Events

[ROCK] For a guy whose guitar playing earned him an sit-in with the Allman Brothers Band in his teens and the #16 slot in Rolling Stone’s 2011 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list, Derek Trucks is surprisingly unassuming. Humble, bashful, and always learning, Trucks and his wife—fellow guitarist and blues-belting powerhouse Susan Tedeschi—have evolved into a rock and roll power couple. It’s a journey that called them both away from their respective solo projects to merge musical forces.

The resulting Tedeschi Trucks Band (TTB) is an 11-piece contemporary blues machine, incorporating bits of pop and funk with an improv-heavy jamband sensibility that’s won them a devout audience of repeat concert-goers. The band’s Wheels of Soul revue arrives at Artpark on Tuesday, a showcase of like-minded players featuring the retro-steeped grooves of Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and Doyle Bramhall, perhaps best known for his reversed-string guitar style.

“Call it willful ignorance, but I just don’t pay enough attention or buy into it enough to think about it much or really even know it’s there,” Trucks said of his many musicianly accolades, calling over the phone from a Georgia tour stop. “Actually, I feel like folks want me to show off a little more in TTB and I’ve purposefully steered away from that—we’ll let people get upset about it and move on.” 

Trucks is very clear about the role of chemistry as the propellant for a successful band dynamic, and just because his name might be more familiar doesn’t make him the center attraction.

“We’re all about focusing on digging in and making it inspiring, and the rest of the band definitely isn’t thinking about issues of stature. It’s an amazing cross section of experience and musicianship and there’s a level of hunger in this band currently that’s frankly hard to match. Every night when we get offstage there’s talk about what could have been better and what needs work instead of a bunch of backslapping. It’s about pushing and sharpening the blade, which I appreciate.”

Although just 36, Trucks has already had a career that many talented guitarists only daydream about. TTB is just five years old and has already walked away with a Best Blues Album Grammy for 2011’s debut, Revelator. His hugely successful Derek Trucks Band allowed him the freedom to develop his own signature blend of slide-heavy blues with rhythmic elements from all over the globe, while side gigs in the Allmans and with Clapton have allowed him to pick up tricks from seasoned industry greats.

The Allmans gig began innocently enough: as the nephew of drummer/founding member Butch Trucks, the young guitar-whiz was invited to fill in for Jack Pearson, suffering with tinnitus, for a specific run of shows. It ended up becoming a 15-year tenure. When Trucks and fellow guitarist Warren Haynes (Gov’t Mule) finally announced their collective intention to depart, the Allmans decided to throw in the towel altogether rather than attempt to assemble another lineup. Staged at New York City’s Beacon Theater last October, the final show was their 238th consecutive sellout. They could’ve kept going, but for Trucks, paychecks were not lure enough to keep him around.

Leaving The Allman Brothers Band was an emotional ordeal, but it was a necessary, liberating step toward giving the Tedeschi Trucks Band the full-time attention it deserves. As the collective prepares a third studio release (the second, Made Up Mind, dropped in 2013 with a live set, 2012’s Everybody’s Talkin’, in between), Trucks expressed what sounds like a breakthrough in the ongoing quest to capture TTB’s adventurous live spirit in a studio.

“Ideas for this record sprung up naturally,” he said. “We let things breathe a little more, wander a little further… it’s a bit more aggressive and also more experimental,” he said. “When you’re making a record, you go down the rabbit hole so far, it’s hard to be subjective. I don’t hear anything on it that’ll get played on the radio, but that’s probably all for the better. When I listen to current music on the radio, all I can think is ‘would you please just stop lying to me?’ whereas, y’know, we’re giving it a more honest go.”