Atlantic City Weekly

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Derek Trucks has toured and recorded with Eric Clapton, has been the leader of his own band for the last 16 years, is married to a multi-Grammy award nominated musician, has guitar skills likened to that of Duane Allman, Dickey Betts and Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers Band, and has been an official member of that Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame group for the last 11 years.

And Trucks is only 31 years old. If anyone has earned the right to rest on his laurels or show some swagger based on what he’s already achieved, he has. But instead he comes across as humble, and on some eternal quest to expand horizons that are already on the upper echelon of the music world.

This Saturday, Nov. 13, Trucks will play lead and slide guitar for the Allman Brothers Band at the Taj Mahal’s Mark G. Etess Arena. Joining him on stage will be three of the original members of the group that formed 10 years before Trucks was born, including singer/songwriter/keyboardist Gregg Allman and percussionists Jai Johanny Johanson and Butch Trucks (Derek’s uncle). Rounding out the band are bassist Oteil Burbridge, percussionist Marc Quinones, and Haynes.

About a dozen blocks south on the Boardwalk, at Caesars Circus Maximus Theater, Trucks’ singer/songwriter/guitarist wife Susan Tedeschi is part of the Experience Hendrix tribute tour, which is likely an unprecedented instance of spouses performing for different headline acts on the same night in Atlantic City.

“It’s pretty funny,” says Trucks. “We’ve been on the road I guess about 11 years since we’ve been married [often touring together in their own band], and there’s been many times where our busses will be passing each other on the highway. It’s just the nature of the beast.This just happens to be two different tours stopping in the same town on the same night.”

The Allman Brothers’ Atlantic City appearance is the third stop on a nine-gig run that ends in New York City. Trucks spoke with Atlantic City Weekly shortly before the tour started at the Tower Theater in Philly.

What’s the touring life like, and do you still enjoy it?

I was on the road from age nine years old on. I mean it wasn’t full-tilt in the beginning, but it was touring and traveling, and in a way it’s all I know. I feel really comfortable traveling. Once you have kids [he and Tedeschi have a son, Charles, and a daughter, Sophia] it changes things quite a bit. You want to be home as much as you can, but I’m programmed to enjoy the road. With some people it’s just not in their DNA. Even with some great musicians I’ve worked with I know it’s just not what they like to do, but I really enjoy being out on the road and the freedom of it. And when the kids are on summer vacation, they come out with us as much as they can.

Duane Allman passed away before you were born, but like you he had a reputation as a virtuoso slide guitarist. How much of an influence on you was he?

He was my first and biggest influence. I guess when I was about eight or nine years old when I became really moved by his sound and his attack, listening to the [Allman Brothers’] Filmore East, Eat a Peach and [Clapton’s] Layla [and Other Assorted Love Songs, on which Duane Allman contributed heavily]. At the time I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it, but it was just a freedom and a fearlessness in his playing that really struck a nerve. He was the reason that I got interested in music in the first place. You think of him as one of those guys, whether they knew it or not, who lived their life like they only had 25 years, because they got in a lot in a short time and lived like there’s no telling if you could keep the flame burning that hot for much longer. It’s funny, early on there’s that really romantic notion that all of your heroes are gone by the time they’re 32, 33 years old, and there’s something to that. But then you have kids and you start thinking ‘I really need to be around,’ and maybe instead of the flame being white hot, you should pull it back at times. You see people like B.B. [King] going strong, and my wife just did a set with [jazz great] Dave Brubeck, who’s 90 years old. There’s something to be said for sticking around.

I read where you’ve become captivated by Indian and Pakistani classical music. How did that evolve?

I think I was about 14 or 15 when somebody turned me on to Indian classical music, Qawwali and Pakistani music. At that point I was really looking for something beyond the bar bands I was singing and playing with. You see Ali Akbar Khan, Ravi Shankar and guys like that who dedicate that much time and energy to their craft, and who have become total masters, it’s something really appealing. Just like some of the great musicians who are coming out of Cuba, I think there are just some pockets where the time and the energy they put into it is second to none. It’s like the Harlem Renaissance with [John] Coltrane and Charlie Parker and all these players who are excelling so much further than anyone thought the instrument could go. Indian music has been going on that way for generations, and there’s just something appealing about people digging in and making their life’s work a never-ending quest.No matter what you do, you should be looking to the masters in the field and trying to figure out why they’re playing circles around your ass. Usually it’s because they’re putting more time and energy into it than you are. I run into a ton of musicians and some of them have had a huge influence on me, some of them are contemporaries, some of them are musicians that maybe got a lot of fame really quick. After a while you see people hit a certain level, they may get a lot of accolades or a lot of smoke blown up their asses, and after a while they just stop learning and sort of flat line. I think it’s important not to do that.

How did it feel when you were officially made a member of the Allman Brothers Band in 1999?

I was sort of shocked to be asked. I was 19 and I think we just cut our second record with my group [the Derek Trucks Band, which recently released its ninth CD called Roadsongs], and it just wasn’t even a thought that, one, another guitar chair would open up and, two, they’d ask me. It’s the band I grew up listening to, but at that point, while I wasn’t exactly rebelling against that music, I intentionally wasn’t playing that music. When you grow up playing at a young age, and when you’re related to a famous rock band, people want to come out and hear the child play Statesboro Blues all night. When I got the call to join the band I was about the farthest away from playing that music that I had ever been. But it was good, it brought things full circle, it was getting back to your roots when you needed to, and it was an honor to be asked to go along for the ride. The last 10 or 11 years there’s been some pretty amazing music made with that group, and with three of the core members still on stage together after 40 years — the amount of energy they still put out after all these years is astounding. Everyone in the band’s great individually, but there’s something about that combination of them getting together and playing the whole repertoire — I can’t think of any band from that era who can touch what they do.

Your double live CD [Roadsongs] is sensational. You do covers of Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, but the majority are songs you wrote yourself or co-wrote. Did learning guitar and developing a love for music at an early age help your songwriting ability too?

You know, it’s actually a whole different skill set. It took me a while to appreciate songwriting, because the first five or six years I played I was more interested in what sounds and what instruments I loved, or what vocalists or instrumentalists moved me most. It was more about the performance for me than it was the songs. It wasn’t until I was maybe 16 or 17, when I really started listening to Bob Dylan, The Band, Bob Marley, the Beatles or Hendrix, and really digging into what made a great song. And you can’t really put your finger on it, but as time went on I began to appreciate the process more. In the year I was on the road with [Eric] Clapton, I really enjoyed digging into his catalogue, especially the Derek and the Dominoes era. I thought it was a great collision of great performances that was kind of an awakening for me. More and more, as the band went along we tried to introduce a lot more original material. We always enjoyed kind of digging into the stuff that inspired and influenced us. We didn’t mind playing [covers], especially some of the more unsung musicians that we really love. We didn’t shy away from playing other tunes, but it’s always more gratifying when you play your own stuff.