Dickey Betts and Great Southern
Canyon Club
Agoura Hills, CA
August 22

Fortunately for Dickey Betts and his loyal supporters, the distillation of his 45-year career into a two-hour performance yields a far different result than that of tamed whisky. One is meant to remove the imperfections, and with aging offer a smooth, refined result. The other, if this summer night in Southern California is any indication, displayed the 70-year-old six-string master and his unreconstructed Great Southern band remaining satisfyingly raucous and raw.

The Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famer, flanked on his frontline by Andy Aledort and Betts’ son Duane on guitars as well as bassist Pedro Arevalo and Mike Kach on keyboards, rose out of a wash of Marshall amps running red-hot into opener “High Falls,” an instrumental from the 1975 Allman Brothers Band album Win, Lose or Draw. It was the first of a mostly Brothers-laden set, including the night’s second entry, “Statesboro Blues,” a mainstay of his former mates, with Kach handling the vocals on this one as well as on the ensemble’s rumbling rendition of “You Don’t Love Me.” As for Betts, his hill-country whine, alternating between barrelhouse swagger and sweet tea melody, graced “Nothing You Can Do” and “Blue Sky,” the latter featuring a nod to the Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower” before being plagued in its closing harmonies by on-stage monitor issues.

To a mostly-seated, close to capacity crowd, Betts and company slid into centerpiece “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” its syncopated three-guitar symphony weaving neatly through the composed first section before providing Betts, the younger, a platform for a patient, yet palpitating extended solo. Not to be outdone, Betts, the elder, bobbed methodically behind the beat before finishing his sentence with a blistering flurry, leading into the firecracker barrage of dual drummers Kenny Crawley and Frankie Lombardi, briefly referencing Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone From The Sun” at its climax. The evening’s second half touched off with the Bo Diddley-inspired “No One To Run With,” into a penultimate “Ramblin’ Man,” complete with audience sing-along and a broken string quickly remedied with a swap of Les Pauls, Betts never missing a note of the mounting outro. Dipping back into his legendary cache of instrumentals for an encore, “Jessica” gave the players plenty of spotlight and their audience, another rousing ride through Betts’ remarkable musical past.

With so much history under the wheels and really nothing left to prove, it’s exhilarating to hear Betts perform at this level on the second night of a short, four-date run up the Golden State. He’d be forgiven if he played a compact, cursory concert, his snow white beard the hallmark of his mellowing, but that’s never been his style. Dickey Betts isn’t a spirit meant for sipping.