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Bio
At age 23, Derek Trucks has already accomplished more than most musicians do in a lifetime. The gifted guitarist has been touring since before he was a teenager, has three solo albums to his credit (his latest, Joyful Noise, is his first for a major label), is the leader of a highly talented band, and has performed with renowned groups such as Government Mule and Phil Lesh and Friends. And, oh yeah, then there's his other gig: he's one of the guitarists in the Allman Brothers Band.
While many players Trucks's age are more concerned with partying and the perks of the road, he appears to be focused squarely on his music. In an era in which image is king and musical integrity and skill are secondary, Trucks is the anti-Britney. He's on a mission to put musicianship back into popular music, and he's leading by example.
Trucks describes his group as "a Delta-blues jazz band playing soul music with a bunch of other things mixed in," and indeed, Joyful Noise (Sony Music Entertainment, 2002) bears out that description. The record offers up an eclectic combination of blues, rock, jazz, and various world-music styles. The roster of guest vocalists testifies to its wide musical range; present are Ruben Blades, Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Solomon Burke, and Trucks's wife, blues singer Susan Tedeschi.
Trucks was raised in Jacksonville, Florida, and began playing guitar at the age of nine. Within a year, he was playing out. "I learned a lot by ear," he recalls, "I took about a half-dozen lessons with one of my father's friends. I just started sitting in with local blues bands, and then touring with them. It was definitely a trip."
Despite his almost instant success, the joy of playing was purely a musical one for Trucks. He was not at all comfortable relating to the audience. "I wasn't drawn to being in front of people," Trucks says. "It was definitely the music that got me in, and not the scene." In fact, Trucks was so shy at first that he didn't even face the crowd. "When I first started playing, the only guy onstage that I knew was the drummer, so I faced him for the first month or two."
The first thing you notice about Derek Trucks when you hear him play or listen to one of his records is the gorgeous, fat tone he gets when playing slide. He achieves his sound with about as minimal a setup as you'll find. A Gibson '61 Reissue SG (sometimes he uses a Washburn E300) into an old 1964 Blackface Fender Super Reverb. That's it. No effects, no fancy preamps; just a guitar into an amplifier.
The only things that aren't stock about his setup are the Pile Driver speakers in his amp. Trucks's tech, Joe Main, tells the story of how Trucks started using them. "He blew his speakers out on a Saturday night, and so on Sunday his father and I were looking for speakers, somewhere, anywhere. We couldn't find anyplace open. So we went to a car-stereo store and found those speakers, and we put them in the amp, and Derek won't let me change them. They were designed to be in a car stereo; they weren't designed to be in an amplifier."
Part of Truck's distinctive sound also comes from the fact that he plays everything - not just slide - in open-E tuning. "I started playing open tunings at about ten years old and just never went back," he says. Playing slide in open tuning is common, but playing nonslide guitar parts when tuned that way is extremely unusual. When he started doing it, Trucks had to relearn all his chords and scales. "There are definitely some chords that are really stock for normal guitar players that are a little bit difficult in open E, but there's vice versa," he says.
These days, Trucks is influenced less by guitarists and more by horn players and vocalists. "There's always the obvious like Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane. John Gilmore, who played with Sun Ra for a long time, is one of my favorite tenors. There are so many, though. That whole Blue Note era in the '60s, almost any record you pick up is amazing. We burn out a lot of those. Clifford Brown is another favorite."
Trucks and Haynes, both master slide players, have to divvy up the parts and decide who will handle the "Duane" parts and who will handle the "Dickey" parts. "There are certain songs that we [trade] every night, every time a certain song comes along," says Trucks. "On Tuesday, it's Warren's [turn to play a particular song]; on Wednesday, it's mine. There are some tunes like that and there are other tunes where we just decide 'this is yours, this is mine.'"
Links
Derek Trucks' Official Web Site
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