WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 770 - Derek Trucks

Episode Date: December 22, 2016

A lot of former child stars have been in the garage, but Derek Trucks wasn't so much a child star as he was a prodigy. At the age of nine, Derek was a guitar wizard. He talks with Marc about avoiding the pitfall of becoming a novelty act and evolving into a versatile practitioner and appreciator of music, with help from several notable mentors along the way. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! and ACAS Creative. what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuckadelics how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf thank you for for joining us sit down take a load off bundle up are you sitting

there by a fire are you wearing a hat is it cold where you are christmas is coming Hanukkah is coming. So many holidays. Do I need a list? Is Kwanzaa now? What's happening? The truth of the matter is that I'm not trying to be disrespectful in any way, but I don't really engage with the holidays. I just know that there is a drastic shift in the tone outside. a drastic shift in the tone outside either it's chilly or cold or quiet or gray or um things seem to uh to just slow way down emails start diminishing that the pace of those everything i i just feel a a cultural um easing up which is fine uh getting into it immediately you know getting into it

easing into it myself when i realize it's happening is is a little not traumatic but i'm like what's going on is everybody okay why is everything how come no one's where's everybody what's happening is it the zombie apocalypse where what's going on? Did something go off and everyone left? Am I missing something? Today on the show, we have Derek Trucks, the guitar wizard, the slide guitar wizard, who I was excited to talk to. I didn't know what to expect because, you know, he is a child prodigy and he really took it to a a— he did not become—like some child prodigies become sort of like these freaks that are sort of paraded around by their parents or some morally corrupt manager to do their one or two tricks to cash in. And that could have happened to Derek, but we talked about it.

His father wouldn't let that happen. And very early on, he evolved into quite a thoughtful and professional and creative exploratory musician. And he was great to talk to. So look forward to that coming up shortly. It was weird. Last night, I watched that La La Land. I, you know, it was weird last night. I, I, I watched, uh, that, uh, La La Land. There's been a lot of attempts at doing, uh, film musicals that have not panned out framing of the musical was very traditional and it was a real sort of love letter to Los Angeles past and present and to movies past and present and to the nature of show business but also to the nature of difficult love and loving somebody but maybe not having

them be the right person at that time and having those struggles there's a it just i i was surprised you know i i i the the movie opened up and there was a big musical number and a dance number and in a traffic jam and i'm like oh boy here we go but then as it evolved because of the performances of of ryan gosling and em Stone, which were very human and almost raw. And then the music was, I think, a little understated. There were some beautiful songs. And the dancing was just enough. And just the cinematic work was very simple but very effective.

Close-ups were used properly. And the emotions of it were just beautiful, and the fantasy versus reality element was tremendous, but it was really framed like, I think, a classic film musical. Now, the thing that bothers me about it is that I don't know if it's me or culture or what, because I know the movie's doing pretty well, but, you know, that heyday of musicals, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, and I could be because I'm no film historian,

but I think the heyday was really during some of the worst times in America. I think that the relief that the musical brought the world and this nation was at its peak when i i believe the depression was on and wartime was on and i maybe i'm wrong you can correct me if i'm wrong but i'm gonna i'm gonna feel it that way because i i i think that the power of a musical and a love story and and something so escapist in a way but so directly connected uh to our hearts and to the human experience on that level, but able to elevate you into sort of a fantastic realm where, you know, I realized when I was watching it, it's like, hey, everything's going away. And I would try to bring everything back.

And then I'm like, why do it? Why do it? Don't bring it back. Just enjoy the sweet love story and the dancing and the power like i'm like i was very conscious of of what it was providing me because it was just pure joy with a slight bit of heartache and uh it's a it's a sweet movie and that that emma stone is really good and i already liked ryan gosling but uh yeah there's one song in there the song that she sings at her last audition about her aunt. Well, it was great. And there was like a moment in there where I'm like, that's an interesting lyric. That's, you know, that's some honest shit. So emails. Did I burn up all my time? No, I've got plenty of time. It's my show. This first email, shadow governments.

Hey, Mark, I don't know about any shadow governments. Maybe everything is very compartmentalized. I was a CIA analyst for two years and then in Marine Corps intel for a year after 9-11. Everyone who I knew in the CIA were just good people, probably even the office a-hole who worked in cubicles and who wanted to believe we helped keep America and its allies safe. We wanted to avoid D.C. traffic. We loved escaping to Chinatown for long lunches when the bosses were on vacation. We talked sports, pop stars,

and how we were going to get our kids through college. We had birthday party planning committees and waited to see who would eat the most rum balls at the holiday party. Political diversity was no different than any other work environment I have been a part of. Just men and women trying to do something good and hoping to get home early enough to have dinner and watch a little TV with the family. Love your podcast. I wrote to you once before. I think I might have offended you. Sorry if I did. Fight the good fight, James. I don't know all this stuff, lunches in Chinatown, you know, talking sports, pop stars, you know, how how you're gonna get your kids through college birthday party planning committees this sounds like a front for the shadow government to me

i don't know james i'm kidding thank you for uh clearing what the work environment at the cia is up for me i don't know if i feel feel better, but I feel that you're being honest. I feel better. Thank you for serving. All right, let's read a couple other emails. Hanukkah, Hanukkah, blah, blah, blah, baby. I just wanted to balance it out. Hanukkah, blah, blah, blah, blah, baby. I just wanted to balance it out. This one is, these are a little more emotional, and I think there's an element of gratitude and hope.

Right? Subject line, Casey Affleck. And the greeting was, greeting you, old Jew. Always nice. Well, you finally hit the interview that made me pull over and cry. Casey. I grew up in poverty, not the romantic poverty from novels, but the real kind where your father abandons you in the dead of winter and your mother has been married and or making

babies since 14. I was raised in Gastonia, North Carolina. My childhood was anything and everything desperate and disparate as anything you've read or heard from others. No need to rehash the details. Fast forward to now, I'm a full-blown alcoholic. I self-medicate terrible panic attacks and depression with the drink. I have no other vices, but liquor seems to be enough to turn my life into something I don't recognize about once a month, kind of like a period, only if it were

Satan's period. I've been to rehab, 12 steps, all the bells and whistles, pretty solid for the past five years, but I haven't hit my point yet. The interview with Casey has given me some hope. As you well know, the shame and self-loathing of addiction is the boiling point. I've slept through birthdays, been wasted through school events, missed Christmas, left jobs before they could fire me, busted my eyebrow open on a door jam, ripped off a toenail, driven drunk, thrown up everywhere and every place you can imagine. My kids have seen quite a bit of this. Newsflash, you can't hide things from your kids, even if you think you are. I have all the trappings of codependency, social anxiety,

hyper intellect, but stifled by my own pains and general dysfunction. When Casey talked about being okay with his dad and told some of those stories, I've definitely slept through pizza dinners with my kids and turned up bruised from falls, I had to pull over. His whole stream of consciousness about that gave me hope. I was so worried that I have hurt my kids to the point of no return. When he talked about his kids telling him he's the worst dad with the reply, let me tell you about the worst dad. Then he said they'd be okay too if they had to deal with that. When he talked about Ben rehab and his whole family's recovery, I was sobbing in my car.

So congratulations, Maren. Your show finally hit me in a good way. So I say thank you for what you do. I can guarantee you touch a heart every episode. From the garage, you're saving lives and you probably just saved mine. I haven't felt the same since. the garage you're saving lives and you probably just saved mine i haven't felt the same since somehow that interview relieved the crippling self-hatred just enough where i could see the other side i could see full recovery i love you and the world loves you even the people who put

spinach in your lox eggs and and well-grilled onions love you from a place of my heart, I cannot describe Bonnie. Thank you, Bonnie. And I'm glad you had that moment and really stick with it. Stick with it. This one is, this next email is a pretty funny one. Has to do with dads. This is from Brett. I spent most of my 20s growing resentful of my father. When I turned 30, I decided to stop drinking and began dealing with my emotional life. I broke the deafening silence with my father and attempted to build a relationship with him.

Your podcast, and specifically your fearless dialogue around father-son dynamics, has been hugely helpful in understanding my complicated relationship with my father. WTF is the first place I heard the words narcissism and codependency, which helped give me a context, language, and framework for understanding seemingly irrational and hurtful behavior. You also have taught me to be more compassionate with my father. It's easy to get mired in my own pain and forget that my father is a whole person and has probably done more good than bad in the world. pain and forget that my father is a whole person and has probably done more good than bad in the world. So thank you for reminding me, as hard as it may be, to always return to love and compassion

and forgive our parents. Which brings me to the present and what compelled me to write. I recently returned to my childhood home in Maryland to help care for my father, who has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. It is difficult for us to communicate during this challenging time, but one thing we can always connect on and share is WTF. After a less than cheery morning of silence, injections, and IVs, we returned to the car, and my father, consulting his iPhone, lit up with excitement and chirped, Jerry Lewis, WTF.

I agreed, and off we we went you said you were reluctant to air it because the interview was cut short but i'm so grateful you did a quarter of the way through the interview i heard my father sniffling and wiping his eyes i asked why this was making him so emotional he is an only child and his love and escape was going to the movies with his mother he told me he and his mother saw every movie that Jerry and Dean did together. I piped in and said, oh, you're feeling nostalgic about going to the movies with your mother.

To my surprise, he tearfully replied, no, not that. It's how devastated I was when Jerry and Dean broke up. I held back my laughter with all my might. In this moment, for the first time, I understood why what was on the TV was always more important than what was going on with our family. My father has emotional connections with people in the movies and on TV. These are his friends. Thank you for giving us something to laugh about at this time in our lives when laughs are hard to come by.

Boomer lives. Warm regards, Brett. That's just like my dad, Brett. And if your dad's like my dad, if you guys are sitting there listening to this right now, he'll either get a real kick out of it or he'll feel like you shouldn't have sent the email. So I hope that doesn't cause any trouble. Derek Trucks, guitar wizard, and also a very charming, intelligent, and thoughtful guy,

and has some great stories about mentors and just being how good he was at such an early age. I also want to say the Tedeschi Trucks Band will be on tour throughout the U.S. in January and February. You can go to tedeschitrucksband.com for tour dates. So here now are me and Derek Trucks. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations,

how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong.

A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Hucks. Boy, you must have a good humidor on the bus there because this one's nice and soft. Yeah, we have a little fella that we keep flush. That's a thing?

I'm excited. I didn't know I'd be smoking a Cuban right now, but I'm going to do it. So you're down south. Where'd you grow up? Jacksonville, Florida. You grew up in Skinnerd land. Yeah, so the funny thing is the Allman Brothers formed in Jacksonville. Yeah. And then Skinnerd later on.

And my dad, he was always, the Skinnerner thing was the more redneck side of things right and the almond brothers were maybe it was an interracial band it was a little more forward thinking so my dad was pretty anti-skinnered like it wasn't he just he's like those rednecks he just didn't like the whole i mean the rebel flag right all of that And so I grew up around that scene. I mean, all those guys, Artemis Pyle, Ed King, Randall Hall, Leon Wilkerson. I'd always see them. And most of them were pretty nice fellows, it seemed, and I would play with them as a kid. Yeah, you grew up around them because your uncle was in the Allman Brothers.

Your uncle was Butch Trucks, and your dad's his brother? Yeah. So I grew up around them because in the small blues scene going on in Jacksonville at the time, those guys were still in and around it. They all still lived in the area. Right. The Skinner guys were always around. But it was funny because my dad

was just, he just wasn't having it. I mean, he was at some of the Fillmore shows. He saw Hendrix at the atlanta pop like a music nut but that that side of it he would always kind of tamp down and later on i would listen back to some of the records and be like there's actually some good stuff there sure man and so the funny thing is now where our studio is in the swamp and in jacksonville my parents ended up buying the house four doors down from me and uh they're the the house right next to them was uh alan collins's house it was like it was like the

skinnered party pad and when we moved in the neighborhood some of our neighbors uh i could tell they were a little apprehensive about having musicians and the the guy across the street he was like i was the one that found the car in the ditch with his girlfriend like alan collins drunk drove into the ditch with like multiple people in his car and then split went to his house and so when we moved in i was like yeah we're uh we're a different kind of musician i was like we'll keep it between the lines i promise so it took us a while to while to gain slight acceptance as we're bringing the property values down. It's so funny because I grew up, I'm 52, so Skinner had a lot of charting hits at the time. And I had a friend who was really into Skinner.

And I sort of defend Skinner and I defend ACDC. And because my generation of people, I don't want to get too heady, and we don't have to feel guilty about it anymore. But those guys could play all right. They could. They could. And they wrote some great tunes, no doubt about it. But when you put them up next to Dwayne and Barry and the exploratory stuff,

it was a different order of being. No, that's right. They sort of like commercialized the south in a way that that fit a time i guess yeah and and i think for me a lot of times it's uh usually it comes down to what was your intention and but sometimes it's beyond that it's like what what is the wake that you left behind you and i think i think a lot of wakes literally yeah yeah a lot of wakes, literally. Yeah, yeah. They literally left a lot of wakes. You know, I think people glommed on to the wrong part of their music and message, and that kind of was blown out of proportion.

So I think sometimes the baby does get thrown out with the bathwater. But it's funny. So you're a kid, and you're actually part of that Jacksonville blues scene. Like, you're going out. You got your guitar when you were nine when did when you first picked up the guitar you grew up music was certainly familiar to you I assume yeah there was always records spinning in the house always always good vinyl I mean really at that time it was the Layla record my parents the Fillmore East record my mom was a big Joni Mitchell fan my dad it, it was B.B. King and Elmore

James. So those are the records I was hearing. And when I started playing, you know, at that age, you don't really question things. If it's fun and you take to it, you just do it. It wasn't like I sat around practicing and loved it so much. It was just like I'd play baseball, I'd pick up a guitar and me and my dad would play a little bit. What's he play? Well, he just played enough guitar to woo girls for a minute. But he never played on stage, never professionally. But he'd been around it because of his brother. Totally. He'd been around the music scene.

But then I started sitting in at this local blues bar. How old? Nine. So it was quite a scene. I remember the second or third time I was there. First time it was just me and this guitar teacher I was playing with at the time. And it was just the two of us. And then it was with this local band, this singer named Ace Moreland from Oklahoma.

He was, I think he was maybe half Cherokee. Yeah. He was a striking looking dude and yeah amazing singer played a lot of wolf tunes yeah like the first Howlin wolf I heard was from him and I would start sitting in with that band but the only guy I knew was a drummer so I just faced him I don't even turn around the audience two or three songs a night I would play with them but I I met Cocolor there when i was nine ivan neville who reminded me recently he's like we played together when you were nine years old so i remember that now so but when you're nine and you just what like i guess there's something

i'm trying to understand that probably is not necessarily explainable but you just could hear and play what you know you you instinctively knew yeah you know and it was growing up i mean my dad used to put us me and my brother yeah bunk beds we used to put us to bed to like the fillmore record or eat a peach or so i'd fall asleep and it was really the sound of duane slide and then this elmore j record that was just kind of... Like the greatest hits? Yeah, it was. With like Hawaiian Boogie and... Yeah, like his double album?

Totally. Yeah. With the two kids on the cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So I think that stuff was just there. And when I first picked up an instrument and my dad showed me how to play a librarian A minor, just the melody,

the simple melody. There's this thing that this light bulb that goes off. You're like, Oh, that's that sound I've been hearing. Right. And then a friend brought over a slide around the same time. And that even made more sense because I'd been listening to Elmore and Dwayne and my hands were small.

So fretting a guitar was kind of a pain. So the slide was just easier and I could get to those notes. And it's fun to try to pull those ghosts and those sounds out of an instrument. I mean, that's kind of what we're all doing until you find your own voice. But then it's essentially the same thing. You're just, you're kind of,

you're trying to mine for gold. Right. You're just trying to find this thing. Well, that's the trick. That's what, like, it's not's the trick that's what's like it's it's not unusual for somebody who's called a prodigy to become like a like a sort of dancing monkey totally totally you know like because you're a novelty act absolutely and i was really fortunate um i think my dad always says he's uh he's an atheist but the way he is moved by music and

he thinks about music is it's one of the few sacred things to him it's like family and music uh-huh but like i would see him listen to a ray charles track and you know just goosebumps or tears and i was like something's up right with you like there's more of the story but the way he would talk about seeing duane or dickie betts in the in the heyday or um i mean he would take us he took us to see miles when i was too young to i mean i remember the images of it but he there was a jazz festival in jacksonville he was always it was always music so like late miles like synthesized horn totally yeah with foley on the on the tenor guitar and But so he was never into the scene or like exploiting your kid for gain.

It was like the music part is what was important to him. And we would run into a lot of other kid guitar players that were doing the Stevie Ray Vaughan clone thing. And there'd be these stage moms and dads that were like, you got to walk out in the crowd. You got to talk to the audience. the Stevie Ray Vaughan clone thing. And there'd be these stage moms and dads that were like, you got to walk out in the crowd and you got to talk to the audience. And my dad is like, I will,

I'll never pull that stuff with you. Don't you worry. Like, right. So there was a whole sort of like community of child blues guitar players. You just run into him. And I remember, you know, around that time there was a,

there was all these guys popping up when I was 13, 14, the Johnny Langs, Kenny Wayne Shepherds, all those guys. They were all kind of, were they, Oh when I was 13, 14. Johnny Lange, Kenny Wayne Shepard, Bonamassa, all those guys. They were all kind of... Oh, he was a kid too? We're all the same age. You and Bonamassa?

So they flew Bonamassa down when I was 12. He was 13. They flew him down to Jacksonville. Back when there used to be radio stations that had budgets. It's going to be the battle of the kid guitar players, north and south. They flew them down and it was just

the oddest thing. They put us with this weird house band and played the landing on the river. It was just such a shit show. What happened? Speaking out of school,

there was one moment where, you know, and he's a kid, so I'm sure people change. He's over it now. Yeah, but there was a moment where he uh we took a break and he said something like dad go get me a coke

like thirsty and my dad looked at me he popped me he's like you ever pull that shit i'll beat your ass in front of everyone else i didn't even do anything man so dad was always he was always really good about making sure that it didn't go to your head. Like, I remember at one point things were starting to roll a little bit. I was a kid and he was like, you know, you've been walking a little bit different lately. I was like, no, I'm not. He's like, no, you are.

I don't really like it very much. So he was keeping in check. Absolutely. And man, I think I appreciate it at the time, but I certainly appreciate that shit now. Yeah, I bet. I bet it'd keep you humble. Absolutely. Well, that's hilarious for me.

So Kenny Wayne Shepard, John Bonamassa, that's his name, right? You, and there was another one? Well, there was a bunch. Some made it, some didn't. But there was, you know, every blues club, there would be a few house bands that would play. And there was a circuit. And there would be this little wonder kind kid that was playing. And most of them were doing the same stuff.

Like, it was mostly Stevie Ray Vaughan clones. Yeah. And there was something about it that just, I had a total aversion to it. And I love Stevie. And I loved Albert King and all the stuff it came from. But I didn't like kids wearing hats and playing with the same instrument. I was like, it was a different thing. So I think that helped me avoid trying to go down that road

or get like the singer in the band where you're going to get some weird rock radio hit at 15. And then fade away. Yeah, so I was lucky that that stuff just kind of, I think your instinct just- But that wasn't your thing, though, either. You weren't a Stevie Ray guy. You were probably the only one playing the slide at that time, right?

That's true. It was a little different. And I ran into some musicians early on that kind of pointed me down a different path. There's this guy named Colonel Bruce Hampton in Atlanta, Georgia, and he's kind of, he says he's a minor league baseball coach for musicians. Like a lot of people come through him and he he'll take talented musicians and it'll kind of shatter them into a thousand pieces. And then they reform is just more realized humans. Really? What's his job? I mean, no, he's a musician. He's a singer player from Atlanta. Yeah. And you met him where

I met him. We played a club with him when I was 12. He had a band called the Aquarium Rescue Unit. And it was Oteel Burbridge on bass who ended up playing in the Allman Brothers. It was Jimmy Herring on guitar. Yeah. Just super musicians. Yeah. But the Colonel was this fascinating character.

Dwayne Allman got him signed to Columbia in 1970. Yeah. The Hampton Grease Band. Yeah. And his claim to fame is the second lowest selling double record ever on Columbia behind a yoga record.

So this is the type of character the Colonel is. Yeah. He can spew baseball stats all day long. Right. But he, you know, he would hit me

with the right book or the right record at the right time or turn me on to Sun House or, you know, the aspects of howland wolf's thing that you should really be focusing in on or which were what well just hubert sumlin and just the band and the whole thing and he i mean he had seen wolf a dozen

times and just stories and um he's the one that bought me a love supreme and oh right you know turned me on to sun raw and just all that guy usually Usually it's an older brother, but in your league. No, but the Colonel, it was that. And he would, every time I would see him, he would kind of check in. He's like, I think you're ready for this. And he'd give me a Krishnamurti book. Or like, it was just me. Like, when he thought you were ready to take it on, he would hit me with this amazing record or this literature or whatever.

So when you go up there and you're 12 doing your, uh, you know, boy genius tour, what is he, what is he, what's the first thing he hit you with? I think the first thing we connected on was probably Howlin' Wall for Bobby Bland. Maybe that was the stuff. Yeah. Uh,

and you know, and then the, the deep Delta blue stuff like Book of White and Sun House. And, and that was. Sun House. That's a great, that record,

the Death Letter record. Oh man, it doesn't get better. It's insane. That's the, yeah. That's a great, that record, the Death Letter record. Oh, man. It doesn't get better. It's insane. That's the. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's when you're really digging down.

You're hitting bedrock at that point. I can't, like, listening to Skip James is, you know, I've never heard anything like that to this day. It's eerie, man. It's eerie. Yeah. And there's another guy that came out of the same county uh is it bentonia in mississippi this guy named jack owens yeah who was skip's protege and he recorded into the 80s and 90s when he was 80 or 90 years old and it's pretty haunting stuff

man yeah uh devil got my woman same a lot of the same tunes yeah cherry ball he does all of those but there's some great recordings of jack owens last time we were in the area i took my son i rented a car we were in jackson and we drove to uh skip james's old homestead and we drove to jack owens's spot and we hit some of the blues trail it was it was a good day it was cool oh yeah my son's 14 now i I think he was 13. We just listened to Delta Blues all day, and I just tried to put him in it. Yeah. Did he get it?

Oh, yeah. He's got good ears, and he's an empathy, sympathy. He'll go in. He's a sweet kid. Is he playing anything? Does he play? A little bit. My daughter plays a little bit more than my son.

She's always writing and singing, and she's pretty fearless that way. It's kind of funny that we're talking about it, and we didn't even mention Robert Johnson. That's a rare thing. See, that's an evolution of the knowledge of the blues culturally. Totally. Because 10 years ago, even, it was just Robert Johnson. That's all anyone talked about. And he's obviously great.

Sure. But there were people that came before and after. Sure. I don't listen to that record. It's a difficult record to listen to because you've got to really get on it and hear it. Totally.

But when you hear Charlie Patton or those other guys, it jumps out of the speakers. Bowie blues. Totally. It's crazy, man. Or pony pony blues and it's just this voice yeah it's like a drunk frog or something that's unbelievable yeah jack white's a big uh i went to jack white's studio to interview him and he's got a huge painting of that one portrait yes oh yeah that's a powerful look charlie patton so we played dockery

farms this last year where charlie patt, all those guys lived and came from. It was one of the biggest plantations in Mississippi. And all the buildings are still there, the cotton gin, all the stuff. Were they preserved? They keep them there on purpose kind of deal? The last 20 years they came back in and preserved it for that reason. And it's a pretty heavy spot. I mean, there's the commissary where Charlie Patton would,

apparently every Saturday, all the workers would get paid in script. We had some money, plantation money. Plantation money with Dockery printed right on it. And there'd be about 1,000 people waiting to go in the commissary and get their pay. So Patton and Willie Brown or whoever was coming through would park it on the stoop and play get everyone worked up and then there's a little bridge over the uh Sunflower River and Charlie Patton would rent out the little cottage

for the for the night they take all the furniture out they put mirrors like eight mirrors up and around it with gas lamps so the place lit up from the inside and they would have they would it would be it would be this throw together juke joint and they'd charge 50 cents to cross the river and he would just make bank and apparently charlie patton was amongst everyone there was just running always had sunday clothes on had a car like he was yeah but he he while everyone's getting paid, he's playing on the stupid. No one heard anything from Saturday to Saturday.

You're in the field working. There's no electricity. You don't hear music unless it's singing in the field. This is an electrifying thing that's going on. Good device with the mirrors. Good thinking. Absolutely. They said word spread and it became like all the traveling

Delta guys would go to Dockery and play Howlin' Wolf Sun House that's where it all started to come together Pop Staples

grew up on that plantation no shit it's a pretty heavy spot wow it's worth checking out well you don't I think what we lose because especially

if you you romanticize that music yeah is the hustle. You know, these guys did a lot of gigs. Yeah. And not just music gigs.

They were working all kinds of angles. Whatever it took, man. Yeah. Whatever it took. And, you know, even being at Dockery, you're a little conflicted because, you know, they had the original plantation house there. Mm-hmm. And then there's all the stuff that's left.

And then the band, some of the band was going to stay at the plantation house there and then there's all the stuff that's left um and then the band some of the band was going to stay at the plantation house and those guys in our band was like i don't feel comfortable being in there like this this doesn't feel right right i mean our group is pretty evenly split there's the caucasians and we got we're and there were a lot of people in the band that were like there was were some people that were like, no, I'm staying in that house tonight. Right. And other people were like, you know what? I can't do it. It doesn't feel right.

One of them wanted to fight the ghost. Exactly. And I was like, you know what? I ain't touching that. That's interesting. But it felt that way being there. Like, even the fact that it's preserved. Like, people need to know about this.

But like you said, you can't romanticize it too much. Right. Like when they're telling the stories, they're like, yeah, an old Mr. Dockery, he let everyone play. I was like, yeah. So maybe- Let them play. So they would keep ripping the house down.

I don't know. But there's a lot of history to unpack with that stuff. No shit. When I met Susan, we were on the road and um she had done a few gigs with her she just had the susan tedeschi band right yeah i remember them she's great so she had done a few few shows with john lee hooker and then my band got the call it was 99 2000 new millennium new year's eve we just booked our highest paid gig ever in Telluride with my group. And then we got the call to be the third band before John Lee Hooker at the Maritime for

like no cash. And I called our manager. I was like, you know what we got to do, man? We're canceling that Telluride show. Really? I was like, I got to see John Lee Hooker while he's still around. Right. And I was like.

You had your priority. I was in the know the 99 2000 we're like this is important stuff yeah and so we went out and uh we did our little set and then uh john lee hooker invited he he he loves sue he was all about her so he invited her backstage before the show and we we go back there and he's uh he was so sweet he was like uh baby where are you living now she's like well i'm gonna move in with derrick if he lets me and he's uh he was so sweet he was like uh baby where are you living now she's like well i'm gonna move in with derrick if he lets me and he looks at me he goes he kind of stutters he's like you you'd be a damn fool not to i was like all right it's it's done consider it done

and he's like well if you're out here i got seven houses you can stay at any one of them i was like this is beautiful i was like sue if you want to go hang with John Lee Hooker, who am I to stop you? I'm not going to deny you that. But he had us on stage for the countdown, and it was just such a blues countdown because it's, I mean, this is Y2K. Everyone's losing their minds.

And he has these two chick singers who are half drunk, and they're counting down from 20, and they're just kind of stumbling it. And I'm like, the New Year's was about two minutes ago. And we're standing on stage and John Lee gave Sue his 335 that looks like yours

and she's playing his guitar and he's kind of leading the charge and she's got a bottle of Cristal that somebody had handed her. I was like, this is a good night. Yeah, great night. This is the way to do it.

If it ends now right perfectly content with this we didn't have kids yet i didn't have anyone to think about it was a good day real blues new year all right so now you make your first record when you're how old 15 or 16 i think well i mean we you know we did some other throwaways that I try to pretend didn't happen before that. When I was 12 or 13, we went into the studio with Buddy Miles and did a track or two. And there's this little cassette tape with this awful drawing on it. With you and Buddy Miles? Yeah, there's some blackmail material out there. Where'd you, like, I guess you were just around these guys.

Because if you think about it, I guess the blues community is not huge. No, it's in the touring world, especially at the small level. Yeah. You're playing the clubs that are out there. It's a small world. You run into everybody. Right.

You run into almost everybody. When I was in college, they had a place called Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square that later became a comedy club, actually. But I saw Willie Dixon there and I saw Big Mama Thornton there. Wow. And they were both almost dead.

Yeah, yeah. And it was pretty heartbreaking but beautiful. I hear you. You know what I mean? At the end with Bebe, it was that way. But then I was like, you know what? If you get to be in that dude's presence, count yourself lucky. Did you play with him?

Yeah, we did a few tours with him. We were out with him for quite a bit. Some of my favorite memories have been on stage with B.B. There was one here in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl where we went and sat in with him and won at Royal Albert Hall. But he was so sweet. He was a prince of a human being, man. And he was really like, because I noticed like i saw you guys at the bowl and you know you know bb king you know he would play with an orchestra sometimes right and you're kind of a conductor up there too like

i could see you playing and susan singing but like there were moments there where you got a lot of instruments up there a lot of people and you're watching everything and you're like okay you're conducting yeah to some degree that's part of the deal man it's herding cats is what it is and like i hadn't seen like because i think bb had to do some of that right totally i mean towards the end his band knew him so well that they would just kind of follow right whatever trip he was on but yeah he yeah, there was some unique moments because I had met him quite a few times over the years but never played with him.

Yeah. And the first time that we played together was on stage at Royal Albert Hall. And I remember just playing a BB lick and him yelling and then playing it back. And I was like, oh, that was pretty sweet. I was like, we just had a conversation, a musical conversation. It's very specific licks with him totally i mean there's a thing there's a sound that he got out of the

instrument that everybody after him dug into because i've been realizing that lately just in playing my own bad blues is that you know the phrasing and the simplicity made some of these guys that's it yeah and it simplicity made some of these guys. That's it. Yeah. And then you get these newer guys that as time goes on, they keep filling in more and more gaps. Totally.

And sometimes you lose it. And it really should go the other way. I think so. You should be paring it down and perfecting it. I remember just recently watching this documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi,'s it's a sushi chef in tokyo about the old man yeah but he's talking about he's like the first 90 of of mastering something is kind of the easy part you know it's like you he's like it's it's when you start shaving down those last four or five ten percent when you get to the when the margins get smaller he's like

that's when it's tough and that's to me, those are the masters like Bebe or Albert, where they pared it down to the things that are going to stab you in the heart. Or it's emotions. They have harnessed the energy of it, and there's no throwaways. There's nothing they play. When they were at their peak, there was nothing they played that you could think of being any different. Right.

Not a note you would change. Did you have to go back to find that? Do you know what I mean? Like once you got the foundation. No, I think I was really lucky where I think my natural instinct was that's what I cared about. And some of it came from my father. Like when he would listen to music, that's what he keyed in on. You want to have that effect. He told me a story about

about Dwayne and Bebe and I forget who the other guitar player was but they were all sitting in together and this guy was doing that thing where he's just shredding yeah and just all over the stage and apparently Bebe went and got a seat and put it down he's like why don't you sit down and play with us here for a minute? And he would talk about how that would go on. And then B.B. would just lay out one note. And just you could feel this wave of intensity through. Everyone knew.

You're like, oh, that was cold blooded. You can do that shit all you want. Right. But it kind of reminds me of the old cartoon with the two dogs and the one just yipping around in a circle. And it's just pow. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Well, that's interesting because I'm just starting to sort of realize it mentally. Just because I play what I play.

But in thinking about it, for years, one of the reasons why I was too insecure to really pursue it was I didn't think I could be that good. But that's not the thing. I know it's not the thing. And you know, look, it's different for everybody. I mean, there's periods you go through, and if you're searching for something, and you're actually breaking new ground all the time, I don't care how many notes it takes to get there. Like the Coltrane, Sheets of sound period, whatever trip you're on.

But at the same time, when you play a note, a single note, it should all be in there. Every bit of it should be in that one sound. And I remember during, you read those stories, when Coltrane was kind of at his peak of just mastery, giant steps, all of this, there was this wave of people like, yeah yeah he can't play a ballad you know he can't just everyone's got a somebody's got a

bitch about something right so then he puts out this whole record and it's just the most beautiful heartbreaking shit yeah fuck you yeah he's like you know what if you can do both he's making choices it's choices though it's not right it's out of fear. He wasn't playing that fast because he couldn't stop and lean on a note. It was because he was actually working through shit. Right. He was breaking down musical barriers. And that's a whole different trip. You know, I'm sure you, you know, whether it's comedy or whatever,

you go through these periods of just throwing shit against the wall and seeing what works. And then you pare it down to the things that yeah that you know the the nuggets well well you don't want to lean on them too much but they're there but what's interesting about those boundaries though because like even when you listen to your when i listen to your first couple records i mean right away even though you're in teenager you're playing with big cats it's big production it's tight sound you know what i mean you're not in the garage yeah yeah and you know right away you're pretty proficient and you got an ear for production obviously and guys know how to produce you but then you know not too long after that whatever sort of compelled

you towards that uh that indian music was like that's like no, I have not heard that before, that the way you can transition from, I don't know what the style of playing is, but sort of bringing together that with, you know, kind of like, you know, swamp blues and country blues is sort of tricky, right? You know, what's funny about that is going back to Colonel Bruce Hampton. Yeah. It was around that time I got turned on to Ali Akbar Khan. Yeah.

Great Sarod player. Probably one of the great musicians. A Sarod is like, that's not a sitar. It's the other thing. It's like a fretless sitar. Uh-huh. So around that same time we were on tour through Mississippi. We went to the crossroads just to see the sights.

We were in our 15-passenger van, and I bought this. I was on a Book of White kick at the time, but I got this record that the great writer, Robert Palmer, not the musician. Yeah, the rock critic or music critic, yeah. He produced this record by this guy named Junior Kimbrell. Yeah, I know Junior Kimbrell. It's great shit.

Yeah, I think the record was called Most Things Haven't Worked Out. And at that time, I was listening to Delta Blues and Ali Akbar Khan. It was Indian and Delta. And the first track on the Junior Kimbrell record is this real droney thing. And then he starts singing, and it hit me.

I was like, those are the same inflections it's the same microtones it's like it's the same yeah there was a there was a humanity there that crossed over from the sound from india and this sound from mississippi that goes back to africa that goes all the way back yeah absolutely and then it's like to the primal sound and it i mean it it was a i remember the moment listening to it in the van where i was like holy shit this is all kind of the same thing and i was reading that book deep blues the robert palmer book yeah where he's tracing he's tracing the different delta musicians back to probably which tribe they came from right through their music and right the way they look that's right

it's pretty fascinating back to africa absolutely yeah so and that stuff will never fail to hit you in that place i'm fucking sitting listening to robbie shankar all day man i'm with you i don't even know when that happened yeah but i just got that record uh live at the in hollywood where the hollywood record gotcha it's 71 or something i think he's at someone's house beautiful you know and it's just the whole process but i can you know i don't think everybody can sit with that yeah no for me i'm like i'm good one chord go with it when i need uh when i need a slate cleaner when i you know sometimes you feel like you there's sometimes where the inspiration is easy to tap into and then there's other times where you feel like you have to work for it and when i get when i feel like i'm running out of gas yeah there's a few records that I can put on

that almost always clean the slate. And one of them is this Ali Akbar Khan, it's called his Signature Series Volume 2. And it's just the most beautiful melodies and just something about the tone of that instrument and the way he goes about it. It reminds you what's special about music and why you do it. It's one of those, like, everything lines back up.

Right. And there's a few blues records. You put on a Howlin' Wolf record and it sounds like your speaker's about to blow up. Like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just dig in. Yeah.

Quit being a baby and play. Right. Oh, man. Some of that stuff. When you knew you had this natural knack for it how did you outside of like having the the kernel you know turn you on to shit you know what was the process for you to evolve as as a musician was there ever a point where you couldn't you you would listen to something and you couldn't figure it out or you how did you

you know grow more did you ever take lessons or you know i looking back on it a lot of it was pretty amazing timing where i i felt like i ran into certain musicians when i needed to take the next step or be pushed a little bit and you know being around people uh when i was about 15 i met john snyder this producer that um i played on this junior Wells record with him in Louisiana. You played with Junior? Yeah. Oh, towards the end? Yeah, it was called Come On In This House.

He had a bunch of slide players. And one of the guys that I played with, Bob Margolin, who was in Muddy's band for a while. Right, yeah. I did a lot of shows when I was a kid with him, 12 to 14. With Muddy? No, with Bob. Bob, yeah. And they were looking for slide players players and Bob threw my name in the hat yeah uh John called my parents house in Jacksonville Bob had the number and yeah they flew me out and and then I connected with John and he

started taking me around and I've played on a lot of different sessions with him just one I went up to Levon Helms place i guess i was 16 at the time and it was rich stock yeah it was rick danko and garth and it was no way they did this tribute uh to bob dylan one track yeah i think it was called one too many mornings and i kind of walked into it i knew the band but i didn't know it like i know it now right so i kind of walked into it cold and it was it was one of those time slows down moment i was like they're they're on to some totally different trip here like i've i've never been around music like this like what what was it exactly it was just a an ease to it and uh no

one's in a hurry and like hey calm down like it's cool like because at first i was just there i was just there visiting right and then eventually they're, why don't you play a solo on this? Right, right. And Levon had just had his throat cancer, so he couldn't sing. Yeah. He was playing harmonica, but chain smoking weed. Yeah, yeah. It was a fascinating scene.

But I took one pass, and Rick Danko was like, he's like, that's good. Just breathe through it a little more. And I never had anyone really produce a solo. Right. And so your first instinct is, wait, wait, he's like that's good just breathe through it a little more and i never had anyone like really produce a solo right and so your first instinct is what wait wait he's totally right like i'm on a totally different wavelength than these guys right now right and i'd slowed down and i and i i got to that place and i could feel you know you just feel yourself the space yeah you just feel yourself get in it right and and i got done i was like hey man thanks for that breathe through i really appreciate that because i thought i thought in general that's how i played like i left space it's one of the things right you thought there's different levels

of that apparently and you learned it from the buddha denko exactly he's like hey uh just breathe man it's cool and he's like one of the great most you know beautiful singers absolutely and and i honestly i didn't know at the time yeah so after after i left that i've i've i learned pretty quickly because i dug into those records big pink and yeah and i just remember thinking all part of me thinking i wish i would have known but i'm kind of glad i didn't right because i didn't go in as a like a total fan right i went in just like oh cool he must have been like that must have been like when was that he didn't live much longer no it was it was right towards the end probably 96 i would say sweet guy oh yeah oh man it's such an amazing you know tradition in history and it's hard

like the weird thing about i i mean i like to play blues and it's all i play and i get a lot of satisfaction out of it but i don't listen to it as much yeah you know it's a weird thing that i go in and out you do yeah totally because there's something that happened with the blues where it just became not only a populist music but like any bar band could do pretty good blues oh well i don't listen to anything that's done now no no no i know yeah but like i think that's sort of what what kind of diminished totally no i'm i'm with you it it definitely was uh it was taken down the wrong path and people took the wrong things from it the simplicity they took from it you're like no no the point is the humanity of it like that's the

point right you were asking earlier like what what shifted from just being a kid guitar player and you're like it but it was this it was that time where you mentioned the indian classical stuff i remember watching this footage of ali akbar khan and then you read about he had a college in san rafael yeah just the way he talked about music the seriousness yeah and there was like it's that there's colonel bruce hampton giving you a christian murdy book you hear bill hicks for the first time and then you have you have this amazing uh just collision of all these these concepts yeah they basically come down to like quit whining quit bullshitting people and like get to it like yeah and and there

was a there was a moment around 14 years old 15 when i was like you know what this came pretty easily to me up to this point right but if we're gonna do it it's time to like dig in like let's do it yeah like it's well that's what i noticed about dedicate your life to this thing when i listened to it you know you know and i refreshed my memory and you know the new the stuff you're doing with susan and the tedeschi trucks band is different than what you did earlier in a way because you know it leans heavily on her playing on her lyrics and you know there's it's a different vibe totally so when you're just playing without her and you know you've got you know singers coming and going yeah but like there's there's a core to it that there was a point where you realize that you know you couldn't rest on your laurels even though you were a virtuoso and that in order for

you to find your style because like i listened to it and no one you know at a certain point no one's playing like you because you've integrated all that shit like that stuff becomes your playing yeah that the way you can move from from that uh to rock, to minor blues, to major blues, to country. Like, you know, you've integrated it all and it's yours now, right? Yeah, and I think about it sometimes. The way you listen to music, I think about and like the the chemicals and food you would put into your body right you have to be really careful what you listen to because when you're improvising it all sneaks in but that's okay though i mean no it is but it's like you gotta you can't listen to

too much trivial bullshit like on your spare time right you like the music should mean something it should be a melody you're okay with sneaking out in the middle of well that well that's well that's the other problem with fucking blues is that you know you're gonna cop riffs there's no other way absolutely and and it's not even bad no but but there are certain riffs that are heavily identifiable as people's riffs yeah and then there's like some people that just have some sort of magic twist on it like i'm a big peter green freak and you know those first you know, those first, you know, three Fleetwood Mac records, like that guy could play a minor blues like I don't think anyone else could.

And it's funny because a lot is revealed in, like you were talking earlier, the vibrato or just the tone or the way you approach things. And, you know, knowing his, knowing the arc of his life and career now, you can look, Peter, you can look back and you're like, oh, there was, like, there's a lot of conflicting things going.

There's a vulnerability to his playing that you can't cop that. Yeah, because I think it was killing him. Absolutely, and you hear that, and there's something incredibly compelling about that. It's like most of our favorite musicians, there's something in there that they're working through, you know? But the weird thing is, is with that they're working through you know but like not like what the weird thing is is with eric i mean you know clapton kind of like i liked all that mail stuff yeah i like the blues breaker stuff and i like you know like some of the and

cream was okay just because of like the development of the riff yeah but like i i kind of like i think he's a proficient player but i'm not moved the way I am with guys who flash early and run away. Yeah. No, there's something to that. And there was times on that tour. You did a bunch of dates with him? A little over a year. Oh, yeah?

Me and Doyle Bramhall. And there were times on that tour where he would pull that trump card out of his back pocket and light it up. I remember one. We were in Denmark. And I was like, oh. He like oh you could do it i was like oh that's there like it was it was it's weird right it is a weird thing i know because like he did like i've seen that happen yeah where like even on um even like when you watch the last waltz like you know post post cream you know and him trying to be the band or do whatever he's doing with slow hand and you know uh the other stuff like whatever he's trying to do musically

where like there are these moments where you're like oh he can fucking light that guitar oh yeah yeah and it's like why isn't he doing it all the time there's something to that and there's but there's a little bit of like when did he he do it? When were the moments where you were... I remember one in Denmark, just some random show we did. And we did 26 countries on that tour. And he's playing the full catalog, bits and pieces? We were doing a lot of the Domino's stuff by that point in the tour. So you guys would get on stage together at the end? You'd do separate sets?

No, I was in his band. Oh, that's how it went. Yeah. It was three guitar players. It was me, Doyle, Bramhall, and Eric, which was pretty fascinating. And you were touring Derek and the Dominoes, basically. I mean, it was his solo stuff, but towards the middle of the tour, there was a good portion of the show that was the Dominoes.

So you were almost all slide? Yeah. I was probably 60, 40. Uh-huh. Yeah. So what were you learning from him? Anything? Well, there was a few things. I mean, he was a great band leader. He was able to pull things

out of the band without directly asking for it, which I found pretty fascinating. And there's, I mean, there is something about the longevity, man, of being able to keep on the road and keep a career together that long and keep your game together. Like he could still play. I mean, I've been around a lot of musicians that it comes and goes, right. Like actually comes and goes, right.

They can't play at all. Really? You know what I mean? It's like, and he, there's, there is a, a respect that he gives to the overall craft that,

that really, that, that kept it going. I think that's what what his bag became absolutely yeah and then you know when i met him it was on the jj kale record i was a part of that and and seeing the way at least at that point of his career he was kind of going going back and paying homage to his heroes yeah and he you know it was a it was a very it seemed like a very thought out thing he

was doing well he came back around to what we're talking about that like he eventually sort of loop back around to a real simplicity yeah he did that blues record and he kind of stayed on that path he did the thing with bb yeah which is amazing from the cradle was the blues right yeah it's funny it's like as weirdly contentious my relationship with him is you know my mind musically yeah i've listened to all the shit yeah no i hear you and and i mean think about this bb king's first gold record was riding with the king really it's not an just it's insane were you about to say abomination no it totally i mean it's insane but the weird thing about eric and i imagine you sitting there playing with him was was like, you know, you hear his runs, and you're like, I know that run. Totally.

You're playing a tune, and you're like, oh, wait, we're playing Layla with Eric. It's kind of a trip. Because I was named after that record. Right. And so my dad, who's a roofer in Jacksonville, Florida, well, I flew him over to the Albert Hall shows, and we went out to Clapton's Place in the country. Yeah.

I see my dad, the roofer, having high tea with Eric. I was like, what a weird life we're living. Did he love it? Oh, yeah. He was pumped. He must have loved it. A lot of trucks was pumped. So wait, so what happened in Denmark?

He lit it up? No, he just had one of those nights where just out of the blue. I mean, the tour is going great. Shows are good. And then there was just one night where I don't know what got into him or up his crawl, but he just, I was like, oh, that's. That guy's in there. I get it.

Yeah. That guy's there. Right? And I don't know if it was just like, hey, motherfuckers, just in case you were wondering. Right. I don't know if it was that or just the spirit moves you sometimes. Who knows? I mean, I try to figure these things out because we play almost every night.

We're on the road 200 days a year. What kind of guitar was he playing? Strat? Strat. There was one night I got him to play a 59 Les Paul because somebody lent me one and he broke his out. And I think the struggle of playing a guitar that was physically harder to play was awesome. And that was a harder to play was awesome.

And that was a night, too. That was one of the other ones. Wrestling with it. Yeah, it was like he had to manhandle that thing. But that was it, though, because that was his tone for years. Absolutely. I mean, the Strat was later, right? Totally. And that fucking Gibson, that was when he screamed, man.

No, when he had the SG and the woman tone, I mean, those are things people are still trying to sort out. Right. You mean tonally? Absolutely. Well, that's the other thing that comes with the simplicity thing we're talking about is that you know part of it is the space and the breath and everything else and those notes but then you know choosing a tone which took me a long time to that resonates with you yeah like you say you're not a pedal guy and i know a lot of cats now that you know blake's not really a pedal guy my buddy matt sweeney he don't do pedals yeah you're just playing with these old fucking tubes neil young you know like you're just wrestling like neil i had him in here and like he's got

a fucking contraption up there that is like a bunch of amps together that only one guy knows how to work they're all old yeah and like literally every night he's like i don't know if it's gonna make it through the show no and that's part of the beauty. I mean, that's like with electricity. No, every night, like we,

I'll call our monitor engineer is my guitar tech too. And I'll call him over. I'm like, man, what's the voltage in this room? It's hot, isn't it? He's like,

yeah, it's one 23. Like you can tell when your amp is running too hot. Yeah. It gets too crunchy. Yeah. We're like, all right,

let's, let's swap out some power tubes. Let's try something else. Like, you're all night. It's just, I mean, there's some nights where it sings and you're like, that's it. Right.

Tomorrow's going to be great and it's just horse shit. It's like it disappears so quickly, man. That's part of the beauty, man. If you could lock it down, it would get boring quick. Yeah. So now when when do

you step up like how old were you when you first played with the almond brothers well the first time i was on stage with him i was playing this little club in south florida on south beach i was maybe 10 yeah and they were they were getting back together and i guess 89 and they all came and sat in with Dickie? No it was Greg my uncle Warren and Alan Woody and there's this picture the stage was above the bar so it's all

liquor bottles and then this 10 year old kid and my grandfather at the time he had a picture in his house but he covered up the liquor bottles I remember that photo so that's the first time i played with him but i joined the band at 19 yeah so in 99 i joined what's your relationship with greg you know and since you were a kid was he regular in your life or you know like you know it was always in and out that whole scene um i mean when i knew you

yeah when i was first starting um i wasn't around that stuff at all. And then I ran into them at that club. And I remember Greg and his guy pulling me aside and giving me one of Dwayne's slides, which was just a life highlight. God, everyone's giving you that. You're like, you're the guy. Here are the ritual artifacts. Yeah.

So that's a relic that sits in the house yeah um but then you know greg was he was pretty in and out of it at that time so i would see him liver wise and just you know his head was in a lot of places but i saw him recently like just like walk behind me at a hotel in new york i didn't realize how short he was number one and number two i'm like is that a ghost yeah no he's you know he's been dealing with some health stuff lately too but then i i guess at 14 he flew me out to california and i played in his solo band for a tour or two and you know people always you always get these questions like anybody ever give you good life advice and i was like no one ever really

does that like it never happens but there was one moment with greg where i we went for a ride in his uh i think he had this i think it was a vet yeah on the back it said bay baby bro yeah that was his it was duane's little brother you know yeah yeah and uh we we went for this ride up up towards the lucas uh studios lucas ranch so it's just beautiful drive and first time i'd ever been in a real sports car that you can get on it he let me get behind the wheel for a minute i was like oh this is amazing then we pull over and and he he gets really serious man and he's like he's like if all the all the potholes and all the dark trips i've been on or not be in vain like somebody needs to learn from

it and he showed me he showed me his arm you know like scars the track marks yeah and he's like you can do a lot of things he's like do not fuck around with it and that's it's one of the very few i was in a band with him for 15 years after that and there was never any moment like that like it was just out of the blue and i don't know if he i bet he doesn't remember it like it was it was in a pretty dark period for him yeah and uh but he got deadly serious and it was a it was a moment that i've i remember clearly man because i wasn't expecting any of that yeah i was like this is just a fun ride in a car with a hero of mine right and then it got real serious yeah but you know those are some things you take to heart well yeah that was a guy that never got out of the grips of it absolutely and you know

and and it was uh it was a real moment and you you know you no matter what happens after that with a relationship with somebody you you always appreciate those things did it scare you enough oh yeah i fucked around with a lot of things that's not one of them it leveled a lot of dudes absolutely you know and i mean the sad truth is there's some amazing music that came out of that stuff amazing art but it took it took most people down with it you know well it's one of those things that like it it's one of those you know i can appreciate it as what it would do for somebody it definitely shuts out all the other noise yeah yeah you know i mean and you can't listen to a record like kind of blue or right any of that and and and not

realize that that was a big part of the yeah how are you gonna find that space how are you gonna find that space yeah and but then you you're like wow it there was a lot of casualties yeah i mean coltrane was one of the very few that was able to just kick it yeah cold turkey and then but then love supreme came out of that man he sat in his room for four days and just sweated it out sweated out love supreme yeah sweated out drugs and talk all the toxins and then came out with the theme to that and ready to record pretty pretty amazing story but also like allman i think he doesn't get the credit for being as good a singer as he is he's a great singer one of the great i mean to me that's the difference between

that band and a lot of the other um jam bands a sorry term but it's uh none of them had a singer that could do what otis did or not you know it's not otis but it's in that realm yeah yeah that shit holds up yeah no they they they could they could take it hard left hard right they could take it to the hoop musically and then you got this guy that can just belt i mean that's yeah that's kind of the uh magic formula yeah and what did you did he ever talk about duane with you a bit yeah yeah you know that there was there was some funny moments i mean duane's duane's spirit loomed large over that band the whole time i was in it too i mean there would be there would be musical conflicts that would go

on and then you would almost you would almost see duane and greg's ear and then he would be like you know what i I take that back. Like it was one time when Jimmy Herring was in the band, um, for one year between Dickie and Warren coming back. And we, we did mountain jam, which red dog,

the original roadie who was there forever. Yeah. Um, he, he was like, man, you guys got to take it out. Like when Dwayne was here,

he would just, it would go anywhere. Like, don't, don't play the same themes. Like he would just always needle us yeah and we'd get done he's like yeah that was all right but like not nearly far enough so we're like oh we could we can take it out and so there was one night i think we were maybe a virginia beach or just some random gig and it went it went out like it went sunra out like it went just deconstruction and everybody was on board not everybody so so that night we get we get back on the bus and it's it's me and otil and and jimmy herring and and greg and then the drummers are on the other bus and we're up front

we're like oh that was pretty that was fun and greg comes on he's like all right who's the fucking fish fan and i was like not me I don't fucking like fish at all and he goes to the back of the bus or no it's after that he says uh he's like you know what that was just that was too much like that's that ain't what we do and like he kind of kind of leaned into us which he had never done then he goes to the back of the bus and door shuts and we're like well that was fun while it lasted and then not 10 minutes later he comes back up and he goes he looks at me he's like man me and my brother used to go round and round about that shit you guys play whatever you want i'm sorry about that and then he disappeared

again i was like what just happened i was like he went back there and duane was like you little motherfucker like he totally he's still talking he got yelled at 30 years after his death. I was like, it was an amazing moment. And what about that roadie? Oh, he loved it that night. He was pumped. Dude, Red Dog was a legend, man. Red Dog, he was a Vietnam vet, got wounded, sent home,

and then reenlisted because he was like, I'm never going to get that adrenaline rush again red dog was insane yeah wow but he was one of those guys that would take a bullet for for the band like he was he was the quintessential roadie yeah he's he's one of the roadies that should be in the rock and roll hall of fame maybe he will he there needs to be a petition for that right there's a few guys in the dead camp and red dog and joe dan from the almond brothers they they were lifers yeah in a very real sense so now uh i listened to some of the the latest record with uh the tedeschi trucks band and it sounds great man now what's the big difference in in working with your wife um you know it's been it's been so much easier than i thought it would be i gotta say good

player oh yeah no susan is amazing and when we put this band together we intentionally kind of scrapped what her band did what my band did and we started just from with a seed and i think three records in i think it's starting to the lid has finally come off and I feel like like this tour especially the the shows have been really exploratory and I feel like it's we're gonna do a live record from this tour and there's some there's been some pretty inspired moments I feel like now it's getting back to the best of what maybe my solo band was tapping into and the best of what her thing was doing I feel feel like it's, it's finally got its sea legs. When we,

when Tim LaFave came on board about two years ago, a bass player, um, I think he was kind of that missing link, a guy that could just play bass when he needed to. Yeah. But harmonically he can hear anything. And he,

I mean, he played in the 55 bar for years, just avant-garde trio with Wayne Krantz, like really exploratory stuff. He did that last Bowie record, black star yeah um tim is an amazing player but him and kofi the keyboard player in this group um they're like they're the closest to musical genius borderline that that i've been on stage yeah they can It doesn't matter what it is. They're on your ass, man. Yeah, yeah.

So that stuff, we've gotten to the point where it doesn't matter what happens on stage. Everybody's ready to just take a turn at any given moment in any tune. Like, nothing's off limits. So that's a fun place to be. I think the last three or four months with this band has been, it's been the, it's been the most growth I've, I've been a part of within a group. So it's, it's a, and you're still kind of pushing the envelope. Absolutely. And the musicianship, there's no ceiling. I haven't found the ceiling yet.

I haven't found the spot where it's like, all right, well, we can kind of do that, but not really. Yeah, yeah. So that's a good place to be. And the two drummers, man, they are connected at the hip. Yeah. They have a thing. Yeah, and you like two drummers. I do.

You know, after a few years with the Allman Brothers, and then towards the end of that Clapton tour, he had a second guy out. I was watching this old Otis Redding footage, and there's just something about two drummers, man. What is it? I mean, it gets tribal. I mean, there's sometimes when that thing gets rolling,

and if you're not getting on it, you're going to get plowed under the earth. So there's a little bit of fear. You're like, oh, shit. I got to get on. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I better step on the gas.

And how's your draw? Good? People coming out? Man, it's been slowly but surely things have been taking up. My manager, Blake, who originally was riding in the van with us for the first four years, just road-dogging it, he's been with me 22 years. And he hit me to the fact that every year the draw has been a little bit better. We haven't had any huge jumps, but every single year for 22 years.

I mean, it's easy when you're starting at like 12 people a night right to get up to 30 but you think you're picking up a little of that almond slack and a little bit of that you know the the whether you're their jam bandy or not but that that audience i think there's certainly a void that that we're picking up on i think there was a there was a a time where me being in theman Brothers and doing other things in some ways would eat into our crowd. Yeah. Because people were like, well, we just saw him here. You know, there's some of that.

There's that kid again. Yeah. And then there's, you know, the band, as it gets better, people start talking. You know, it's all word of mouth these days. There's no, you don't sell records anymore. Right. days there's no you don't sell records anymore right but he also got that expanse of like you know good sort of like heartfelt singing good you know blues rhythm blues you know whatever and then and then you got that whole other world of like just high-minded music yeah i hear you right yeah right they're coming out right absolutely yeah you know it's funny we were in san francisco

um we did oh we did two nights in Oakland at the Fox Theater. And Renee Fleming, the opera singer, is a huge Susan fan, which is an amazing thought. Yeah, it's great. And we went and saw her at the opening of the San Francisco Orchestra. And she's out there belting out Puccini. And it's this beautiful thing. Right. And then we get done with the show.

And she's like, have you heard Susan sing? I was like, this is beautiful. It's great. She must have loved that. Oh, she was beaming all right well man it was an honor talking to you man likewise man uh i appreciate you having me yeah it was great i'm glad we did it great okay what wasn't that nice? I love that guy. We text sometimes. He sends me pictures and I send him things. I think he's a pal. Guitar genius and pal.

Oh, mine. All right, I'm going to play some guitar, but don't tell Derek. This is more in the Marc Maron Massage Music Catalog. Done with new agey effects. The Marc Maron Massage Music Catalog. Done with New Agey FX. Thank you. Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed,

how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family.

Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.