A new documentary about Greg Allman is turning back to the wound that never healed: the 1971 death of his brother, Duane Allman, and the grief that shaped the rest of his life. Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul traces the saga of the Allman Brothers Band from Gregg Allman’s point of view, and a new trailer shows vintage 1970s footage of him speaking with painful honesty about the loss.
“I was mad at him for dying,” Allman says in the trailer. “I was mad at life.” He adds, “You never know how much you’re leaning on someone until they die.” Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, and the words land with added force because Gregg Allman himself died in 2017, leaving behind a story that now arrives as both memory and farewell.
The film will have a premiere event on June 9 at New York’s Gramercy Theater, where Devon Allman is set to give a special acoustic performance with Duane Betts, the son of the late Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts. Another screening follows on June 11 at the Grand Opera House in Macon, Georgia, with Chuck Leavell appearing at that event. The documentary opens June 17 on more than 200 screens across America.
Directed by James Keach and made in association with Rolling Stone Films, the project is executive produced by Rolling Stone’s Alexandra Dale. It looks back at a band story that was never just about hit songs or Southern rock mythology. Gregg Allman led the Allman Brothers Band for 45 years through success, setbacks, addictions and internal squabbling, and the film argues that the early loss at the center of that life helped set the rest in motion.
Keach has said Duane’s death drove Gregg Allman deep into addiction, a claim that gives the trailer’s memories a harsher edge. The documentary also arrives with a bigger sense of finality now that Jaimoe, born Jai Johanny Johanson, is the last surviving member of the original incarnation of the Allman Brothers Band. What the film offers, then, is not just a retrospective on a famous group, but a record of how one brother’s death echoed through the life of the other for decades.
