Gregg Allman has a brand new solo album out - Low Country Blues - his first in over a decade and the finest collection of blues material with his name on the spine.

Universal has kindly given me three copies to offer to Blog On The Tracks readers. So check out my interview with Gregg here and be in to win.

I spoke with Allman just before Christmas. He was very excited about his new album - and with good reason. Straight away, in a voice that suggested he could/should be whittling a stick on a porch Allman matched my opening praise for his latest efforts.

"Why thank you sir", he said, in his best southern gent style. "I love the record myself. I think it's the best shot I could offer, and the best shot I could give. I really do.

"I think it's the best record I could hope for and so I'm just thrilled to hear someone else say that they like it".

There are quiet laughs - signalling a form of relief.

The album was a a huge effort but the result of course is that it all sounds, well, effortless.

"That's true", Allman adds. "It's got a lovely feel to it that I'm just really pleased with - I really, truly, couldn't have wished for any better. And you know I wasn't exactly planning to make another album any time soon, so that just makes it all the more better".

So let me explain - with some of Gregg's words too - a bit about how Low Country Blues was born.

Gregg with brother, Duane, formed The Allman Brothers Band in the late 1960s. Duanne was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971. He was just 24 years old and had performed sessions for all manner of people from Laura Nyro and Aretha Franklin to Wilson Pickett and Otis Rush.

He had collaborated with Eric Clapton for the Derek & The Dominoes album, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs and of course had laid the groundwork for the jazz-tinged boogie-blues of The Allman Brothers Band with his younger brother Gregg.

"He was already a guitar hero, already a legend when it came to blues and boogie and southern rock" Gregg says.

But Duane's early death did not stop The Allman Brothers Band. Gregg started his solo career in 1973 and masked the pain of losing his brother with drugs and alcohol ("it was the time, it was what we did, we didn't know we were running from anything at the time, we just took the stuff, we just did it").

The Allman Brothers Band continued with Gregg's vocals and organ playing, with occasional guitar from him also. The band still plays to this day.

Gregg's personal life is a tale of survival. He has been married half a dozen times including - most famously - to Cher.

He continued to mask his pain with booze, with drugs and continued working. He released half a dozen solo albums - including the career-suicide duet album with Cher, they were billed as Allman and Woman - the album Two The Hard Way is Gregg's worst. Worse than that, it might also be Cher's worst.

And for the last 20 years he has alternated between leading The Allman Brothers Band around America and Europe, releasing new material sporadically - and his own band, the billing alternates between The Gregg Allman Band and Gregg Allman & Friends.

So now we have his first studio album in over a decade - an album that is very much the culmination of far too much life, of so much music; it's also very much a brand new start.

To add to the sadness that has ridden sidesaddle with Allman on the long, dusty trail, producer and friend Tom Dowd passed away in 2002.

"When Tom died", Allman tells me, "I figured that was it. No hope, ever, of doing another record. I mean it just seemed like there would never be any point.

"My heart just broke. I mean he was like a funnel to the recording studio, you either went with him or you didn't go at all. He was all I knew and all I wanted to know. End of story.

"He was having trouble with his lung and then, next thing, 'poof', he's gone! I mean I was just without words", he pauses, "I didn't want to work again. I knew that much".

Enter T-Bone Burnett. The soundtrack and record producer who has worked with everyone from Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello to Ryan Bingham and Gillian Welch - and who is very much the "sound" of the Coen brothers movies (most famously O Brother, Where Art Thou?) was not known to Allman.

"I had never heard of 'im" - he breaks with the serious tone and laughs heartily.

"I'm aware, now, of all the good work he has done - the man's a genius - but I was in my bubble, doing my thing, so used to working with Tom, I just did not know who he was. I was very reluctant but the suggestion was made - a meeting took place and I just loved T-Bone's approach.

"He had with him a portable hard-drive and he had all these great old blues tunes, literally thousands of songs from way back to one hundred years ago and then on up to the 1960s and he was marking out a few for me to listen to and we were sharing ideas and it was just all very natural.

"He was full of good ideas and he was very easy to work with. A dream. I mean, you have to understand this comes from someone who was not really thinking about making another record. So he made it very easy".

The band also helped.

"Oh my god", Allman enthuses, "it was a dream-team, it really was. These guys just played out of their skins and it was just such a rewarding thing for all of us. Just the best record of my life".

We'll get to the players in a minute but there's a reason that line - "just best record of my life" - hangs there, so pertinent; so poignant.

Hard living caught up with Allman and he underwent liver transplant surgery in 2010, delaying the release of the album.

He was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2007 and says again, "my generation...we were all just such heavy drug takers. We didn't know no different. We didn't know no other way.

"It was what we did. And that's going to come back and hit ya - and it got me. But I've been clean a while now, I quit it all - finally - 16 years ago, thank god".

He's feeling healthy now. He tells me the new liver is good, but "it was heavy - really heavy. It was the most painful thing that has happened to me. The most painful thing in my life and I know about pain in my life. God took care of me, that's all I can say, and I'm so thankful for that".

So, there you have some of the context around this album - the long life/lives of touring and recording - the binges, the sadness, the deaths. Now let's look at what T-Bone Burnett and the band did to bring out this incredible performance from Gregg.

"We just clicked - all of us. I mean this was an incredible experience", Allman reiterates. He's talking about T-Bone Burnett's approach to begin with.

"He just made it so easy for me - I mean we picked songs, we shuffled them around and then we just got to making arrangements and I just sang my heart out.

"T-Bone'll catch them first takes - we did a few of them. And, oh my, that scared me to death, I'll tell ya. But he got 'em, he did. The first track on the album - Floating Bridge - is an example. We set up in the studio, and we're really just getting comfortable and we run through, I sang one down, we stomped it out and then at the end it felt pretty good and I said, almost sorta joking, 'well, it was a shame you didn't have the recording going for that' and T-Bone says 'you just have a look through there, that ole red light's been on the whole time, just come on in here and check it out' - oh my, I tell you that was scary. But we got it".

It helped that among the great players helping with the effortless feel was an old friend of Gregg's, Dr. John.

"Well Mac [Rebennack] is just the man, I tell you. He just came in and nailed it - and he sounds like Ray [Charles]", here there's a slight waver in Allman's voice; I can hear him choked up at the thought.

"He sounded like Ray - he really did. And that, that was just so great, I mean that's it isn't it. That's all anyone could want. No one can play like Ray. Yet, he can!"

It was nice for Allman and Rebennack, older, with clearer heads, to reconnect.

"Well, we're old buddies, but it was like meeting someone for the first time - previously it was like looking out through a fog but now all that fog is gone, from both of us, on both sides", and here there's no pang, no sadness just a warm chuckle.

"So, yeah, it was a happy reunion - he's an old touring buddy, we both know the road and, my god, he's playing as good as he ever did - and we're no longer seeing through the fog which is how it was for all of us, pretty much, back then..."

Allman's own guitar can be heard and his organ too but the lead guitars on the record belong to Doyle Bramhall II - "a freak" according to Gregg Allman.

"That guy!" he says and laughs instantly. "I mean, are you kidding, backwards and upside down, left hand, just like Albert King. I mean I was just watching him going 'did you hang upside down and practice staring in to a mirror, how does that work?' you know what I mean..." and he trails off in to laughter.

The album features songs by B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy among others.

Allman would love to come to New Zealand - but he can't make any promises just yet.

"Well, I've always wanted to head there because I'm a keen fisherman, so I'm interested in going there for the fishing - but sure I'd love to play too".

There'll be shows with his Gregg Allman band and shows with The Allman Brothers Band and though both work as separate entities, Gregg says he's aware that there are songs people want to hear and need to hear.

"We'll always do things like Midnight Rider and Whipping Post whichever band I'm in, Melissa too - I mean these are signature songs, they're ones I just have to do. So we work 'em up a little differently in each band but we deliver 'em and people like 'em". It's a wry, knowing chuckle this time.

There will be shows around America and Europe, Allman is sure of that - beyond that it's guesswork, but he reiterates that he'd love to come to New Zealand.

"We should really bring The Allman Brothers Band down for that though, right? You guys would want to see that - we'd play for a long time for ya, that's the best thing we got from my generation of rockers - we know how to do the show.

"You know we might have been a bit naughty but we learned the craft and we had a bunch of songs that people liked. We always played 'em and people always came to see us - and I'm talking about all the people from my generation, all these bands, some still doing it like The Allmans, others that aren't doing it anymore. God bless originality".

Low Country Blues by Gregg Allman is released today. Thanks to Universal I have three copies to giveaway. To win a copy answer ONE of the following questions - one guess only:

1. What is my favourite film starring Gregg Allman?

2.  What activity would bring Allman to New Zealand beyond touring?

3. What guitar player, mentioned in the last two weeks here at Blog On The Tracks has a special connection to The Allman Brothers Band - and has been compared to the late, great Duanne Allman?

Pick one of those questions and jot it down below. The first three correct answers will each win a copy of the album - you will not win if you answer more than one in your comment.

So who's excited to hear Gregg Allman's new album? Any Allman Brothers fans out there? What are you favourite albums/tracks? Anyone ever seen the Allmans live in any capacity?

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