Today I am in Macon to celebrate Kirk West’s 75th birthday, a fine day to pay tribute to the man known as the Tour Mystic, and the individual most responsible for my transition from journalist covering the Allman Brothers Band to an ABB insider.
We met in 1990, when I did my first big Allman Brothers piece, for Tower Pulse magazine upon the release of Seven Turns. (I need to share that piece, which changed my life.) By the next year, I was working as Guitar World Managing Editor and we became increasingly friendly as I kept writing about the ABB. To make a long story short, I went to his house in Chicago where we spent three days, doing interviews, smoking cigarettes, listening to music and going through boxes of photos and other archival material. This was all in the service of me ghost writing a story with him on the band’s history. We worked very closely on it for weeks on end and got along great, and he loved the way it came out, then started asking me to work with him on archival releases and other things.
Rebecca and I visited Kirk and Kirsten in Macon shortly after they bought the Big House, which started the process towards it becoming the fabulous museum it is now. They are the primary reason that the Big House Museum exists and I will say so every opportunity I have, because they went through hell and high water to make it so.
When Kirk and I met, he was well known as both an intimidating presence patrolling the ABB stage and the friendly guy who helped the ABB fan community be a community. I saw him in action on both the friendly and tough guy front many times, and it took me a long time to realize how hard he had to work to front bring a tough guy. Like me, Kirk is really a lover not a fighter. He also was an ex addict who chain smoked filterless Camels, lighting one cigarette off another - 4 packs a day, I think. Then he quit cold turkey, with the help of an acupuncturist. One of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed. I’m not sure any sentence has ever surprised me more than hearing Kirk say, “I don’t smoke anymore.”
He’s now been one of my best friends for decades, and we have stirred up some shit together! I am very proud to have helped bring him back into the ABB world he had left behind after retiring from the road when I asked him to be the photo editor of One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. For all these reasons and many more, he was a crucial part of the writing of my last book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s. Details below in the book’s excerpted Author’s Note.
One final word on Kirk: he is an absolutely brilliant photographer, a rock icon for that alone and my house is filled with his images, because I bring one back every time i go to Macon. Probably will have one in my bag Sunday as I head home. Amazingly, it took me probably 20 years of friendship before I realized the depth of his talent with a camera. His books, Les Brers and Blues in Black and White, are both fantastic.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIRK WEST!
BROTHERS AND SISTERS - AUTHOR’S NOTE
In September 2021, I flew back from Macon, Georgia, carrying a dusty suitcase full of hundreds of cassette tapes that an old friend promised would shed new light on the Allman Brothers Band and American culture.
Kirk West, the longtime Allman Brothers insider, had recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with the band in the mid-1980s for a book he never wrote. Some forty years had passed, and no one had ever listened to most of them—not even Kirk. I carried the precious cargo on the plane with tender, loving care, as if I were transporting sacred texts. I had already started writing this book, convinced that there was a lot more to be said about the Allman Brothers and their impact on America beyond music, even after so much had been written about the band, including my own bestselling oral history One Way Out.
The era that was the most crucial yet most under-explored was the time before and after Brothers and Sisters, an album recorded and released in 1973. It became the Allman Brothers Band’s first true hit, pushing them beyond their devoted circle of hardcore fans to superstardom as they rose above the status of great American rock band to become a national institution. Telling the story of the album reveals a larger story, a story about the nation itself.
I dug into the making of the album and the events of 1971–76, stitching together a broader story that explains how and why the band was so deeply influential period during this period. They helped elect Jimmy Carter. They hosted the largest rock concert ever. They were at the center of events involving a who’s who list, including Cher, the Grateful Dead, and Geraldo Rivera. I did thorough research and dozens of fresh interviews, but my secret weapon was contained in that suitcase: Kirk’s cache of never-before-heard interviews.
The subjects were talking to someone they deeply trusted during a lull in their careers. In the mid-1980s, the band was twice broken up with no plans to reunite, and everyone was bracingly honest and deeply reflective and insightful. When the Allman Brothers Band did reunite in 1989, Kirk became a central figure during their final twenty-five years together, serving as “Tour Mystic,” photographer, and historian, as well as conceiving and founding Macon’s Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House.
Before any of that, however, he was a major fan researching a book and conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with founding members Dickey Betts, Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, and Jaimoe, as well as crew members, wives, siblings, and promoters like Bill Graham. When Kirk got hired by the band, he shelved the book and stored his tapes in the two-sided case, which was stashed under a desk in his office and left to gather dust until he entrusted it to me.
I digitized the cassettes with the help of Alan Friedman, a local audio expert, and spent endless hours listening to the members and their extended band family tell their stories and share their thoughts. The interviews provided original insights beyond what I could have imagined, leading me to a deeper understanding not only of this era but of the band’s entire history and the real personalities and motivations of the members, and their relationships with one another.
There is a symmetry in having Kirk’s interviews hold such a central spot in this book. He is the reason I became an Allman Brothers insider in the first place. Our relationship began grounded in mutual professional respect and blossomed over thirty-plus years into one of my most valued and important friendships. Kirk was with me every step of the way in writing Brothers and Sisters.
Excerpted from Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, copyright Alan Paul, 2023.
Note also that the audiobook includes 40 clips from these interviews! You can buy it here.
Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was my third straight instant New York Times bestseller, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book was Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band. It was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer who fronts two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band. We may well be playing near you soon. Click here to find out.
Happy birthday, Kirk! Alan, I’m so glad you and Kirk had the foresight to document and preserve this wonderful band of brothers!
Happy Birthday Kirk! and many more. Kirk probably doesn't remember me but we corresponded a bit in the early 90's. Not long after he bought the Big House, maybe '92? My wife and I were headed to Florida and he invited us to stop in. Sadly, we were on a tight schedule and could not but I always appreciated his kind offer to a virtual stranger. He knew I was a huge ABB fan, so that was good enough. We did stop by Rose Hill to pay our respects to Duane and Berry. Have a great day Kirk. Thanks again. Kevin B