One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (48 page)

DEREK TRUCKS:
It’s just an underlying respect for the history and legacy of the band, which Warren and I share. You want to make music that can stand on its own, and you want to be able to listen to it in twenty years and be proud. It’s a big obligation to make music as the Allman Brothers and both of us want to make sure that the name is back in a very positive way. You don’t want to be the guy who let it slip! And there’s a responsibility to being in the group in bigger ways, as well. You don’t want to be the guy who played a part in ending this great institution.

JAIMOE:
It’s funny to hear people say, “Listen to what Derek is playing compared to what Warren is playing.” Same way I’ve always felt about people comparing me and Butch. It’s about the big picture, the whole picture. Can Derek play all of that and also direct a band? No. I don’t count songs off. That don’t mean I’m not playing. Everyone has his role and that’s what makes a band.

PEARSON:
Jaimoe is one of my all-time favorite drummers. I can tell his playing in three notes. He always sounds like him no matter what drums he plays.

Jaimoe playing the drums.

ALLMAN:
Warren is a master. As great as he is, he serves the song, and he has a knack for pulling everyone together because he is about the group, which is not always the case with lead guitarists. He doesn’t put a fill in every phrase, or play just to hear himself; everything he does says something and has a purpose.

HAYNES:
The direction of your solo changes as soon as someone plays something different than expected. If Oteil or Jaimoe play a riff or Derek plays a rhythm figure in a hole I left, then my response changes the direction I was previously headed. To open yourself to the music reaching its full potential you cannot have a predetermined solo that you play regardless of what anybody else does.

DEREK TRUCKS:
It’s the nature of improvising. For me, it’s different with this lineup because there is a whole new level of comfort among the three guys up front. With Dickey in the band, it was follow the leader. Now it really is three guys tossing ideas back and forth.

HAYNES:
The example I always use is the Miles Davis Quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter. No matter who’s soloing, as soon as they take a breath, someone plays something really cool in the hole and that changes everything. The next thing that came from the soloist would be based upon what that person played in the pause. It wouldn’t be preconceived; it would be responding. We’re trying to open ourselves in the same way, knowing it may be a little less Allman Brothers–ish at times. But that’s cool, because we’re here to grow.

DEREK TRUCKS:
A lot of time that leads to it being more of a band solo than a soloist front because everyone is both following the stream and directing it.

HAYNES:
And that’s the best it can be. A great band solo is better than a great individual solo.

LEAVELL:
So often in bands everyone is focused on playing their parts. In the Allman Brothers, everyone has always been listening to each other and focused on the big picture. I think that listening is one of the really powerful things about the Allman Brothers. Whether it’s a drum roll, a guitar lick, or a phrase that Gregg sings, everyone is looking to complement one another and make the whole better and bigger. It’s a very different approach than worrying about your own part and playing it properly.

JAIMOE:
This band is the greatest one since Duane and Berry, and why shouldn’t it be? Everyone knows the tradition and everyone has his own personality—which is the only thing that makes any music different from any other.

The Allman Brothers Band frontline since 2001: Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, and Oteil Burbridge.

Duane would come up with stuff in his head and just start playing spontaneously on the bandstand, which was one of the great things that the Allman Brothers were built on. At a recent gig, Warren went right into a new song in the middle of a solo and man it was beautiful. I was so happy. After the gig, I told Warren, “You see what you just did out there? That’s what the band was built on. If you heard something in your head, you played it! And it built from there.” That’s the only sort of thing that can save this band from not just going out and playing gigs but playing with some sort of meaning. It’s ideas that Derek or Warren or Oteil come up with.

HAYNES:
You spend your whole life trying to become proficient on your instrument, then you get back to chasing that childlike wonderment you had before you even knew what you were doing. For a lot of my life, it was all about trying to have the ability to play what was in your head. Now it’s sometimes more about “Do I want to play that or do I want to play something different?” Or do I want to pause and listen to what someone else is playing and let that push me into a new direction?

Hands down: Gregg and his keyboard.

Younger Brother

Derek Trucks has grown up in public and on stage.

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks

It’s easy to imagine that Derek Trucks was born with supernatural guitar powers. He was touring when he was ten, recording with blues great Junior Wells at fourteen, sitting in with Bob Dylan and Buddy Guy by fifteen and a full-fledged member of the Allman Brothers at nineteen. His uncle Butch was a founding member of the ABB, and Gregg Allman is among those who have wondered if Duane Allman was reincarnated as Derek—who was named after Derek and the Dominos.

But all of that overlooks the commitment to perfecting his craft that Trucks has always shown, his thirst for musical knowledge and eagerness to listen to and adapt a wide range of influences, from Delta blues to Indian classical music.

“You’ve got to log the hours to master the instrument,” Trucks says. “You’ve got to put the time and energy in no matter how good you are. To make something have any worth, there has to be some sacrifice.”

Though his parents, Chris and Debbie, named their sons Derek and Duane after their favorite guitarists, Derek insists that nothing was ever forced on them.

“This music was always around my house and I knew that my uncle played in the Allman Brothers and it was somewhat sacred but no one made a huge deal out of it,” he says. “I heard a lot of somewhat mythical stories, but it was the music that really drew me in; nothing else struck me the same way. I got into listening to and playing Duane’s stuff before I was ever around the band.”

An early teacher suggested that Derek learn to play slide first, a highly unusual approach. He never adapted his unorthodox style, still always playing tuned to open E and never using a pick, instead favoring a unique, self-taught right-hand technique that is difficult to describe and even harder to imitate.

Trucks started playing at eight and began performing the next year, at first billed as Derek and the Dominators and backed by older, barroom veterans. He moved remarkably quickly through the trained-monkey phase so common in kid performers, sitting in with the Allman Brothers Band for the first time at eleven. He was a little kid with a Braves hat dwarfed by his red Gibson SG and wowing hard-core fans with his quivering Duane licks. Trucks quickly added other, far-reaching influences, notably “sacred steel” gospel music, deep Delta blues, and Indian classical music, which can be heard in his masterly microtonal playing that can make each note sound like an entire universe.

“One of the things I love about playing slide is you can hold a note and very subtly bend it. There are very few instruments where you can do that,” says Trucks. “When you stay on one string, you can really emulate a human voice.”

Trucks was nineteen when Uncle Butch called and asked if the nephew was ready to become a Brother.

“It sounds strange to people, but I never imagined myself in the band,” Trucks says. “Getting the call was crazy and overwhelming and exciting. From the start I took being a part of that band very seriously.”

Six years later, Eric Clapton called and asked Trucks to “do some recording.”

“That was just like the Allman Brothers call but it was a level crazier, because there was no family connection,” says Trucks. “It was just a musical connection. I’ve been fortunate enough to have that experience with several of my heroes. You put it out there and play this music and you get a call from Herbie Hancock or B.B. King or Junior Wells asking you to play. It’s very humbling. Eric calling out of the blue was a pinch-myself moment.”

Trucks appeared on Clapton and J. J. Cale’s 2006 recording
The Road to Escondido
, then joined the guitarist’s band for a yearlong world tour.

“My whole family came to London for the Royal Albert Hall shows and Eric invited all of us out to his country estate,” Trucks says. “Watching my dad, the roofer from Jacksonville—the guy who named his son after Derek and the Dominos—sip tea with Eric, I was astounded. I was thinking, ‘This is one crazy life we’re leading…’”

In 2009, Trucks broke up his long-standing solo band and formed a new group, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, with his wife, singer Susan Tedeschi. They are seeking to craft a new path forward, not just musically but personally, struggling with a rock and roll variation of finding work/family balance.

“Guys like Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix provided a great template for how to be musically successful but not necessarily personally successful,” says Trucks, who has two children. “They sadly died young and did not get to incorporate their great music into a full adult life. I want to make great music and also have a strong marriage and family.”

Before joining the Allman Brothers Band, Trucks was exploring more Indian and jazz music and went through an extended phase of listening primarily to horn and harmonica players, avoiding guitarists and rock and roll. Then he became a core member of one of rock’s most storied bands, and toured the world with another rock icon. The experiences have altered his vision of music and what it can and should accomplish.

“I think playing in the Allman Brothers has probably kept my own music grounded and prevented me from taking a hard left,” Trucks says. “I want to make music that’s challenging but also the kind that I sit back and listen to. I don’t want it to just be for musicians. I don’t want to look up at a show and only see guitar nerds with notebooks out there. It’s nice when you see all of humanity. I’d like to see the occasional woman.