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Towards the end of Duane Betts’ video for “Heartache,” a melancholy song about grief written after his father died in April 2024, the 48-year-old guitarist etches the initials “FRB” in the sand. It seems like a riddle, or perhaps a non sequitur, until you realize Betts’ late father, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band, was born Forrest Richard Betts. “It was something that was kind of thought about and plotted out as an easter egg—something very meaningful, but not obvious. We didn’t want to be too on the nose about any of the references,” the singer and guitarist says, speaking to Premier Guitar by phone from a summer home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the night before he’s scheduled to perform with the Allman Betts Family Revival in Vail, Colorado. “Some people don’t know that my dad’s first name is Forrest. They might not catch the initials.”

While inspired by the senior Betts’ death at age 80, “Heartache” is a universal ballad, on the edge of Neil Young-style folk-country and, yes, the Allman Brothers’ soulful southern rock. “I’ll wait, watch over you / Nothing I can do,” Betts sings, then repeats the phrase “there’s nothing you can do” multiple times before playing a solo that is both mournful and hopeful on his cherry-red 1961 Gibson ES-335, a guitar he inherited from his father. “I wrote that song down in Florida, shortly after my dad passed away, with my friend [singer-songwriter] Stoll Vaughan,” Betts says. “I had this haunting chorus melody, and I was mumbling ‘heartache,’ and it just went from there. It’s a universal feeling that everybody can relate to. It’s about loss and acceptance and getting through that process.