So began the opening night of the Allman Brothers Band's annual New York City residency at the Beacon Theatre Friday night (March 7). It will likely be their last.

In January, Haynes and Trucks announced that they are leaving the band after this year. A few weeks later, namesake and co-founder, Gregg Allman said in an interview with Relix, "This is it-this is the end of it. Forty-five years is enough and I want to do something else, anyway."

Still, it was an acknowledgement of the importance of Haynes and Trucks that they opened the show as a duo, without Allman or other remaining founding members Butch Trucks and Jaimoe. The Allmans aren't a band to speak much from the stage, but the decision to open with this spoke volumes.

After the opening number, the rest of the band - Allman, drummers Butch Trucks and Jaimoe, percussionist Marc Quinones and bassist Oteil Burbridge - joined the guitar duo on stage and launched into, appropriately, "No One To Run With" from 1994′s Where It All Begins. The song, now twenty years old, saw Allman and founding guitarist Dickey Betts, who wrote it, but was dismissed from the group in 2000, looking back at a wild life, marveling that they're still around to talk about it.