Derek Trucks is a busy guy these days. He and his wife, blues woman Susan Tedeschi, have just celebrated the birth of their first daughter named Sophia. They also have a 2 ½ year old son named Charles. Derek is the slide guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band along with fronting his group, the aptly named Derek Trucks Band. He’s played with other bands as well, like Phil Lesh & Friends and Frogwings, but the ABB and the DTB are his main gigs.
The Allman Brothers Band were formed about a decade before Derek was born. Back in the early days they were fronted by the guitar tandem of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. Today it is Derek along with Warren Haynes leading the guitar attack. Derek, who is the nephew of ABB drummer Butch Trucks, first played with the ABB back on 7/11/90 at the age of eleven when he sat in for the song “One Way Out.” He was tagged as a prodigy at an early age and not just because of his musical talents. Derek was also a three time winner of the National Spelling Bee. Even today he is still a competitive Scrabble aficionado.
The Derek Trucks Band is a blend of so many different styles of music that perhaps the best phrase to describe their music is world soul. Compared to the Allman Brothers Band, the DTB is mellower but more varied and certainly open to more musical possibilities. The band’s lineup includes Todd Smallie on bass, Yonrico Scott on drums, Count M’Butu on percussion, Kofi Burbridge on keyboards and flute, Mike Mattison on vocals, and of course, Derek. The group has two recent studio releases called “Joyful Noise” and “Soul Serenade.” They also have a new live recording just out called “Live At Georgia Theatre.”
I spoke to Derek by phone on September 16th. He was in Milwaukee at a Brewers versus Giants baseball game. Derek was sitting out in right field hoping to see Barry Bonds hit his 700th career home run. I was watching the game on ESPN. We timed the interview so that neither one of us would miss any of Barry’s at bats.
BH – Derek, you hit the road with the Derek Trucks Band immediately after the Allman Brothers tour ended. Is that because of a need to explore different musical outlets that you may not be getting with the Allmans?
DT – “It’s definitely partly that. There’s definitely some
thing to being in a situation where you’re free to roam musically and try anything. That’s part of it and also part of it is out of necessity if I want to keep the band together, which is something that I can’t imagine not doing. To keep a group together you got to keep people working. It means you have to tour a good portion of the year so a lot of it is that as well. With our group we’re not at a level where we can afford to only work when we choose. It’s like sink or swim.”
BH – How do you balance your two careers, your wife’s career, and the demands of two small children?
DT – “Up to this point it’s worked out great. I think now that my son is 2 ½ and now that he’s really aware of when I leave town, it becomes a lot more difficult to juggle two groups. I can see in the next six months to a year having to scale back either the Allman Brothers or my group in terms of the amount of dates. I’m definitely not going to work as many dates next year as I did this year so in the next few months I’ll come up with a plan to scale back one way or the other because the one thing that is not an option is being an absentee father. That’s not on the list of things that I plan on doing. You have to set priorities and up to this point it was really easy because with one baby, Susan could fly out by herself with him and it was a lot easier to travel with just one child than two. So it’s a different picture now and also with her career, that usually works out well because we tour at the same time. My mom will travel with Susan and help watch the babies and then we would actually be home all together. So that still works out. But I definitely think it’s going to have to be pulled back a little bit as far as the amount of dates touring.”
BH – When you talked about the record “Soul Serenade,” you said that it was your goal to make a record with the same vibe from start to finish. How do you go about getting everyone on the same page musically to accomplish something like that?
DT – “With anything it really happens in waves. There are times when the band is thinking alike, you know, you’re living together, you’re really close and you’re listening to the same tunes. You just kind of have to catch everyone on the right cycle and luckily with that record we went in during the middle of a tour so everyone had been playing together and the band was sounding right. And you decide what tunes you want to record before you head in and have everyone thinking about it. So that helped out a lot. And then there’s just spending time together. It makes a big difference. I see a lot of bands that are so dysfunctional as a family that everyone kind of goes their separate ways, meets on stage and that’s that. We really try to avoid that type of interaction. We want everyone of the same page personally as well as musically. That makes a big difference.”
BH – “Joyful Noise” is a very mature record for a young
artist like yourself. With songs sung in three different languages were you purposely looking for more of a world music sound?
DT – “I think it’s that but also we wanted to make sure that when we signed with Columbia Records… let’s put it this way… any time you sign with a major label there’s always that trap you can fall into of, you know, the label wanting to turn you into the next guitar thing, the next Stevie Ray Vaughan or whatever it is. And I think we consciously decided to just ruin that notion right from the beginning. Because our vocalist left right before we cut that record, they wanted me to call on a few favors from friends and have guest vocalists. So we decided a guy from Pakistan and a guy from Panama would be the best way to do that. That’s the music that really moves us, whether it’s Solomon Burke or Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn or any of that. That’s the stuff that really inspires us musically so we wanted to represent what the band does live.”
BH – You mention Solomon Burke. I was at the Jammy Awards this year and I saw the two of you playing together. Is he one of your influences?
DT – “Yeah, he’s really one of the last from that era of Otis Redding and the great soul singers. He’s the one remaining guy that still has his voice together and is still doing it.”
BH – There’s a song on “Joyful Noise” called “Frisell” that sounds like it could have been on the “Soul Serenade” record. It has that same vibe.
DT – “Yeah that’s the first tune we recorded for ‘Joyful Noise.’ We set up the studio in Bearsville up in Woodstock where there have been so many great records done there. The whole place just has a vibe. So the first day we got in, after we got everything set up, the producer Craig Street, he laid it out. He had it looking really nice. He had a lot of candles going, the light was right. Everyone just sat down and started playing and that’s the tune that came out. And it kind of reminded us of the great guitar player named Bill Frisell who does a lot of stuff in that vein, so that’s where the title came from. Yeah, that could have easily been on ‘Soul Serenade.’”
BH – I really enjoyed “Live At Georgia Theatre.” I noticed it was only available through your website though. Is this a trend? Will you continue to make your live shows available through your website?
DT – “I think so. We’ll probably do a live record or two a year. I mean I would like to get this one nationally released though because this is a really good one and we’ve got some great stuff on it. It caught the band at a great moment. We’re dealing with Columbia on that right now so we’ll see. But yeah, we multi-track every night. We carry the machines with us. So we have every show on tape and me and Marty, the soundman, went into the studio and mixed that record down and we’re pretty happy with the way it came out.”
BH – A couple of years ago when Dickey Betts was kicked out of the Allman Brother there was a lot of bad blood between him and Gregg and some of the other band members. However, when I saw you and Dickey playing together at the Jammy’s you guys looked really tight.
DT – “Yeah well me and him have never had a problem. You know when all that stuff went down our relationship was fine. Not long after he put his band back together and the Allman Brothers got rid of him, he would actually play ‘Joyful Noise’ before a set and get up and plug our record.So he’s always been really good to me. So that was something that went back 35 years. It’s like being married to five guys, you’re just not sleeping with them so problems don’t get resolved that way!”
BH – Derek, I don’t want to embarrass you but I want to read a quote from your uncle Butch and I want you to respond: “Duane invented this style of playing slide guitar, but Duane was just beginning to touch on what Derek is doing right now. Technically, Derek is much better than Duane Allman was, there is no doubt about it. Just listen to the records.”
DT – “Obviously when you hear somebody that played with him say that it’s a huge compliment. But for me it’s something where you’re constantly working on what you’re doing and trying to evolve. It’s too early to look back and think you’ve gotten anywhere. The ultimate goal is usually to take the music of your idols and the people that took it as far as they could go in their lifetime and hopefully get to that level and move the bar higher for the next generation. I think that’s what the musical evolution is about. It’s just constantly trying to reach higher and not being ok with the level you’re at. You got to be moving forward. So there’s always a little uneasiness with where you are musically, you never feel like you’re there. So that’s kind of what you’re going for.”
BH – Derek there are so many bands and musicians speaking out about the upcoming election. Is there anything you’d like to say?
DT – “With this band, and with music in general right now, I think it’s something that almost all groups are very much thinking about. I think some bands feel much more comfortable throwing their opinions out in the middle and seeing what people think of it. But to me music has always been social commentary at its best, whether it is Curtis Mayfield or whoever it is. But I’ve never seen the country as divided in my lifetime for sure so I think it’s a pretty important time. We actually have a few organizations come out to the shows and sign people up to vote. I think it’s really important. And as far as throwing out our political views, I think it’s pretty obvious by the music we play. I think it’s unfortunate that there are really only two political parties but there’s one party that kind of embraces different views and there’s another one that seems to be much more isolated towards one way of thinking.”
BH – Finally Derek, are there any plans for a new studio album?
DT – “Yeah, we’re doing a lot of writing and getting ready to head into the studio hopefully by the end of the year.”
Barry Bonds didn’t hit his 700th homer that day. I joked with Derek about what a great story it would be if he was the one to catch that historic baseball. I’ll be seeing Derek again soon when he plays at the Wolf Den on November 19th. I’ll have to invite him to the Red Sox home opener next April 11th. They’ll be playing the Yankees that day and they’ll be raising their World Series Championship banner. Take it from me Derek – it will give a whole new meaning to the phrase “Joyful Noise!”