NHOR : What's coming next for the Allman Brothers Band? It's been 6 years since the release of 'Hittin' The Note' in 2003. Can we expect a new studio album anytime soon? BT I don't know. With the state of the music industry, the record industry specifically these days, I don't really see the reason why. You damn sure don't do it to make money anymore. In fact, you lose a lot of money going into the studio. It's very expensive. Once kids started the whole Napster, stealing music online, I don't think they understood what they were doing. Because by doing this, they've made it so that the major bands won't go in the studio and spend that money to make records anymore. Because what's the point? If people are going to steal it, you're going to lose money, so a lot of music that would've been made, that people could have enjoyed and listened to, never got made. It's getting much worse. There are fewer and fewer major records being made, in terms of studio albums. That being said, we've always been a live band anyway. I tend to think, there's a lot of new material floating around we'd have liked to have worked up, but we just had two weeks of rehearsal. We had to spend just about all those two weeks learning a whole bunch of songs to play with all the guests who are coming to sit in with us. So we didn't get a lot of time to work on our own material. But at some point we will. I tend to think rather than wasting six figures in a major recording studio that we'll just work up this material and start recording us playing them live. We record every show that we do on 72 track digital, so I tend to think our next album will be a compilation of new material that we've recorded live on the road. That way, we put it out, the expense is minimal, because we expect sales to be minimal. Right now the #1 seller of songs in the world is iTunes. Kids don't go to the store and buy CD's much anymore.

NHOR : Many of the brick and mortar stores are closing up shop today anyway... BT : You're right, record stores are closing. Like I said, it's very difficult to sell your product anymore. People have to understand that this is the way we make our living. It just frustrates the hell out of me. If you've got somebody who works in a store making clocks, how would they feel if it was their store making clocks and everybody just walked in, picked them up and walked out with them? Are they going to keep making clocks? It is the same concept. No one would just normally walk into a store, pick up a shirt and walk our with it, but they don't seem to have any qualms at all about stealing songs. Like I said, these songs cost us a lot of time and money and effort. It's what we do so that we can feed our families, pay our rent. Luckily, as The Allman Brothers we do quite well playing live concerts, so we've been able to feed our families and pay our rent. In fact, it's got really good the past several years. - Read the full interview here

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