Derek Trucks

Derek Trucks
Trucks playing with his slide on his Gibson SG
Background information
Born	8 June 1979 (1979-06-08) (age 30) Jacksonville, Florida, United States
Genres	Rock, southern rock, blues, blue-eyed soul, world music
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, record producer
Instruments	Guitar, sarod
Years active	1990 - present
Labels	Columbia, Legacy Recordings
Associated acts	The Allman Brothers Band, Susan Tedeschi, Scrapomatic
Website	The Derek Trucks Band.com
Notable instruments
Gibson SG '61 Reissue

Derek Trucks (born June 8, 1979) is a Grammy Award-nominated American guitarist,^[1] songwriter, and record producer. He is a long-time member of the Allman Brothers Band and his own band, which he founded at age 15 and bears his name. The Wall Street Journal has described him as "the most awe-inspiring electric slide guitar player performing today".^[2]

Trucks first attracted the attention of the music industry as a nine-year old child prodigy on the guitar,^[3] and by age 12, he'd worked with some of the biggest names in the music scene. He was sitting in with Buddy Guy and an increasing list of other famous musicians,^[4] touring with the Allman Brothers Band for a decade before finally becoming an official band member in 1999. That same year, he met blues singer Susan Tedeschi, and the two married in 2001, beginning a family. He continues to play with both The Allman Brothers Band and as bandleader of the The Derek Trucks Band. In recent years, Trucks and Tedeschi have merged their respective bands when their schedules have permitted, billed as the "Soul Stew Revival", drawing accolades from fans and critics.

Trucks is known best for his specialty as a slide guitarist, his stoic focus while performing on stage, his reverence for the legacy of roots and blues musicians whose influence can be felt in Trucks' music, as well as his familiarity and integration of a wide variety of musical genres in his music.

Career

Early years and family legacy

Derek Trucks was born June 8, 1979, in Jacksonville, Florida, in a family with deep musical roots.^[5] Derek's uncle is drummer Butch Trucks, one of the original members of The Allman Brothers Band who has continued to perform with them since the band was founded. From childhood, Derek listened to his parents' vinyl recordings of the Allman Brothers classic, Eat a Peach, and Derek and the Dominos, featuring Duane Allman and Eric Clapton, which was the source of his name, "if not the spelling", Trucks says.^[6][7] He has a younger brother, also a musician, who is a drummer, named Duane Trucks, who frequently tours with him and his band. He is also the great-nephew of the professional baseball player Virgil Trucks.

Livingston Taylor and Derek Trucks

At age nine, Trucks first bought a used acoustic guitar, which he found at a yard sale for $5.00, and secured his first paying gig by age 11.^[8]

Trucks began touring after learning the fundamentals on the guitar from his father and a family friend. He moved on from the acoustic guitar, and quickly adapted to a Gibson SG, which he has used as his primary guitar to the present day. Initially an adolescent sensation, he gained proficiency on the instrument, and began working as a session player playing with professional musicians who increasingly were highly regarded rock and blues musicians. He was touring with The Allman Brothers Band, at age 11-12, with his father acting as chaperone and road manager.^[8]

Trucks began to form his own band in 1994 during his mid-teens, and The Derek Trucks Band has been one of Trucks' primary musical outlets ever since.^[1] Before he had reached his twentieth birthday in 1999, Derek Trucks had played with some of the most influential musicians of the time, including Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh and Stephen Stills.^[9]

Career as an adult

Derek Trucks was formally made a full member of The Allman Brothers Band in 1999, after over a decade of performing with the band as a special guest. Trucks has said, “When I joined the Allman Brothers Band was when I first had that feeling of all this music history coming full circle.”^[5] With The Allman Brothers Band, Trucks has performed on three live releases, which include the platinum-certified Live at the Beacon Theatre DVD, as well as the studio album Hittin' the Note in 2003. His presence has helped stabilize the group's lineup following a period of turmoil around the time of founding member Dickey Betts' departure in 2000, and his familial ties to the band help reinforce the notion of family implicit in the group's name.

Highly regarded with the slide, Trucks was ranked 81st in Rolling Stone Magazine's 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time",^[10] the youngest musician to be included at age 24.^[11][12]

Slowly adding other musicians to the lineup over the years and touring with two of the earliest members since his late teens, the outcome, The Derek Trucks Band has been a solid sextet since 2002. Each member's musical influences cover so many genres and so much territory, that their unique sound, of which Trucks is the undeniable centerpiece, can be only best described as world music.

Trucks continues to act as guitarist and bandleader with his band, and shares the stage in the Allman Brothers Band with Warren Haynes as one of their two permanent guitarists. Before he had reached his twentieth birthday, Derek Trucks had played with some of the most influential musicians of the time, including Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh and Stephen Stills.^[9]

	"Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" (2007) Sample of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad", performed by Eric Clapton's band featuring Derek Trucks, live at the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival.
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L to R: Doyle Bramhall II, Derek Trucks, Steve Jordan, Eric Clapton, Willie Weeks in 2007 at the Crossroads Guitar Festival

Early in 2006, Eric Clapton initially called Trucks to arrange a recording session with him for a proposed album with J.J. Cale featuring Billy Preston. Although Trucks had met and played with a pantheon of rock and blues' elite, this was Trucks first occasion to meet Eric Clapton. While working in the studio together on The Road to Escondido, Clapton found a quick compatibility, and invited The Derek Trucks Band to open for him while on his upcoming 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Toyota Park, Bridgeview, Illinois on July 28, 2007. Derek's Band and Trucks' wife, vocalist Susan Tedeschi, were to open for Clapton at the Festival, and to provide backing support for Johnny Winter's performance onstage. Afterward, Trucks would remain with Clapton as his accompanist on guitar during his set within his house band, and after, continue with him during his world tour to follow. Trucks was elated; he mentioned some concerns he had regarding his responsibilities with The Allman Brothers Band (Gregg Allman in particular), but his worries were unfounded. Commenting afterward, in 2007, he said, 'The Allman Brothers Band has been really great this past year working around Clapton’s schedule. I’m really grateful. They understood it was something I couldn’t pass up.'^[5] In another interview, speaking of Clapton, Trucks said, "He asked me that [to tour] out of the blue". I think he was just looking for a new guitar foil to play off." He continued, saying, "I was weaned on Derek and the Dominos... I experienced a moment of realization that I was in Clapton's actual band one night during "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad", when I looked over and saw him there playing!"^[13] As a result, in 2006, Trucks found himself playing in three bands in 17 countries.^[5]

January 2008 saw the completion of a new studio in the rear of Trucks' home, and The Derek Trucks Band released their album Already Free on January 13, 2009.^[14] It debuted at #19 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart,^[15] and #1 on the Internet chart, #4 on the Rock chart and #1 on the Blues chart.^[15] This marks the band's highest debut on the Billboard Top 200 chart to date. After touring with the Allman Brothers, Trucks performed with his own band throughout the following remainder of 2008. In addition, the band toured through the summer of 2008 as part of the Soul Stew Revival, with Mattison's band, Scrapomatic opening in most performances.^[14]

The Allman Brothers Band performed in March 2009 for fifteen days, marking the band's 40th anniversary, and dedicating it to the late Duane Allman, with many special invited guests that, this time included the likes of Levon Helm, Johnny Winter, Trey Anastasio of Phish, Phil Lesh, and Eric Clapton, to name a few, performing some of their songs, in addition to the usual musical fare by the Allman Brothers Band.

Musical style

Influences and the slide

Derek Trucks performing in his youth on tour

Trucks' early repertoire was influenced by blues-based music, although by his mid-teenage years, he admits that his name and family connections to the Allman Brothers prompted him to distance himself somewhat from their music, opening him up to jazz and other genres for a time. The exposure to diverse composers benefited Trucks with a variety of approaches to his own musical expression when playing with his own band. However, the pull of Delta blues and Southern rock that he'd grown around and loved was strong enough to continue to influence both his performances, and his songwriting.^[16] His playing was more often inspired by older bluesmen like Howlin' Wolf and Albert King, jazz musicians Miles Davis, Sun Ra, John Coltrane,^[17] Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, and Wayne Shorter. In recent years, the influence of traditional Southern Sacred Steel can be heard in Derek's slide work. Trucks credits Allman Brothers' primary founding member and guitarist Duane Allman, and Elmore James as two of the most significant slide guitarists that initially influenced his early style. Additionally, Freddy King, and B.B. King were some of the original blues and roots music based influences that Trucks has also mentioned.^[18]

Trucks developed a love of Pakistani and East Indian Qawwali music, and was moved by the sound of artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, prompting him to study at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California which is where he learned to play the sarod, leaving lingering strains of Indian music in his guitar work as well.^[19]with lessons in playing the sarod. There, he also found himself schooled in discipline, which in one manifestation, shows in Trucks' posture on stage. He strives to focus entirely on his performance, and it accounts for his lack of movement on stage, where he rarely moves from the same spot for the duration of each song. ^[2],

	"Sahib Teri Bandi" (2006) Sample of "Sahib Teri Bandi", performed by The Derek Trucks Band. Appears on Songlines.
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Trucks (left), with John Mayer (center) and John Frusciante (right), on the cover of Rolling Stone 1020.

Derek Trucks has been hailed as one of the greatest slide guitarists since Duane Allman.^[20] Several other guitarists who have played in The Allman Brothers Band, including Duane Allman, Warren Haynes and Dickey Betts have all shared a mastery of the guitar and a fondness for the slide guitar. In 2007, Trucks was pictured on the cover of Rolling Stone (#1020) in February 2007, along with John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and John Mayer. Named as one of the "New Guitar Gods" and nicknamed by Rolling Stone Magazine as "The Jam King", Trucks' signature move, according to John Mayer, is "making the guitar sound like a female singer from like, the '50s or '60s, just belting it out".^[18] Asked about his choice of becoming a slide guitarist, Trucks has explained that when he learned to play at a young age, the strings were painful, and his small fingers too tender to adapt quickly, and the slide made it easier for him to advance on the guitar.^[21] Trucks uses open tuning, a practice familiar to other famous slide players, that, a generation ago, included Ry Cooder, Lowell George, Rory Gallagher, Mick Taylor, and Robert Johnson. Duane Allman's bottleneck slide was originally made from a Coricidin bottle, but since such pill bottles aren't manufactured anymore, Trucks has remarked that the only way to get them is to look for them in antique stores, or buy the re-issues. Trucks has instead employed the use of a replicate of the late Allman's bottleneck slide. His, made of Dunlop Pyrex, a substance including plastic that produces a sound resembling the bottleneck slide Allman used without the difficulty of tracking down just the right kind of bottle, slicing the neck at just the proper place and angle, and having to concern himself with keeping it safe from shattering.^[13]

The sound

When playing older Allman Brothers material, Trucks sometimes takes parts originally played by Duane Allman, most notably the long slide guitar solo that takes up much of "Dreams". In other cases, there are no direct correlations between what Trucks plays and what previous guitarists in the band have done. Butch Trucks said in 2009, "My nephew is just scary. I have played with a lot of really good guitar players. And with every one of them, I start figuring out what they are going to do ... even with Duane. There are certain patterns they play that lead to something else and you kind of get used to what they are going to do. After all the years of playing with Derek, I still don't have the faintest idea of what he is going to do. Every time he starts off his solo in 'In Memory of Elizabeth Reed', he comes from a different direction. He never does the same thing twice."^[22]

The Derek Trucks Band plays an eclectic blend of blues, soul, jazz, rock, qawwali music (a genre of music from Pakistan and Eastern India), Latin music, and other kinds of world music, drawing on the wide variety of the different musical influences of each member. The Derek Trucks band, according to one All-Music reviewer, are a "group of musicians that share a passion for improvisation and musical exploration".^[11] Trucks, in a 2002 interview commented that "When you hear people like Coltrane, and the search that he was on, I think that's what it's ultimately about... I heard it on a Sun Ra documentary, he was always talking about making a 'joyful noise.'"

Equipment and style

Trucks avoids processing and effects, preferring to get the purest tone possible by connecting his guitar (a modified Gibson USA SG '61 reissue with factory Vibrola, which has had the tailpiece modified and a stopbar tailpiece installed) directly to his amplifier, a 1965 Fender Super Reverb loaded with four Pyle Driver MH1020 speakers. He modifies his tone with the controls on the guitar. In early 2006, an equipment trailer with Trucks' gear was stolen. Some of the gear was recovered from a field outside Atlanta, including the 1965 Fender Super Reverb (an amplifier he's been playing with since he was a young boy), a 1968 Super Reverb (one of the backup amps), a Hammond B-3, two Leslie rotating speaker cabinets, a Höhner E-7 Clavinet, and a few other minor items.^[1] He said, fortunately, nobody was home at the time, he "was away gigging with the Allmans", so nobody was hurt.

Trucks, performing in 2007

Trucks regularly plays without a plectrum, or pick. He generally plucks or strums (together or independently) with his thumb as well as his index, middle, and ring fingers. An article from The Washington Post describes the sound, saying Trucks "harvests notes and chords that soar, slice and glide, sounding like a cross between Duane Allman on a '61 Gibson Les Paul and John Coltrane on tenor sax".^[23] Electric guitarists who play without a pick are rare. Howlin' Wolf's supporting guitarist Hubert Sumlin, Mark Knopfler, and Jeff Beck are among the notable exceptions who play without a pick. He uses custom gauge DR nickel-wound strings on both his SG and resonator guitars: .011, .014, .017, .026, .036, and .046. Most of his guitars are tuned to open E. Although he still prefers Super Reverbs when playing with the Derek Trucks Band, currently Trucks is playing Paul Reed Smith amplifiers almost exclusively when gigging with the Allman Brothers Band.^[24]

Personal life

In 2001, upon learning of girlfriend and singer Susan Tedeschi's pregnancy, the couple married, and their first child was born by the end of the year in December, 2001.^[25][26] Named Charles Khalil Trucks, for saxophonist Charlie Parker, guitarist Charlie Christian, and author Khalil Gibran, he was followed in 2004 by their second child, a girl, Sophia Naima Trucks, who takes her unusual middle name from a John Coltrane ballad, which was also the jazz legend's first wife's name. Again, Naima was unplanned, but welcomed as was her brother; as Trucks points out, it is nearly impossible with two full-time bands touring around the world to plan for children.^[25] The Derek Trucks Band recorded a cover of "Naima" on their first album, seven years before her birth. Trucks' marriage to Tedeschi is an atypical domestic life, with both Trucks and Tedeschi frequently touring, although infrequently in the same place at the same time. The pair endeavor to perform as much as possible together, occasionally merging their respective bands, along with others—including Trucks' younger brother Duane Trucks, singer Mike Mattison's band Scrapomatic, and saxophonist Ron Holloway, (formerly part of Dizzy Gillespie's final quintet) who has performed since 2005 in Tedeschi's band. When the two merge together, they bill their concerts as the "Soul Stew Revival". Tedeschi is a blues artist whose vocal delivery has been compared to Janis Joplin, and Bonnie Raitt, in part, she maintains, because they share the same influences. Having opened and performed with bands of notable renown, including B.B. King, and Buddy Guy, Tedeschi holds her own with The Derek Trucks Band. Since both Trucks and Tedeschi are so frequently on the road, the two children are often with them, with Trucks' mother acting as a nanny when Tedeschi is touring. The children are now growing through their school years on the road, just a little younger than when Trucks himself began touring as a child.

Soul Stew Revival

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks

Trucks and Tedeschi began combining the talents of their two bands during the celebration of New Years' concerts, seeking ways to spend more time together. They have received such positive feedback, that they began booking concerts more frequently together. Derek has estimated that he spends 300 days a year on the road, so they have carved out additional time to tour as Soul Stew together. He continues, "There's a lot less sleep, but the kids are old enough now to be on the road and it's not a complete drain. It's a lot but it's great to have the family together."^[27] The Soul Stew Revival can be heard on the internet, in streaming music, with various sources, such as their performances from the Bonnaroo Music Festival, in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 16, 2008.^[28] As of 2008, the Soul Stew Revival has officially grown to an eleven-piece ensemble for the summer including a three-piece horn section.^[14]

Selected Discography

With the Derek Trucks Band

• The Derek Trucks Band (1997)
• Out of the Madness (1998)
• Joyful Noise (2002)
• Soul Serenade (2003)
• Live at Georgia Theatre (2004)
• Songlines (2006) (Legacy Recordings)
• Songlines Live (DVD) (2006) (Legacy Recordings)
• Already Free (2009) (Legacy Recordings)

With the Allman Brothers Band

• Peakin' at the Beacon (2000)
• Hittin' the Note (2003)
• Live at the Beacon Theatre (DVD) (2003)
• One Way Out (2004)

Recording collaborations

• Storm Warning (1994), Tinsley Ellis
• The Circle (1996), Planet Earth/Carey Nall
• Come On In This House (1996), Junior Wells
• Searching for Simplicity (1997), Gregg Allman
• Live... With a Little Help from Our Friends (1999), Gov't Mule
• Croakin' at Toad's (2000), Frogwings
• Project Z (2001), Project Z
• Live in the Classic City (2002) Widespread Panic
• Wait For Me (2002), Susan Tedeschi
• Little Worlds (2003), Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
• The Best Kept Secret (2005), Jerry Douglas
• Hope and Desire (2005), Susan Tedeschi
• The Road to Escondido (2006), J. J. Cale, Eric Clapton
• Skin Deep (2008), Buddy Guy
• Here and gone (2008) David Sanborn
• Sidewalk Caesars (2008) Scrapomatic
• The Blues Roll On (2008), Elvin Bishop
• Back to the River (2008), Susan Tedeschi
• Lifeboat (2008), Jimmy Herring
• Guitars (McCoy Tyner album) (2008), McCoy Tyner

See also

• Sacred Steel
• Qawwali music

References

Additional Sources

• NY Times review for Songlines
• NY Times article, 2003
• NY Times Allman Bros 2009 at the Beacon
• Altsounds.com, information about release of Already Freepossibly good for the album page too
• The DTB Legacy Recordings website

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Derek Trucks

• DerekTrucksBand.com – official site
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052801213.html
• Wanee Festival Site
• RadioDTB, a weekly podcast featuring live music from the Derek Trucks Band
• Derek Trucks Band collection at the Internet Archive's live music archive
• Derek Trucks and Derek Trucks Band at Allmusic.com
• Rolling Stone Interview
• Soul Stew Revival with other famous acts
• Conversation with Derek Trucks - March 2009
• Interview with Derek Trucks; Read the Hook