We were just touring Europe, and I noticed that we'd go to all these beautiful places, and everyone's just taking a picture of themselves. I don't understand that at all. And I feel like that extends to music. I think we've lost the script a little bit.
— Derek Trucks
I live in Jacksonville, Florida, but Atlanta always feels like the hometown gig.
But I think what makes a band great is that you're not trying to be someone else ever. At no point do you want it to become nostalgic; you never want to be a cover band for anybody.
I think the first time I was at Red Rocks was my first gig as a member of the Allman Brothers Band, June of 1999.
My favorite artists are able to take things to the edge or just over the edge. Miles Davis and Duane Allman, for example. It's about not playing too many notes. Those guys had lots of phases to their careers, but they always played with economy and intelligence.
I remember recording with Johnny Sandlin at his place right outside Muscle Shoals and he turned me on to a lot of those musicians at an early age, like Roger Hawkins and David Hood and just a ton of great players.
I felt like for it to really turn into something, you have to jump in with both feet. And it always turns out a little different than you imagined it, but that's kind of the beauty of it, when you feel musically confident enough to just kind of follow where it goes.
The one thing the Allman Brothers Band does not do is phone it in. They bring it every night and that's something I draw from.
I remember the first time hearing a recording from Minton's Playhouse; it was Charlie Christian and a young Dizzy Gillespie, and he was just the best musician in the room.
When you think about your heroes, it absolutely shapes how you play and who you are.
A lot of the gear came out of some of the old studios here in New York City. We picked up a lot of old microphones, reverb tanks, tape machines, so yeah, we try to record the old way, which takes more time and energy, but it certainly feels better when you're getting to the end of the process of making a record.
George Alessandro in New Jersey builds these great amplifiers. He was working on my Super Reverbs for years and he's kind of a vintage Marshall specialist. He built this amp and it's kind of a cross between a Dumble and a Super Reverb but a little juiced up with a little more power.
Y'know, you can sit in a room, practise all day, learn your scales and blaze blues riffs: it's easy to hide behind that. But I think with the slide, it's a little bit tougher.
I don't really love the guitar hero trip, anyway, so it's not something I'm actively searching for or after. I don't like what it's about.
It's always nice with two guitarists in one band to have some contrast.
My dad was a roofer; my mom worked in elementary school.
When you do a different city every night, it's easy to repeat things. There are songs you want to play for people and get excited about so you don't always switch things up.
When you're dealing with the age of Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, then everything becomes very selfish and cynical.
You hear a great Art Blakey drum solo or Elvin Jones, and you can tell when they're taking a breath. You can tell when they're loading up for something big. There's just this humanity in it, and I think that's important as well.
B.B. King wanted people to carry the torch. He wanted people to keep that music alive, and he would talk about it.
When you're co-leading a band with someone whose career is bigger than your own, like with my wife Susan, it's different. You have to agree on things musically. It took months for it to come together.
When I had the idea to build a home studio, the purpose was to start making records.
I'm a big fan of other guitar players, Duane Allman and tons of them, but I don't really love totally guitar-specific albums.
I think on some level, you always carry your first and biggest influences with you, whether it's the Allman Brothers or Col. Bruce Hampton, people that you learned a huge amount of what you do from. So it's always there.
I got a picture of me taken next to George Jones. I rarely ask for that, but he's someone I couldn't pass up.
One of those Rolling Stone Greatest Guitar Player lists came out and there was no Albert King. That's impossible! There are 10 people on there who wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Albert.
I remember a festival we did in Denmark with the Clapton band where you suddenly realize it's an actual band - and you're on an equal stage playing music together.
We got our old Neve recording console, it was owned by The Kinks for a long time.
You hope to catch the band on a good night and you hope that it sounds good when you hear the tapes back, and you hope that when you mix it you still have the feeling that you had when you were onstage, but it seems like it never quite works out that way!
Slide can sound like the most beautiful woman's voice.
I have only a couple of Super 6s now, but I do have quite a few black-face Fenders around the studio. They all have slightly different character and tone, so I keep collecting them.
Well I've been playing an SG forever, and I've got some other vintage Gibsons I like to use in the studio.
My earliest memories are of traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to visit my uncle and his family in Tallahassee.
To be part of the Allmans for 15 years was a huge honor. I mean, it's a legendary band. I got to be around a lot of people and make a lot of great music.
But every so often we'll get to this place where everyone in the room is fully focused on what's happening. You see it happens in sports sometimes, when there's a really important moment. It's a great thing when you can get to those places, when you look up you don't see a bunch of phones out.
You hear it in the great musicians, whether it's a drummer or a horn player or a guitar player - you hear them take those breaths. You can feel that there's something they're trying to tell you.
It's a funny thing... I started touring at nine or ten years old, and for the first ten, fifteen, almost twenty years of your career, you're the youngest guy on stage and the youngest guy in the room.
I think we appreciate the musicianship we're surrounded with. Too many bands - it's an ego trip for the leader.
My grandfather's from Pinson, Alabama, all the Truckses came from there.
There's some songs you write like you would write for a four- or five-piece band. But there are times when you start writing and you can immediately hear the full band.
When you're improvising, you connect with people in a way you don't in normal life, strangely.
But I don't pretend I earned a Lifetime Achievement Award.
You can remember almost every Elmore James solo by heart because he was playing songs. Nothing's wasted. Nothing's throwaway.
It was pretty surreal because The Allman Brothers' 'Eat A Peach' and 'Live At The Fillmore East', and the Eric Clapton 'Layla' record was the music I grew up hearing all the time.
I used a '57 Les Paul on one track, 'These Walls', which features Alam Khan on sarod. I tuned it way down because the sarode is naturally in C but I tuned the guitar down to D and he came up to D. It was all a pretty simple setup.
I was nine when I bought my first guitar at a garage sale.
We all notice that the nights that are the most magical are the ones where everybody is taking a deep breath and kind of relaxing into it and relying on the people around you.
When you're producing your own record, you do your best to be objective and take a step back from it from time to time.
The tune 'All My Friends,' we recorded because our friend who wrote the song, Scott Boyer, passed way, and Gregg Allman had passed and he had recorded the song on his first solo record.
A lot people hit the road trying to make some cash. We are out here trying to do something that we really believe in. That's what all of our musical heroes always did.
