It's a busy music weekend at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum, with back-to-back shows, first with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rev Theory at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, followed by a country triple-header at 7:30 p.m. Sunday with Gary Allan, Jack Ingram and the Eli Young Band.

Following are previews of each show:

Lynyrd Skynyrd

When Lynyrd Skynyrd last passed our way at the decade's dawn, there was enough bad karma in the band's history to fill an entire Pantagraph interview.

As the band returns, the history has failed to reverse itself.

But "Free Bird" flies on.

The band is celebrating its 45th anniversary with its first album in six years, "Gods and Guns," released at the end of September in both a single-disc version and a two-disc set with the added fillip of several live recordings of old favorites.

When 20-year-old singer-guitarist Rickey Medlocke stepped on board in 1970, "we were all young and very wild," he told The Pantagraph before the band's February 2000 show with ZZ Top at the Peoria Civic Center.

"And basically when you're young, you go out and live as fast as you can. As everyone likes to quote me, we wanted to 'live fast, die young and leave a good-looking body.'"

That credo came all too true for a sizable chunk of the band's membership as the years progressed from its 1965 founding in Jacksonville, Fla.

"I reneged on that," said Medlocke. His more philosophical take, he said, runs along the lines of, "God must have kissed me when I came out of the womb."

The less-blessed in Lynyrd Skynyrd include founding father Ronnie Van Zant, killed in a 1977 plane crash that also claimed then-new guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines.

Prior to that tragedy, guitarist Gary Rossington was seriously hurt in a 1976 car accident.

Post-plane disaster, survivor Allen Collins' wife died in 1980. That was followed by Collins' own involvement in a car crash that left him paralyzed from the waist down and killed his girlfriend. He would die in 1990.

But the string of tragedies didn't stop at the point of Medlocke's Pantagraph interview in 2000. Bass player Leon Wilkeson was dead a year after the Peoria show; guitarist Hughie Thomasson succumbed to a heart attack in 2007. Most recently in January 2008, keyboardist Billy Powell died at 56.

Besides Medlocke, the current membership features sole surviving original member Rossington; lead singer Johnny Van Zant, kid brother of founding father Ronnie and on board since 1987; drummer Michael Cartellone, who joined in 1999; and a trio of newcomers -- guitarist Mark Matejka, who joined in 2006; and bass player Robert Kearns and keyboardist Peter Keys, both in their first year with the band.

With Thomasson's death still fresh at the time of recording "Gods and Guns," Van Zant says, "It was very difficult, I ain't gonna lie to you. But we got through it, as Lynyrd Skynyrd seems to always do. Music's a great healer."

Gary Allan & Co.

Coming in the wake of the Kenny Chesney circus at the Coliseum, Gary Allan probably won't be beating any of the many records set by the KC juggernaut earlier this fall.

But the 41-year-old Allan, just a year Chesney's senior, has a career trajectory that virtually parallels that of his predecessor.

And like fellow weekend travelers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, tragedy has not avoided him.

Signed to a major label in '96, Allan produced several successful end-of-decade albums, with 1999's "Smoke Rings in the Dark" hitting the platinum-seller level. Two years later, he scored his first No. 1 single, "Man to Man," followed in 2003 by two more, "Tough Little Boys" and "Nothing On But the Radio."

In 2004, his third wife, Angela Herzberg, took her own life after battling depression and migraine headaches, a tragedy that informed the singer's 2005 album, "Tough All Over," with tracks like "I Just Got Back from Hell" and "Life Isn't Always Beautiful" bearing witness.

Allan has since produced a No. 1 "Greatest Hits" collection and 2007's "Living Hard," which spent more than 30 weeks on the country charts.

His new album is expected to be released in early 2010.

Preceding Allan on stage will be Coliseum veteran Jack Ingram, who was one of the venue's earliest performers, opening for Sheryl Crow in the Coliseum's freshman year; and Texan quartet the Eli Young Band, recent Academy of Country Music Award nominees for Best New Vocal Group or Duo (they lost to another recent Coliseum visitor, the Zac Brown Band, openers for -- yes, Chesney).

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At a glance: Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rev Theory

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: U.S. Cellular Coliseum, 101 S. Madison St., Bloomington

Tickets: $49 to $69

Box office number: 800-745-3000

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At a glance: Gary Allan, Jack Ingram and Eli Young Band

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: U.S. Cellular Coliseum, 101 S. Madison St., Bloomington

Tickets: $36.50

Box office number: 800-745-3000