned me on to that. Just take one-third out of the middle. What it does is it kind of flowers the sound up on stage. It makes it kind of come up on stage, instead of shooting it straight out. Of course outdoors, you want to get the sound out there in front of you.

BG Do you use anything different in the studio than on stage?
DB Yeah, I experiment quite a bit in the studio. Probably most of my stuff is done with my stage amp, but I have used little Fender amps, Pro Juniors. It's a great little amp. I've got a couple of old vintage Fender amps and I've got a Gibson Ranger. It's got a twelve-inch speaker in it. I experiment around in the studio with different amps.

BG If someone wanted to learn your style or copy you, what would you suggest that they do?
DB The thing that is most indicative of my style is the pentatonic scale. It's a real melodic six note scale. Just listen to Rambling Man. I think it is probably the most revealing of that scale, but it's a nice melodic way of playing. Then I have stuff like Elizabeth Reed which is a minor scale, so there is a lot more to my playing than just the pentatonic scale, but I think when people think of my style, I think they think of Jessica, Rambling Man and Blue Sky and that's all the six note scale.

BG Listen to those songs?
DB Yeah, for that part of my playing. Elizabeth Reed is totally different than that. I've been doing it a long time. I guess a twenty year old guy is going to learn a lot by the time he is thirty or forty. I think everybody does the same thing that I have done, just listen to other players and pick up things here and there.

BG Now you are the guy they are listening to.
DB I think Garcia, Santana and I have a lot in common.

BG Where do you see yourself going from now? Do you see yourself doing some more acoustic or stick with electric?
DB I'm not planning on doing any more acoustic. We play an acoustic set for about a half an hour or forty minutes, but my main thing is with the electric guitar.

BG You surprised me that you were playing a classical acoustic.
DB Yeah, that's a lot of fun. I just got started doing that when we did that acoustic album and actually we were only going play it on one or two songs. The difference between Danny's Ovation guitar with silk and steel strings on it, the way the tones blended sounded so nice, that I just stuck with the gut string all the way through and I kind of fell in love with it and the thing is that it makes me play different cause I can't bend any strings.

BG Is it because of the neck's width?
DB Those nylon strings don't bend like the steel strings.

BG They kind of roll.
DB Yeah, you can only get about a half a step out of them, so it makes me play different and it makes me learn new things. I'm getting a kick out of the nylon strings. I've got a Montero here that is made in Spain. It's not an assembly line. It is made by one guy.

BG I saw you last November in New Jersey and people came from all over to see you. There were even people from as far as Ohsweken Ontario Canada. They were following you all over the country.
DB Well, we are doing good and we are enjoying it incredibly. The people that come to see us are wonderful. It's like they are our best friends. We get to know everybody. Of course everybody wants to play the bigger places because that means that you are doing well, but I tell you what, it is nice to play the smaller places. I like that I really get to know the people on a personal kind of thing.

BG Your band acts like they are playing for a bunch of friends.
DB The music is what it's all about and if there wasn't anybody coming to see it, then the music wouldn't be worth anything. It's kind of nice the way it works out. I tell you these guys are a great bunch of guys. It's really a gas working with them.