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Thursday, February 26, 2009
At 30 years old, Derek Trucks has already had a lifetime’s worth of musical experience. By Martin Jones.
At 30 years old, Derek Trucks has already had a lifetime’s worth of musical experience. At only nine years old he was playing with his uncle Butch Trucks of The Allman Brothers Band and by 15 he had formed his own band, having already shared stages with Buddy Guy and The Allman Brothers Band, subsequently joining the latter as a permanent member.
Since then, Trucks has played with pretty much everyone who’s anyone, touring Australia a couple of years ago with Eric Clapton – an apt appointment for someone named after Derek And The Dominos.
This year is shaping up as the biggest yet in Trucks’ career. He’s preparing to play the 40th anniversary of The Allman Brothers’ Beacon Theatre shows, on top of a world tour to promote The Derek Trucks Band’s latest, and unquestionably greatest, album, Already Free.
Recorded in Trucks’ new home studio, Already Free harks back to vintage Memphis and New Orleans recordings, songs like Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham’s ‘Sweet Inspiration’ sitting seamlessly alongside originals like ‘Days Is Almost Gone’ which sounds as though it could have been written by Dan Penn. It’s already a contender for one of the best roots releases this year. I caught up with Trucks last week.
You were only out here recently for the Adelaide International Guitar Festival, how did you enjoy your visit?
We had a great time man, it was really a successful two shows. Yeah the audiences were great and we ended up staying about ten days with the whole band, and it was a blast. Really enjoyed it. Everybody took care of us. It was definitely one of the highlights of the year for us.
That’s the way to visit Australia… two shows in ten days!
(laughs) Yeah I’ll take that anytime!
I was just looking at your frightening upcoming tour schedule, that must seem like a distant dream.
Yeah I mean sometimes we’ll do ten shows in two days over here (laughs)! I’ll take the two in ten.
Well, your visits have been making up for the fact that The Allman Brothers never made it here. What’s stopping them these days?
Yeah, I don’t know what their problem is. They’re so comfortable touring over here, it’s hard to shake ‘em out of their nest (laughs).
Amidst all your own touring, I guess you’re gearing up for those 40th anniversary Allman shows at the Beacon Theatre [in New York]?
Yeah that’s right around the corner. So I’m excited for us. It’s a really busy year this year but I’m getting revved up for it.
How many of those annual Beacon shows have you been a part of?
Let’s see, since 2000, so this will be my ninth, tenth year.
Lots of reviews of Already Free are pointing out likenesses to vintage Allman Brothers, was there ever a point in your career where you resisted that musical legacy or have you always embraced it wholeheartedly?
You know I think about the time I got a call to join the band I was really resisting it. The last few years before I got the call, when I did the first record with my band, it was an all-instrumental record and I was really trying to distance myself from, you know, the nephew of Butch Trucks and the Allman Brothers, I was really trying to take it as far in the other direction as I could. And it seems like when you do that, that’s when it comes full circle. That’s what happened to me, when I got furthest from it is when it came knocking.
The new album definitely has some strong roots in Memphis and New Orleans soul.
Yeah, you know I was thinking a lot about Muscle Shoals and all those old studio houses that were just turning out great music. And having a home studio I was really thinking about the sound and the feel of it, even more than the guitar playing. I was thinking how the record would feel and I wanted it to be a coherent statement – I wanted it to feel like a certain place and a certain time. And I think it’s the most personal record that I’ve ever done, or the band has done. I really think it was an honest snapshot of what was going on at that time. It wasn’t just an extension of what we do live, it was a wholly different thing.
Is that something that’s just a natural result of this band’s personality or did you guys kind of guide the record in that direction?
You know I think having a studio in the backyard and producing it myself and bringing different musicians in for different songs really added to that. It was kind of as you’re creating you’re recording and you’re capturing a lot of these ideas the very moment that you conceive them. So I really enjoyed that process where in the past I felt like we had to so prepared going into the studio because you have eight days to finish your record and if you don’t then you’re not going to get it done. So it was nice not having to worry about studio time and how much it’s costing to record. When you’ve got your own spot you can just go out there with three or four guys that you trust and just write and record. It was a good period there for a few weeks where I would get up every morning with an idea and we’d spend the first half of the day writing the tune and then the second half of the day recording it and mixing it. We were writing and recording a song a day there for a few weeks so that was a pretty nice time.
It seems like all the stars aligned for this record, does it feel to you like a whole bunch of things fell into place more than usual?
Yeah, completely. Even up to the point of in the middle of it I had to leave to go up to Atlanta, Georgia, to rehearse with the Allman Brothers for the Beacon Theatre last year and the first day into rehearsal Greg realised that he wasn’t feeling well enough to keep going so they cancelled that whole tour and the whole rehearsal and my first instinct was ‘this is horrible.’ And then it dawned on me, ‘I can go right back home and finish the record’ (laughs). So there was a silver lining and it really took a lot of things lining up like that to make this record even possible.
You’ve been quoted as saying, “I believe this will be on the list of two or three of the great records we ever do as a band.” Did you get that feeling that this was going to be something special as you were making it?
Yeah, you know I think just a few days into it, we’d just gotten the recording console finished and it was in the room and just a few days into it I realised it was happening a lot easier and a lot more naturally than I thought it would. And we were writing tunes immediately and it was sounding great and all the sounds of the room and the equipment we had were just sounding so nice, that I realised pretty early on that we were onto something. It started… we weren’t really under pressure to do a record immediately so me and Mike, the singer, were down there. And we were just going to write tunes and do demos and learn how to use the studio. But after we finished the first track, I kinda took everybody aside and said to everybody, ‘this is feeling too good to be a demo, we’re just going to tell ourselves we’re making an album. We don’t have to tell anybody else, let’s just go about this like it’s the finished product and not think of it as a demo any more.’ And so from then on we were making a record and I don’t really think we let the record company in on it until about half way through. So it was nice to do it in a total vacuum.
That situation invariably produces the best records.
Yeah man it’s amazing what you can do when you have enough trust in the people around you and you have the time and space to do it. (Laughs) usually you only get one of those factors.
It must be an incredible motivation to your creativity that feeling.
Yeah I mean you really feel like when the wind’s at your back you have to just go with it. Because as a musician, especially being on the road fifteen, twenty years, you realise that creativity really does come in waves. There’s an ebb and flow and there’s times when you’re incredibly creative and there’s times when you really feel like… you’re never going through the motions because you’re always giving it more than that, but there’s other times where you really do feel like you have to work at it a little harder. And while we were making the record was definitely one of those times when it was flowing.
Was it as effortless as it sounds on record or was there a little bit of it hard work?
I mean there was hard work – there were long hours and I was trying to get up with my kids every day and drive them to school and it was a full-on working schedule. And there were a few days where musically it wasn’t quite happening, but I would say 95% of it was pretty damn effortless (laughs). Which is not usually the case.
I’m thinking of the Eastern influences in the song ‘Back Where I Started’, it just gels so well with that soul ballad vocal. Did that take some experimenting to get right?
You know that song was funny because it started as, I was laying in bed with my wife and kids and we were trying to put our kids to sleep and they were all wound up that day, so I had an acoustic guitar and I just started playing that pattern. I was trying to think of something that would be kind of calming and I was thinking of Richie Havens, and I started playing that pattern and it immediately hit me that I should try to remember it so I called my cellphone and left a message and played the guitar into it. So the next morning I went out and me and Susan [Tedeschi] my wife’s drummer and bass player were there, and we tracked the tune and the drummer was playing brushes on a cardboard box, it was just acoustic guitars, all around one microphone, and we finished the track and I decided it was the most soothing track on the whole record, it just felt completely organic, but I couldn’t really come up with the right lyric for it or the right vocal melody. We just kind of let it sit for a few weeks and then when Warren Haines was down there I played him the tune and he immediately had a lyric in mind and he sang it and I really enjoyed it but it didn’t quite strike me like I was hearing it. So I asked Susan to try and sing it and then I remembered her voice in the morning is so different than it is at the end of the day. I really wanted to get that first thing in the morning voice, I wanted to get a really calm voice, so I went out to the studio with her early in the morning and it was just the two of us so she didn’t feel like she had to perform for anybody and the atmosphere was relaxed. And then it dawned on me that the sarod would sound pretty nice on it too. So that track was a lot of fun to make just because it was so many different things colliding.
That’s a great example of the advantage of recording at home – you can let things sit ‘til you get ‘em right rather than having to rush and force things.
Yeah and you know we did that with a few tunes. That tune ‘Maybe This Time’ that Doyle [Bramhall II] ended up singing on, that was another one where I had the track finished for a while and we actually had a few different vocalists take a stab at it, a few different people that were coming through the studio and would try to put melodies down and they were all good, but it didn’t seem quite right and when Doyle started singing on it it all made sense.
I read that you came up with a whole batch of stuff, things that have been used for your wife Susan Tedeschi and the Allmans as well?
Yeah, there was one track that ended up on Susan’s record, a tune called ‘Butterfly’, and then there’s a handful of tracks that are finished and just kind of sitting and there’s another handful that are maybe 80% finished, but there’s a lot of stuff laying around. A lot of original tunes laying around that either didn’t quite fit this album or hadn’t quite been finished. There’s a few of them that when I listen to them now I have no idea why they didn’t make the record (laughs). But that’s a good problem to have – not one that we’ve really had in the past.
‘Days Is Almost Gone’ sounds like it could have been written by Dan Penn or someone of his ilk…When you’re mixing original material with other people’s songs, which influences which, is it the originals that influence what covers you choose or is it the covers that influence the direction of the originals?
You know on this record it was our original tunes influencing which covers we wanted to do. ‘Cause really the last two songs we recorded were ‘Sweet Inspirations’ and ‘Down With The Flood’. They were kind of afterthoughts. ‘Sweet Inspirations’ we recorded because we’d just done a few shows with Santana and he kept telling me and the band that he kept hearing us playing that tune. And he played that song for us in his dressing room and so we had a few days in the studio before we went back out on the road so I figured if Santana’s going to recommend a tune, the least you can do is try it. So we gave it a shot and I thought it turned out really nice. And ‘Down With The Flood’ that Steve Berkowitz, our friend at Sony, he had made a mix tape for me a little while ago and that was the first track on it. And I had been a fan of The Basement Tapes already and when I heard that song, and just the lyric, post-Katrina, all of that stuff, it just seemed really timely. So I think that was the very last song we recorded and it was originally just ‘let’s work up a tune to play on the road for this next tour.’ The record was done so far before its release that I didn’t want to play all the songs live, so we were trying to work up songs for the tour and they ended up making the record (laughs). Sometimes it works out that way!
You wrote ‘Days Is Almost Gone’ with your pianist Kofi Burbridge right?
Yeah that song was mainly Kofi. He had that idea and I added a bridge to it and a solo section.
He sounds like he plays a huge role in the soul music influence on the band.
Yeah and he’s such a natural composer, he has so many great tunes. A song like that, like you said, it sounds like a classic soul tune.
So most of these interpretations, have they been worked up live or in soundchecks, or are most of them brand new to the band?
Most of the tunes were brand new and what you’re hearing on record is really the first take on it. With the exception of ‘I Know’ – that song we’ve been playing live a little bit. I wanted to get one or two songs on the record that had been road tested because I feel like those songs feel different – ‘Down Don’t Bother Me’ and ‘I Know’ are probably the two tunes that we’ve gigged before. The rest of ‘em where either arranged or written the day that we recorded them. The one thing that I get from this record when I hear it now is it feels fresh. When you’re capturing the song at its birth it’s always going to feel new and young that way, so I appreciate that. Some of our past records we were recording stuff that we’d been playing live for six months, sometimes a year, and I’m still proud of the recordings but it would have been nice to capture them when they were at their natural peak or when the first thought was there.
When I hear a record like Kind Of Blue, the thing that I think makes it so timeless is the fact that those guys were seeing those charts for the first time. And Miles made it a point to hide it from them so he would get their first impressions. He realised he had completely competent, talented musicians and they didn’t need to know the tunes. They just needed to be there and he wanted to get that first impression. And I mean we didn’t quite capture the Kind Of Blue thing, but I think we did capture some good tunes and the first impressions of them. So it feels different to the other records to me.
Well that’s the secret – having the right place and the right people. That’s what allows you to get away with that approach.
Well, I see you’re heading to Japan later in the year, you’re almost to Australia once you’ve got that far!
I’ll see if we can make the jump man, I’d really like to. We had a blast man, we went surfing down in Middleton, we went on winery tours, we did it up for ten days.
Derek Trucks Band – Already Free is available through Sony Music.
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