Southbound bring the Allman Brothers songbook to Wooly's in March

The tribute band's Friday, Mar 5 date in the East Village is on sale now, four months out.

March in Des Moines is still a coat-and-gloves month. Wooly's has just put something on the calendar to make one of those Fridays feel a lot warmer.

Southbound, a tribute to The Allman Brothers Band, plays Wooly's on Friday, Mar 5, 2027, at 8 p.m. The show was announced Oct 16, and tickets are on sale now through AXS. Four months is a long lead for a Friday-night club show, which is the point: if this is your kind of night, there is no reason to wait for the week-of scramble.

The songbook Southbound is drawing on is one of the most played-out-loud catalogs in American rock, and much of its reputation rests on a live record. The Allman Brothers Band cut At Fillmore East over two nights in March 1971, Wikipedia notes, and it has since been ranked again and again among the greatest live albums ever made; The Independent named it the greatest of all time in 2020. Much of that legacy comes down to the twin-lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, a sound Guitar Player credits with shaping the decade that followed. When Pollstar marked the album's 50th anniversary in 2021, it called the record the cornerstone of countless Allman Brothers concerts.

That history is what a tribute band is really selling: not a costume, but the chance to hear long, improvised versions of these songs played loud by people who have studied them. The Allman Brothers built their legend on stage rather than in the studio, and the only way to hear that music the way it was meant to be heard now is in a room like this one. It also happens that this date falls a week shy of 56 years since those Fillmore nights.

Wooly's is a fitting spot for it. The club at 504 E. Locust St. opened as a music venue in 2012 after a renovation added a bar, green rooms, lighting and a stage, and it quickly became one of the city's busiest rooms, booking 12 to 20 shows a month, according to its AXS venue page. It has hosted acts from Andrew McMahon to The Struts and Grouplove. It sits in the East Village, a neighborhood whose current name dates to a 1998 makeover of the old East Side commercial district, as the Business Record has chronicled, and it is an easy walk from the bars and restaurants along Locust and Grand.

What to know before you go: Wooly's is primarily cashless, per AXS, so bring a card. It is a standing room, so comfortable shoes beat good ones. And with an 8 p.m. start on a Friday, there is time for dinner in the East Village first.

Put it on the calendar now. By March, you will be glad something is there.

Sources: At Fillmore East - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Here's Why the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East Still Holds Up 50 Years Later (Guitar Player) (guitarplayer.com); Recorded Live: The Allman Brothers At Fillmore East Turns 50 (Pollstar) (news.pollstar.com); Wooly's - AXS venue page (axs.com); The Elbert Files: East Village history (Business Record) (businessrecord.com); AXS - Southbound (Allman Brothers Band Tribute) tickets (axs.com)