Never a Cover Band: Derek Trucks On Looking Forward
by Adam Perry for Denver Westword 7/17/2019
Derek Trucks has been a rock legend since he was a teenager in an Atlanta Braves cap slaying “Layla” and nodding to Duane Allman, the late co-lead guitarist for the Allman Brothers, the soulful Southern-rock group that Duane and his brother, Gregg, founded with Derek’s late uncle, drummer Butch Trucks, in 1969. Now forty, Derek has played guitar with everyone from Buddy Guy and B.B. King to Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton; he became an official member of the Allman Brothers at just twenty years old.
The Derek Trucks Band formed when Derek was fifteen, and that outfit tackled everything from blues rock and psychedelia to Miles Davis, whose Kind of Blue was a huge influence on the modal jams of the Allman Brothers. Since 2010, Trucks has embraced writing, recording and performing powerful originals with the supremely talented singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi — who’s also his wife — in the Grammy-winning Tedeschi Trucks Band.
We caught up with Derek in his hotel room in St. Petersburg the morning after the second show of the ongoing Tedeschi Trucks tour, which lands at Red Rocks on July 26 and 27.
READ THE INTERVIEW AT WESTWORD.COM HERE
Adam Perry 