Derek Trucks

Biography

Derek Trucks, born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1979, is one of the greatest slide guitarists of his generation and a genuine prodigy who turned childhood fame into a lifetime of deep, soulful musicianship. The nephew of Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks, he grew up steeped in that band's legacy, and his very name hints at his destiny, since his parents took it from Derek and the Dominos, the Eric Clapton group built around the slide playing of Duane Allman.

Trucks picked up a guitar around age nine and was so advanced so quickly that by his early teens he was sitting in with major blues and rock acts, jaws dropping every time. He plays slide in an open tuning, on a Gibson SG, using a glass medicine-bottle slide and his bare fingers with no pick at all, drawing a vocal, almost human cry out of the instrument that owes as much to Indian classical music and gospel as it does to the blues. There is a warmth and a searching, spiritual quality to his playing that sets him apart from flashier slide players.

His pedigree only grew from there. He formed the Derek Trucks Band, became a full member of the Allman Brothers Band, carrying on the slide role his idol Duane Allman had originated, and was personally recruited by Eric Clapton to play in his touring band, an extraordinary endorsement from one of the men whose music gave Derek his name. Today he co-leads the Tedeschi Trucks Band with his wife, the singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi, a large, joyous soul-and-blues ensemble that has become one of the most respected live acts in American music.

Here is the gem that ties his whole story together: the kid named after a Duane Allman record grew up to inherit Duane's actual musical chair in the Allman Brothers Band, playing the same fingerstyle, open-tuned, bottleneck slide on the same kind of guitar, and to be invited into the band of the very man, Clapton, who had made that Layla record with Duane in the first place. Few musicians have ever fulfilled the promise of their own name so completely. Trucks plays with no showboating and no wasted notes, just a deep, generous tone and the sense that he is listening as hard as he is playing, which is exactly what makes him one of the most beloved guitarists alive.

Legendary Performance

Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon Theatre, 2014

The Allman Brothers Band's annual residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York became one of the most anticipated events in American rock, and the final run in 2014 included some of Derek Trucks' most extraordinary playing. Trucks, who had joined the band in 1999 at the age of nineteen, had by this point developed into what many listeners consider the foremost slide guitarist of his generation.

Trucks played a Gibson SG through a Fender amplifier with no effects beyond the natural reverb and compression of the amplifier running at full volume. His slide technique produced a tone of singing beauty, reminiscent of a voice more than a guitar, and his improvisations drew from Indian classical music, the Delta blues tradition, and jazz in proportions that shifted organically from song to song.

The Beacon performances documented an improvising musician at the height of his powers in the ensemble context that suited him best. Trucks has described playing with the Allman Brothers as a continuous education, and these final shows demonstrated what four decades of that education produced.

Gear

Gibson SG • Fender Dual Showman • Coricidin Glass Slide • No Effects • Ring Finger Slide

Derek Trucks' rig is unusually simple for a guitarist of his stature. His primary guitar is a Gibson SG, typically in the standard configuration with two humbucking pickups, run through vintage Fender amplifiers, usually a Fender Dual Showman or a Vibro-King. He uses no effects pedals of any kind.

The absence of effects is not an affectation. Trucks' slide technique is precise enough to control intonation and sustain without digital assistance, and the natural compression and warmth of a tube amplifier run at full volume provides all the tonal character he requires. Adding pedals between the guitar and amplifier would obscure the nuances of his touch that constitute the substance of his playing.

He plays with a glass slide, specifically a Coricidin pill bottle of the type Duane Allman used, worn on the ring finger of his fretting hand. This position, which differs from the little-finger placement most slide players prefer, gives him greater pressure control and allows him to fret notes with his other fingers simultaneously.

Signature Technique

Slide Without a Pick & Indian Melodic Vocabulary

Derek Trucks plays slide guitar without a pick, using his bare fingers to pluck strings while the slide is worn on his ring finger. This combination, which most guitarists find impossibly awkward, gives him tonal options unavailable to pick-and-slide players: he can generate the soft, round attack of a fingerstip on individual strings while the slide handles melody, or switch between techniques within a phrase.

His melodic vocabulary draws heavily from Indian classical music, particularly the Carnatic tradition. He spent years studying with Indian musicians and absorbing the ornamental patterns, microtonal inflections, and approach to improvisation associated with that tradition. The influence is audible in the way he approaches the slide: he uses it to create pitch variations between notes that Western scale theory doesn't name.

Trucks is also unusual among slide guitarists in playing in standard tuning rather than open tuning. Most slide players use open tunings that allow full chords across the strings with the slide. Trucks prefers standard tuning because it gives him access to fretted chord shapes with his non-slide fingers, expanding his harmonic options enormously.