A CONVERSATION WITH DEREK TRUCKS

A young but veteran performer, Derek Trucks is one of the most ubiquitous musicians in the scene today. Chances are you’ve seen him with the Allman Brothers Band or the Derek Trucks Band, or in an all-star lineup at the Jammys, or with any number of his many musical collaborations. (Derek certainly gives Warren Haynes, his Allman Brothers cohort and another omnipresent musician, a run for his money.) The Derek Trucks Band released its third album, Joyful Noise, in September, and subsequently kicked off a national tour that will take them through the end of the year. DTB opened for the Allmans on several dates, with Derek serving double duty on guitar. As if that isn’t enough, just this year Derek and Susan Tedeschi, his talented spouse and a gifted performer in her own right, became proud parents for the first time. So what makes this man tick? (And where does he get the energy?) JamBase Boston correspondent Sam Katz recently spoke with Derek Trucks to get the inside scoop, and what ensued was a revealing conversation with an immensely talented yet down-to-earth, mature individual. Though he’s often associated with the Southern rock tradition, Derek spoke of some interesting and wide-ranging influences on his work. Read on!

photo by Tony Stack

Derek: Yes.

S: You learned with no lessons, a family friend taught you?

D: Yes.

Who was that? A friend of Butch's [Trucks]?

A friend of my father, who I think had played with Butch early on.

So that was just a friend of the family, it wasn't anyone famous or anything?

No.

And he taught you the basics?

You know, just the basics. How to tune, how to play chords, the early stuff.

When did you decide to stay in an open E tuning?

That was pretty early on, too. I think I was probably still nine years old at the time.

How did you know that was something you wanted to do? Did you not like the sound that was coming out of the guitar?

I was really interested in playing slide early on, and someone had me trying open tuning. So that's where it came from.

So you've been playing professionally since age 11. Does that mean you had paying gigs at that young an age?

Yeah, and maybe even a little younger. I've been pretty full-time since I was 11.

Where did you start doing that, in your local area? [Jacksonville, FL]

Yeah, I started sitting in at clubs in Jacksonville when I was nine and traveling at nine. And then at 11 we put a band together.

Who is “we”?

Well, my father was on the road with me at the time.

So basically you picked up the guitar and could just kind of play it?

Yeah, it came pretty naturally in the beginning.

On stage with the Allmans at age 12, you kind of just sat in for a show or two?

Yeah, sitting in and then we did some dates with Bob Dylan, with my band opening, and sitting in with him at about 11 or 12.

And were you then called the Derek Trucks Band?

Probably, there were some different incarnations, but that's been the gist of it for the last 10 years.

So how was playing with Bob Dylan? It must have been incredible.

Yeah, it definitely was. Anytime you're around guys of that caliber at such a young age, or any age, it's pretty overwhelming.

At that young an age did you realize how important of an American icon Bob Dylan was?

A little bit, through my father because my father was a huge Dylan fan. He had written his senior thesis on Bob Dylan, so he was a head. It was probably more exciting for him than it was for me at the time as far as Dylan went, just because at 11 I didn't have that huge of a grasp on what he had done and who he was.

Here's a quote from you: "It wasn't until I was 14 or 15 that I decided to buckle down." You had already played with the Allmans and been touring professionally, but you didn't consider that "buckling down" at that point?

No, it was just something that came naturally. You know, at nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 years old you just kind of do things, you don't put a lot of weight into it. I think I was still digging in while I was on stage, giving it 100%. But I never really considered and realized that it's a full time undertaking, and there's a lot more that goes with it than just getting on stage and playing. So that's when I started getting turned on to the higher forms of music and really digging in that way.

You got into jazz then?

Yeah, jazz and a lot of other things... world music.

If you could pick one jazz guitarist as your ultimate guru, who would that be?

One jazz guitarist... I would probably say Charlie Christian.

Derek Trucks Band

With these guys, Yonrico [Scott, drums] and Todd [Smalley, bass]. It's been about nine years now, nine or 10 years.

And then Kofi [Burbridge] joined around '98 or so...

Yeah, somewhere in there.

And then when did Javier [Colon] join, a year after that?

Yeah, maybe a year after that.

Staying on Javier for a minute, obviously he left the band. How long has it been since he left the band? Was it an amicable split?

I would guess six months now, maybe a little longer. It was good, it was the right move. It was better to face stuff like that sooner rather than later. The timing worked out really well, especially with the record. He left somewhere in the middle of that, so we were able to pursue other things.

So was he on the record at all? In the first track, “Joyful Noise,” it almost sounds like the vocals could have been him.

Yeah, he's on the record. Background stuff on “Joyful Noise” and the second tune, he's doubling the guitar melody and the same with the last tune on the record.

I think my favorite track on the album, and it's probably been my favorite tune to see live you guys play live, is “Like Anyone Else.”

Nice.

And I always thought that Javier's vocals were so powerful, I thought that added such a great dimension to the song. You've obviously re-worked it for the album with Solomon Burke singing on it. What does that add? Does that add a totally different dimension to the song? Did you totally re-work it for the record version as opposed to the live version?

He came in and sang; it's just a different take on the same tune. It's the same track underneath, we didn't change a thing. He just came in and when he sang it he just took it to church instead of the way Javier would sing it. He just did his Solomon Burke thing to it. When we first did it we were going to try to guide him the way that Javier would sing it, but after he sang it the first time we were like, “I'm not touching that.” Solomon does what Solomon wants [laughs].

How did you guys hook up with Solomon?

The engineer that did our record had just finished Solomon Burke's record and he had been playing tracks for us after we would finish recording. I had met him once before and the lightbulb just went off. We were like, “Let's see if we can get a hold of him.” So it was pretty random, pretty last minute, but it was in amazing connection with him. He was awesome to work with.

Was he something of an influence, was that the reason you chose to cover “Home In Your Heart”?

Yeah, that's one of his early tunes. We were thinking of tunes to do with him and we listened to a bunch of tracks and it kind of made sense to do that one.

Who has been one of your favorite players to sit in with the DTB?

Derek and Susan Farmingdale, NY | July, 2002

Talking more about Susan, “Baby You're Right” is such a great track. Susan's vocals are so powerful, can you see yourself recording a lot more with her in the future? Maybe even doing an album together?

I'm sure it will happen down the road, definitely don't count that out.

What is one of your favorite groups, among your contemporaries, that you've sat in with?

Aquarium Rescue Unit early on sticks out. Doing those dates with those guys when they had Matt Monday and the full band, that was pretty awesome. John Lee Hooker, year 2000, that was awesome...

So you were sitting in with some of your heroes, basically. It must have been pretty fulfilling.

Yeah man, completely. It is fulfilling, but it doesn't take the place of doing your own thing and devoting your time to that. Even though you get a chance to do those things, it's pretty quick and fleeting. That's not going to keep you fulfilled. The work at hand is what makes it worthwhile.

How did it feel being picked as the house band for the Jammys last year?

It was fun, it was cool. The Colonel [Bruce Hampton, Ret.] got to sit in and Robert Randolph and there were some great bands playing, so that was a lot of fun.

Getting back to the album, you obviously named the last track on the album, “Frisell,” after him. Is he something of an influence on you?

We had just been listening to some of his (Bill Frisell's) records really heavily going into the studio. We just kind of played that track randomly and it just kind of evoked that record to us, so we figured we might as well pay homage to him. That's where it was coming from.

Was that song a collaborative effort?

Everyone just kind of threw in a little bit. We had three or four different melodies that we would cue with different lines, so it was pretty free form. But there were some set melodies that we would throw in from time to time.

Is that how the album went, more of a collaborative effort?

Definitely, everyone had a lot of say in it. Kofi wrote a lot of the tunes and a lot of them were band tunes, where everyone had a piece in it. I definitely hope to continue that in the future. I think it makes for a much more balanced record when everyone has a vested interest in the songwriting and everything else. It doesn't get away from you. It seems like a lot of times if there is one writer in a band record it just seems to cause problems.

The longest track on the album seems to be “Make Madni,” clocking in at just over eight minutes. Was there a conscious effort to keep this album on the shorter, tighter side more than doing improv and jamming on the album?

Not necessarily. We wanted to do tunes that kept your interest from start to finish. However long that would be, that's what the track would be. We didn't go in saying we're not going to have any tunes any longer than said amount of time. It's just the way that if fell down and the way that the tracks felt best.

Here's another quote from you: "We have the freedom to create a new sound," talking about the Derek Truck's Band, "having our own voice is the ultimate goal." Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, I just think you look around our scene, you look around all the other scenes, and it seems like it's been a minute since there's has a fresh sound and a fresh movement musically, and I think that this band is definitely going to be a part of it when it happens. I think this band has a lot of versatilities that other bands maybe lack because of what they're going for or the guys they have with them. I look around at the guys in this group and everyone's vision and the amount of music everyone has in their brain and in their past, and I just see unlimited resources. I just feel like this band could kind of go in any direction at any time, which is a really exciting thing. I haven't been a part of that before.

Yeah, it sounds real exciting. Because obviously working with the Allmans you have a set structure and set songs and what you can do.

Completely, and just being around every other band in this scene and playing with everyone, you really get to see what people's strengths and weaknesses are. And I think you try to learn from that and you try not to fall in the same traps as you see other people falling into and just stay true. Keep the band rolling, keep the communication rolling between the guys on stage and I think if you do that it can go on forever.

Did you write any of these songs specifically for this album?

A lot of the tunes we worked on or wrote right before going into the studio to record. We went to the mountains in Georgia for about a week and just wrote tunes and rehearsed and a lot of the tunes came right out of that. Tunes like “Frisell” and Kofi's ballad, the second tune on the record "So Close, So Far Away." They were all tunes that were last minute.

I read that Ruben Blades wrote the lyrics for “Kam-ma-lay” and the band collaborated on the music.

Yeah, we had been doing that tune for a while, and we had sent it to Ruben and he re-wrote the lyrics.

Yeah, because I've definitely heard you guys play that one a lot live, that's a real crowd favorite. Did you stick to the version you know and just let Ruben do what he does?

Yeah, we kind of just sent him the track and when he came into the studio he threw down his stuff on top of what we already had done. He was amazing. He had a set sound in his head and he wasn't leaving until he got in on tape. It was pretty awesome to watch.

Now having a major label behind you obviously adds a whole other dimension. Did that change your method of recording? Did it open up new doors for you?

Yeah, if anything it just gave us a lot of freedom that way, where we could just think about something we wanted to do and we could probably make it happen, like getting Ruben and Solomon and Rahat [Fateh Ali Khan] on the record. If we were doing it ourselves I know it would've been difficult, and it probably wouldn't have come together. But having a major label behind you, you can take chances. It just gave us a little more freedom and time. Even though we only spent a few weeks on the record we could have spent a lot more had we decided to go that route.

I think the album's fantastic. How do you feel about the finished product yourself?

I'm excited, man. It's the first time I've ever been on a record and been able to listen down to it for what it is. Just to be able to listen to it and enjoy it... I think there are some very lasting moments on the record. I think there are some things on it that haven't really been done before and I think there are some really strong band moments. I'm excited about it. I haven't been excited about a record like this before.

I'm sure you've been courted before by all the majors. How did you decide on Columbia? And why did you finally decide to sign with a major label?

We had gone back and forth. Definitely did the underground thing the way we had done it for a long time. We wanted to make sure that if we did sign with a major that we would have our musical independence and not have to give in on that front. So we spent a long time going back and forth with contracts and all of that until we got what we wanted that way, where we knew we could still be the band we wanted to be and not have to bend that way. The guys that we had been working with at Columbia were great and really eccentric and listening to a lot of different things, and just getting the chance to hang with the right people made us decide... it was really just the human to human relationships you have with the people you're working with. And sometimes at a major label there are people you don't want to tangle with. We lucked out and found one of the few A&R guys left that is really a music listener. He did those Ornette Coleman sessions and the Ray Charles box set and just worked with some great musicians over the years, he was at Atlantic for about 25 years. Just finding the right guy that was into music and understood what the band was about was really all it took.

Has the major label signing given you financial freedom, or have you been comfortable since you joined the Allmans?

It hasn't changed anything that way yet, the record is coming out today. We haven't felt any financial push from it. It's still, with this band, even with the Allman Brothers thing, it's not at a point where there is financial freedom. We have to work 250 shows a year to keep afloat, it's still very much an uphill battle that way. That was also one of the things going into signing with a major label. We decided that we wanted to give it a shot, we wanted to try to get this band up one notch just so there is that freedom. So you don't have to beat yourself to get the band together, so you have a little more time to write, a little more time to just focus on the music rather than getting from town to town to keep gas in the vehicle. I think there hasn't been any major hit that way yet, but hopefully if the record does well it will free up more time to focus on really writing tunes and getting the bands sound together. Because it's really hard to do on stage every night when you're really running hard. It's hard to keep new ideas moving, it's hard to keep songs written. So I think that is definitely one of the goals for the next few years is just to really expand what everyone has in their head, really get that out.

Because I think a lot of people think, “Wow! He's in the Allman Brothers, he's got his own band, he must be doing great.” But I think that a lot of people don't realize that there are bands like yours and other bands out there that might be touring that much and selling out venues, but it's still really tough to make it out there as a full-time professional musician.

Derek with Warren Haynes and the Allman Brothers Austin, TX | Sept, 2002 (photo by Tony Stack)

Back to the album for a minute… “Every Good Boy,” was that a collaborative effort?

Yeah, it was Kofi's idea, but going into it we just decided it would be kind of a fun release on the record just to do something completely different. And we gave him a lot of freedom to mess with whatever sounds he wanted to use. That was definitely a fun tune, just a nice release, because some of the tunes on the record are, in a sense, really serious and you don't want to have too much of that on a record. Unless you're making a complete, full-on statement that way.

Yeah, because I kind of thought that that song particularly was sort of your take on what I like to call, for lack of a better term, the “new jazz.” When I say something like that I mean Soulive, MMW, Charlie Hunter, The Slip...

Yeah, I hear you. With that it was just a line Kofi was playing on the B-3 and I think he was probably thinking more about a Snoop Dogg record or something [laughs]. Kofi, in one sense, is definitely coming from that realm too.

“Lookout 31,” to me, seems to be the most traditional, in a sense, jazz song on the album.

Yeah, it's more coming from the Bitches Brew era, Miles Davis.

So is that what influenced that song?

Yeah, just completely wide open... Weather Report, that kind of stuff.

Another quote from you: "I've noticed that an Indian slide guitarist will strike a string once and then do so many things with it." I've seen you do that live a lot. You'll hit one string once and take the slide and you'll take the slide and keep it going for a few more. Is that something derived from that?

That is straight from the Indian Classical influence. And listening to guys like Ali Akbar Khan and some of the Indian slide players like Visha Bhatt and a few other guys. That's definitely coming straight from the Indian classical tradition.

And has that been a huge influence on your slide playing?

Yeah, in the last five, six years it's probably been the biggest influence on my playing.

Going more into that… “Maki Madni,” what an intense track and it must have been totally intense for you guys. Although you didn't work directly with Rahat, you sent him the tapes in Pakistan. But how did it feel recording with one of the masters?

It was pretty overwhelming for me, especially when we got the tape back. I was so excited to throw it on and listen down to it. The stuff that he sang was pretty overwhelming. Just the time frame we that did it in and having the family stamp on a tune like that was... that's definitely been one of the coolest things that I've been a part of. As far as collaborations and just getting a chance to work with people, that was a dream come true that I didn't think would ever come to pass. It was definitely an exciting moment.

You've obviously played that tune many a time live, what did you do with it for the album?

We only did that track once, we played it down once in the studio. My amp actually blew up right at the end of it, it just completely fried. So we recorded it down once, we listened back and it felt right and we were like that'll work, we'll send that to him and see what he does with it. We did a conference call with him and an interpreter in Pakistan and he was really respectful, he really liked the track and he was asking how much freedom he had to sing on top of it. And I was like “sing whatever you want, take the guitar out if you need to” [laughs]. And the stuff that he did was amazing.

So essentially you sent him the finished product and he just dubbed his vocals over that?

Yeah, he just sang on top of the track.

The interplay between his voice and your guitar is pretty incredible.

Yeah, I mean I was amazed, especially the first little break that I took. I played what I thought was a pretty intricate solo and he sang it note for note, I was like “damn.” It's pretty awesome, it makes you realize there are definitely some other musical cultures out there that are much further along than we are at this time here. Just because other cultures kind of nurture music a little more than we do. The people that really get the recognition and the ability to hone their art are people that are really not interested in music anymore. It's all the pop side and the mainstream.

So I have to talk about the marriage for a little bit, I'm sure it's on a lot of people's minds. First of all, congratulations on everything. So you guys [Derek and Susan Tedeschi] met in '99 on Allmans tour and I guess just hit it off.

Yeah, that sounds right. Finding someone that is kind of in the same realm, just doing the same things. Our lifestyle is so crazy, being on the road and understanding that is a big plus. And finding somebody that's listening to Mahalia Jackson and Howlin' Wolf is a pretty big plus too. Being able to hang with somebody musically that way was really nice.

So you're a young guy, as am I. Have you taken it all in yet? Have you said "Wow, I'm married and I have a son now?"

Yeah, that's definitely probably the most overwhelming thing is having a child now. All the other stuff, being on the road and doing what we do, that's kind of what I'm used to so that doesn't really shock me. But having a baby is definitely overwhelming [laughs]. I haven't completely taken it in yet.

photo by Tony Stack

It makes you re-evaluate everything and it makes you realize that you're sole purpose in life is not yourself anymore, you know? You have to just completely think about things differently. You realize that your first priority has changed too. Everything is in a sense secondary. Even though whatever you're doing at the time, that's what you give your energy to, but you realize that you have to re-think things and family has to come first. It if comes down to one or the other than there is no question what you have to do.

So where is your residence now? You and Susan have a house together?

Yeah, we've been living in Jacksonville.

I was reading something about how you and Susan and little Charlie sat in with Les Paul?

That was amazing, not long ago. Yeah, that was very cool, we got him up on stage next to a solid body electric guitar.

Well, if he chooses to play the guitar he'll certainly have music in his genes.

Yeah, and he'll be surrounded by plenty of people willing to help him out too. So if that's what he chooses to do it will be... it won't be a completely easy road because you still have to do the work yourself, but he'll have a lot at his fingertips.

Sam Katz
JamBase | Boston
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