I saw the ABros twice in March, and while it would be kind of silly and pointless to compare the two bands, I left the Ridgefield play house with a similar sense of euphoria that I left the Beacon Theatre with a few months ago. Two months into the tour, DB is playing with passion and intensity and GS is a has solidifed into very impressive ensemble. The Ridgefield PlayHouse is a cozy 500 seat redone school auditorium with great acoustics and a good bar (from which they allow you to bring what you want into the music hall). The worst seat in the house is the equivalent of halfway back on the floor of the Beacon. GS opened with High Falls, then Statesboro. Other first set highlights included a riveting Stormy Monday sung by their talented, attractive and very enthusiastic female vocalist, Blue Sky (with an extended reggae/synchopated Franklin's Tower-everyone thought that was the tune-opening and featuring that always wonderful guitar solo screaming to sky one more time) and a semi-reworked Elizabeth Reed to close the set. For the songs that I saw both bands do (BS, IMOER, One Way Out, Jessica, Southbound), GS had by far the more innovative, newer takes on the songs. The ABros, god bless 'em, do many of the tunes structurally more or less as they have always done them, eg. IMOER is not all that different from the Fillmore East version. I say structurally because of course the guitar solos are always as fresh as can be, I'm referring to the framework of the songs. GS, on the other hand, throws in new intros, reggae influenced beats, changes in emphasis, riffs I've never heard before etc. This is probably in part because they don't have the extensive covers and new material that the ABros do to keep things fresh, so they do it with new takes on the old stuff. The second set included 7 Turns, Back Where We Belong (?), No one Left to Run With, OWO, Jessica (with solid emphatic quotes from Mountain Jam & Les Brers in A Minor and the keyboard player doing a wonderful job with that sainted Chuck Leavell piano riff), and Southbound (probably the hardest jammed song of the night). The encore was Louie Louie...nah. You all know damn well what the encore was. Every song was distinctive and fully explored, nothing was left on the table. The second lead guitar was especially impressive as was the bass player, Bett's son played 3rd guitar, the sound was in no way muddy or crowded despite the 3 guitars. Talking to a member of the crew, I got the interesting news that Betts is still a 25% partner in the ABros (with, I assume Jaimoe, Trucks & Gregg) due to a "brother for life" contract signed long ago and that the band is spending big money trying to change this with no success so far. Two implications are that Haynes, Derek & Quinones are essentially (no doubt well paid) hired hands and that Betts ain't touring because he needs the dough. Betts said during the second set that he's playing the Beacon July 26, that it's going to be the first time he's played there in a while time and it's a very, very important show to him. If you're planning on going, see you there.