One More from the Road (Deluxe Edition) [Live]

Album Review

Few concert albums defined their genre more aptly than One More From the Road. If Southern rock was about integrity fuelled by pride, then Lynyrd Skynyrd was definitely in the right place at the right time — two days after the American Bicentennial in Atlanta, GA. This deluxe edition commemorates the album's 25th anniversary by augmenting the original 14-track release with ten additional performances taken from the July 7-9, 1976, shows at the fabulous Fox Theater. By the time that Lynyrd Skynyrd hit the road to support Gimmie Back My Bullets, their fan base had mushroomed out of their distinctly Southeastern home turf. With the support of national FM radio coverage as well as opening slots on tours with the Who, Skynyrd brought it all back home to the place they were discovered (by Al Kooper, who signed the band to his Sounds of the South subsidiary record label in 1971). Live Lynyrd Skynyrd performances circa the Gimmie Back My Bullets tour contained a sampling from each of their long-players, as well as some kick-ass covers — such as "T for Texas" and "Crossroads" — in addition to "Travellin' Man," a new composition worked up specifically for this tour. Indicating some degree of performance alteration for these shows and the subsequent recordings is the inclusion of a perfunctory "Tuesday's Gone" — which was done at the beset of the set's producer, Tom Dowd. His uncanny and legendary instincts pay off, as the strength and conviction of that performance places the track literally as well as figuratively at the center of this release. One of the most notable and distinguishing improvements unique to this edition of One More From the Road is all-encompassing sound, which was remastered top to bottom from the original 16-track tapes. As revealed in the 28-page full-color liner-notes essay, these tapes had to undergo a series of processes to physically stabilize the tape long enough to be transferred into the digital domain. The results are astounding, making this deluxe edition more or less a final statement.