Duane Betts released his sophomore album ‘Isle of Hope’ earlier this month on Sun Records.
Dylan Wade Cox/Contributed
As Duane Betts traveled into the recording studio each day to work on his sophomore album, a sign would catch his attention.
The roadside marker welcomed him to Isle Of Hope, the neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia, where he and his band cut a new collection of songs.
The name stuck with Betts. Eventually, it took on a new meaning.
“What it means to me is just giving you that sanctuary — a place to escape from all the noise in the world, which is really what music is about,” said Betts, the 48-year-old son of late Allman Brothers Band co-founder Dickey Betts. He continued, “When people go to concerts, my father always used to say that we just want to give everybody a little reprieve, a three-hour reprieve from all of their daily stresses and let them forget about the outside world. The same goes for listening to a record. You become, kind of, immersed in it.”
After some deliberation, Betts named his 10-song album Isle of Hope. An LP as full of reflective, heartfelt storytelling as it is oozing with rowdy Southern rock lineage, Betts released Isle of Hope last month via legendary rock ’n’ roll label Sun Records. The release follows 2023 solo debut Wild & Precious Life. When not working on solo material, many may recognize Betts from his role in Allman Betts Band, a group founded by children of original Allman Brothers members.
Betts recorded Isle of Hope in the aforementioned Georgia studio with sought-after producer Dave Cobb, a nine-time Grammy Award winner who has worked with Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell … and the list goes on.
“It was a very cathartic experience, for me, recording these songs,” Betts said. “We had a lot of fun.”
Betts On ‘Heartache’
The album opens with “Heartache,” a pensive, psychedelic rock tune Betts wrote in wake of his father’s death; Dickey Betts died in April 2024 at age 80. Backed by a slow-burning, kaleidoscopic arrangement, he sings: “Heartache/ There’s nothing you can do.”
The song leans into inspiration from artists like David Gilmour and Pink Floyd, which Betts said he first heard in the second grade.
“It’s a little mournful. It’s haunting,” Betts said. He later added, “I feel like Dave really took that song and elevated it to a level that it might not have made it to without him.”
‘You’re Going To Play Guitar Like Me’
Still, the album doesn’t dwell on heavy-hearted introspection. Betts can have a little fun, too — which listeners hear on numbers like “Down To Houston,” a rip-roaring, old-school swamp rocker, and “Keep My Hands Clean,” a rootsy rambler that closes the album.
And he gives nods to his family history on “Manatee River,” a song inspired by a Florida property where his grandmother and father once lived. In that house, Betts said he learned to play guitar.
“When I would go to visit my grandmother back in the ‘80s, I would go out there and she would have fried chicken and all the Southern cooking,” Betts said. “Those memories were really strong from my early childhood. It was a different world out there.”
And balancing his style of songwriting with his lineage isn’t something Betts wants to run away from, he said.
“I think one of my strengths is playing kind of the way my dad plays. Not a lot of people play like that,” Betts said. “He used to say to me, ‘Son, you like the same food as me. You walk like me. You talk like me. You’re going to play guitar like me.’ I’m grateful that some of that may have rubbed off on me … It’s a balance of doing what comes naturally to you.”