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Gregg Allman, with the help of producer T Bone Burnett, awakens musical spirits on Low Country Blues. © Larry Marano /Retna Ltd./Corbis

On Low Country Blues, Gregg Allman connects with the music and souls that defined his sound - and, by extension, helped form the foundation of The Allman Brothers Band - with such passion and reverence that listening to it is almost like curling up with somebody else's diary. BB King, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, Skip James - these aren't mere influences; to Allman, they're family members. He knows their secrets in ways we never could, but on this ameliorating journey he tells their tales...and his own.

Produced by T Bone Burnett, a man whose roots are steeped in the same swamp water and moonshine as Allman's, Low Country Blues, is a spooky and spiritual all-covers affair with the exception of Just Another Rider, an Allman-Warren Haynes collaboration that sounds neither forced nor incongruous. Backed by an impeccable assortment of players, from legends like Dr John to the rising hotshot Doyle Bramhall II, it's a stone-cold triumph by a man who looked death right in the face (Allman received a liver transplant last year) and lived to fight another day.

Funnily enough, Allman, who cut his last solo record in 1997, wasn't sure he had another one in him - or the will to try. The death of his longtime friend and producer Tom Dowd in 2002 shook him to the core. "That was a huge thing," Allman says. "When Tom died, I didn't want to even hear about making albums and stuff. 'Recording? What's that?' I just didn't wanna know. I was disillusioned about the whole idea of breaking in another producer. All of a sudden, there's a new guy in the band - you know how that can be. But T Bone had the right stuff. He knew where I was comin' from. He got me thinking that a new record wouldn't be such a bad idea."

Judging from the album's top five debut last week, Allman's fans couldn't agree more. "Man, that blew me away, seeing it come in like that," the singer says with a chuckle. "You hope for it, but you never expect it. Needless to say, it's very gratifying. This is a record I feel very special about, so to see people accepting it, that's pretty nice."

MusicRadar spoke with Gregg Allman recently about the recording of Low Country Blues, his admiration for T Bone Burnett, his love of vintage Hammond B-3s, the state of his health and what's on the horizon for The Allman Brothers Band.

I understand that one of the main reasons you went with T Bone Burnett as a producer was because of the respect he had for Tom Dowd, who produced many of the classic Allman Brothers records.

"That's right. T Bone brought him up right away - said he patterned a lot of his stuff after Tom and all that. I wasn't prepared for that. Yeah, he had lot of great things to say about Tom, and I could tell it was genuine. That got me thinking, 'OK, there might be something to this guy. I should hang with him and see what his approach might be.'"

Let me ask you about Tom Dowd. What did he bring to your early records that was so special?

"Tom was a beautiful guy and a dear friend. He had a great way about him in the studio. The reason we kept going back to him and working with him was because we knew it was going to be a fun and easy experience. No yelling, no fighting - not that there weren't occasional problems; you always get a little of that. But a lot of producers act like Attila The Hun when you're making a record; they have this 'my way or the highway' thing, which is totally unnecessary, in my opinion.

"Now, you can pull the plug on a producer any time if you want, unless they're intertwined in your record contract in some way, and then you're screwed. Tom always went to great lengths to make us all comfortable in the studio. He made sure everything was clear, that everybody knew what we were doing and why. There was no guessing with him. We always felt safe with Tom. He was like part of the band. He was a total gentleman. Not many guys like him."

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