Gregg Allman earlier in the tour – photo by Dino Perrucci

Allman Brothers Band
Bank of America Pavilion, Boston, MA
August 7

The Allman Brothers are still one of the most reliable shows on the scene, but let’s not kid ourselves: this is a band somewhere in the middle of its long fade to black. Gregg’s health is an issue that’s gone from a nag to a worry, there’s been almost no new original material in nearly a decade, let alone an album’s worth, Warren and Derek (and for that matter, Oteil) want to park their creative impulses elsewhere — and who’s to blame ‘em? — and hey, if we’re in year 43 of one of the legendary careers in rock, the pragmatic among us admit that the Allmans have been playing with house money for a good long while now.

Does it mean they’re no longer a pulverizing concert force? Absolutely not — they’ll crush you if the planets align favorably. But if you’ve bought into the notion that a bounty of new original material is on the way or that there’s any hope of returning to regular national tours or bringing the balls-to-the-wall A-game night after night, well, we can probably get you a good price on this bridge we’re selling, right?

And yet (there’s always an “and yet” with this crew), there’s still the likelihood of raze and dazzle. The Allmans seem to give a little something extra for Boston, long one of their most reliable markets not called New York or Atlanta. And in night one of a two-night stand down by Boston Harbor — inarguably the band’s best and most consistent shows of 2012 — they roared to life in the opening strains of “Statesboro Blues” and stayed lively, sometimes electrifyingly so, for nearly three hours. There were warhorses, jams and comfortably familiar late-era Allmans touchpoints — guests, guitar duels, Van Morrison songs — and as ever, snatches — the coursing jam in “Revival” to close set one, for example — of what might be if they’d continue to open up old songs in new and invigorating ways.

But you take what you get from these still-smiling Allmans, and in Boston, the triumphs were most of all Gregg’s, singing as capably and as forcefully as he has in ages, and Warren’s, busting loose from his catalog of familiar riffs and tight-knit solos and getting really bombastic, particularly during “Dreams” and a savagely beautiful “Liz Reed.” What was encouraging for the entire band was the willingness to keep things full-throttle; the obligatory, but always-welcome Susan Tedeschi appearance during Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice,” for example, was a cool-down during set one, rather than a placeholder. Setlist pacing was bravura throughout, in fact, and even when it came time for the set two guest gang-bang — “The Same Thing” featured Max Creek/Mike Gordon stalwart Scott Murawski, and percussionist Eguie Castrillo, and drummer Kenwood Dennard, and Jaimoe band saxophonist Paul Lieberman — it felt like just the right time for a loose, limber jam session. Where was all this comfort, accessibility, passion and fire at the Beacon this year?