Gregg Allman’s death in May 2017 marked the passing of a foundational figure in Southern rock—a musician whose work changed nearly everything in its wake. Recorded at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, just two months before Allman passed, the covers-heavy Southern Blood feels as bittersweet as you’d expect, not dwelling on Allman’s predicament so much as illuminating it. It's the stately, resolved sound of a man getting his affairs in order. “I’m closing the book on the pages and the text/And I don’t really care what happens next”, he sings on “Going Going Gone”, reframing the desolation of Bob Dylan’s original as a powerful soul ballad.