PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS CRISMAN
Musical prodigy Derek Trucks grew up on the road, touring with one of the world’s greatest rock bands. Now the gifted guitarist is making his own music and living the dream -- from the comfort of his own swamp.
As I step into Derek Trucks’s backyard studio, situated off Durbin Creek, on the south side of Jacksonville, Florida, it takes a moment for the eyes to adjust. The smack of air conditioning is jarring, and the darkness is almost disorienting. Just ahead, the control-room glass reflects a waning wedge of sunlight as Trucks closes the door behind him, shutting out the warm autumn afternoon and momentarily rendering the 29-year-old guitarist a silhouette.
In the soft interior lighting, a massive mixing console comes into focus. A classic Neve 8048, shipped in from London via California, stretches the length of the wall beneath the glass. It’s a marvelous piece of recording history, the one Ray Davies and the Kinks used in the mid ’70s. Trucks dotes on it like an adoptive father, pointing out that it’s all original and completely restored.
A few paces through a set of doors next to the console is a massive recording area stocked with vintage guitars, amps, microphones, and keyboards. In the far corner, to the left of the window that offers a magnificent view of the dense wetlands beyond, hides a pair of timpani. Trucks glides over to them, almost giddy. “I got these timpani from Elvin Jones’s wife after he passed,” he says, lifting the dust covers on the gorgeous brass beasts. “He played these on [John Coltrane’s] A Love Supreme.”
Relative to the relics that surround him, Trucks seems but a child. Yet when you consider his personal history, his lineage, and his depth of knowledge of these instruments and the music they have produced, all your notions of inexperience fall away. Trucks is a virtuoso slide guitarist who began jamming at age 12 with legendary rock group the Allman Brothers Band, which was cofounded by his uncle, drummer Butch Trucks. By the time the younger Trucks was 20, he was a full-fledged member of the band and well on his way to building a name so reputable that Eric Clapton would later call on his talents. Among his many accolades is being recently named one of the “new guitar gods” by Rolling Stone magazine, which featured him on the cover with John Mayer and Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante.
Yet he resides in a nondescript two-story home in the Northeast Florida swamp, far from the million-dollar West Coast studios and elite music scenes of New York and Chicago. He flies well below the pop-culture radar, too, living in domestic anonymity with his wife, accomplished blues guitarist Susan Tedeschi, and their two young children. Trucks says he likes it this way. He’s beholden to no one, able to hop from Allman Brothers tours to gigs with his own Derek Trucks Band without having to clear it with some empty suit in an L.A. high-rise. It’s the freedom he’s toiled to achieve since picking up his first guitar at the age of nine.
“I think I was lucky that I was always slightly annoyed by the novelty aspect,” Trucks says of the attention he received as a child. “And I didn’t really care. I didn’t have rock-star aspirations. I didn’t care about that. I was enjoying being on the road and being in a different environment. I mean, I was still going to the public elementary school, living a normal life. And then on the weekends, I was in strange bars in strange cities.”
For Trucks and his father, Chris, who acted as the boy’s road manager, the early years were tough -- a virtual crash course in how to survive in show business. Dad had a child prodigy on his hands, and the industry sharks were already circling with dollar signs in their dead eyes. Not only was prepubescent Trucks adorably diminutive, practically dwarfed by his red Gibson SG (still his guitar of choice), he had a famous uncle in one of rock’s greatest jam bands. And the kid could seriously play. He was a commodity all the way around.
Child virtuosos, impressive though they may be, are more common than you might think. Classically trained 10-year-old pianists and violinists are doubtless impressive, but they’re not all that rare. Trucks, on the other hand, was a street-smart kid who excelled in a discipline many guitarists never attempt, much less master. He played slide blues, and he played it better than most elders of the art.
Rather than pursue a formal musical education, Trucks perfected his trade on the road, playing in smoky clubs with guys 20 years his senior. In his early teens, he opened for Buddy Guy and hung out with Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. He started his own band at that time as well.
Attending school during the week and touring on the weekends was grueling, but Trucks was determined to see it through. His father, an old-school blue-collar man who had experienced his own share of hard times, knew he had to simultaneously push his son to succeed while protecting him from those out to exploit him.
“We were completely out of our element, out of our league. It was trial by fire at all times,” Trucks says. “We had no idea what we were doing. We had a manager who tried to get legal custody of me. It got really squirrelly and really weird. There was some supershady stuff going on. We were learning as we were going.”
There were even “mom groupies” on the road -- women in various cities who claimed to be Trucks’s mother. At a venue in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, Trucks’s real mom was in the restroom when she overheard one woman relate to another the salacious details of what she would do with that sweet, little guitarist were she given half a chance. Understandably, Trucks’s mom took issue with the lecherous ladies. In Trucks’s words, she “freaked on ’em.”
Despite the efforts of unscrupulous agents and promoters, Trucks persevered with single-minded determination. He concentrated on his playing, while his dad took care of the business end. Onstage, Trucks was quiet and reserved, choosing to speak with his slide. He never showboated. He just played, and played well.
As Trucks matured and the child-star novelty wore off, a true career blossomed. During his junior and senior years of high school, he participated in an “on the road” schooling program, which allowed him to tour constantly and study in his van between stops. While his older peers had always respected him, they eventually began to see him as their equal. Looking back, Trucks credits his father’s work ethic and his own focus and independent spirit for getting them through it all with relatively few battle scars.
“When I first saw footage of John Coltrane [performing, he] was just business,” Trucks says. “It was the look in his eyes and the sound that came out of his horn. That’s what I was shooting for. The people, whether labels or managers, would try to push it in a different direction. It was just unnatural. I would naturally rebel against that.”
Like Coltrane, Trucks embodies steady calm on stage. When his eyes are open, his gaze is fixed on the neck of the guitar or in the middle distance. Mostly, his eyes are shut, his feet are planted, and his hands do the heavy lifting. His playing style is unusual, even in the world of slide guitarists. He rarely uses a pick, choosing instead to pull and strum the strings with his fingers and thumb. The result is a warm, lush tone absent of the harsh highs derived from picking.
Influenced early on by blues legend Elmore James and, of course, the late guitarist Duane Allman, Trucks is also a fan of improvisational jazz and East Indian music. He’s a devastating Delta bluesman, to be sure, but he is so skilled at using the glass slide on his fretting hand that he can sustain a harmonic note while moving the slide around the neck. With this technique, he is able to create hauntingly fluid Indian melodies; he pays tribute to his mentor, Ali Akbar Khan, a master of the sarod (a guitarlike instrument akin to the sitar, which Trucks learned to play as a teen).
Trucks is so good and so well respected in the music industry that guitar legend Eric Clapton contacted him out of the blue in 2006 and asked him if he would record an album with him, along with songwriter/ guitarist J.J. Cale and (the late) keyboardist Billy Preston. Following the sessions, Clapton invited Trucks on the road for a yearlong tour. Trucks says he couldn’t turn it down. This was, after all, Eric Clapton -- one of his musical heroes, not to mention the former leader of Derek and the Dominos, the band for which Trucks was named.
Onstage, Clapton and his new sideman shared a palpable chemistry, the veteran and the journeyman on even musical footing. As he was in the Allman Brothers, Trucks was tasked with reproducing the licks of Duane Allman, who played with the Dominos for a time. To many, Trucks was, without question, the rightful heir to Allman’s throne.
“That was always the comparison early on,” Trucks says. “When the Clapton thing happened and we started doing all the Dominos tunes, it felt like it was repeating itself again. In the Allman Brothers, playing that music, playing that role -- there’s a certain reverence to what he played. He was such a strong leader.”
But while life on the road with Clapton was a professional boon for Trucks, personally it was tough, as it kept him away from his family for long stretches. And though his wife, herself a musician, understood his situation more than most, it was still a challenge for her to hold down the fort alone (not to mention find the time to write and record her own tunes) while Trucks was country-hopping all over the world. Through that tour and numerous others, however, she’s gotten by with the help of family and friends, who pitch in on particularly rough days.
Today is one of those days. Trucks is preparing to leave on a month-long tour to preview material from his new release, Already Free. Tedeschi is hitting the road too. The four-time Grammy-nominated blues guitarist is heading to Paris to promote her latest record, Back to the River. A hulking tour bus idles just beyond the front gate. Traveling instrument cases crowd the driveway as Trucks’s brother and father finish up last-minute repairs on an equipment trailer. Other friends and family members dart about, loading boxes, moving equipment, and helping out any way they can.
Amid the chaos, Tedeschi loads her son, Charlie, into the family SUV. The six-year-old, sporting a too-big tie-dyed T-shirt, shares his father’s blond hair and boyish complexion. When asked if he plays guitar, he says he’s chosen a different path: He’s a baseball player.
Trucks and Tedeschi, who met on the road, have been married for seven years and have been playing together almost as long. The couple has even formed a group together, called Soul Stew Revival -- an amalgamation of the Derek Trucks Band, Tedeschi’s bandmates, and other favorite performers. Musicians through and through, they named their children, Charlie and Sophia Naima, in honor of jazz artists -- he for saxophonist Charlie Parker and guitarist Charlie Christian and she for John Coltrane’s ballad “Naima.” Though Trucks (who splits his time between three bands) and Tedeschi try hard to balance their schedules with the demands of parenthood, every so often, their calendars conflict and they end up on the road at the same time.
“I go through times when I feel really great and really wonderful and balanced,” Tedeschi says. “Then other times, I’m overwhelmed and frustrated, and I don’t know what to do. I mean, I want to be here with my babies. I want to be with my husband when I don’t see him for three weeks. So it’s hard.”
But with the bad often comes the good -- like the financial windfall from Trucks’s tour with Clapton that enabled him to build his world-class backyard recording studio. While Trucks fawns over the vintage guitars, his beloved timpani, and state-of-the-art mixing equipment, he’s happier still about the chance to work and still be home with his family.
“Being an absentee father is not an option,” he says. “Early this year, I had a month and a half off. I could be home; I could take the kids to school, come back, write a song, record it, have the band stay in the studio, and still be productive.”
That month and a half was the longest break Trucks has taken since he and Tedeschi tied the knot. And with his new studio complete, he’s looking forward to spending more time with his kids. After all, it was his father who helped him, as a child, achieve his dream of making it in music. And it was music that introduced him to his wife as an adult. Music, for Derek Trucks, has always been a family affair, and he’s finally on the verge of bringing it all home.