04/12/2024
Derek Trucks:
"I started in standard tuning, but a few years into it I switched to open E, and that’s what I use all the time now. It’s just a matter of finding what felt good. It was easiest to express what I was hearing, and that came with getting rid of a pick, just playing with my hands. A lot of the stuff that I was really listening to was more geared towards slide playing, too.
You can grow as a musician and not be chained down to any one sound or something that happened thirty years ago. You don’t want to be stuck there when you weren’t around for it the first time. It was a liberating thing to get away from that, but things do come full circle. And when I got the chance to start playing with The Allman Brothers, it reinforced my roots that way.
The timing was perfect for that. Any time I’m playing with another group, and I’m headed in that, it’s going to reflect in what our band is doing, because it’s the music that you’re hearing, the music that you’re playing…it changes the way that you play. And so it’s been a delicate balance with our band, between their sound and what we’re trying to create. It’s been really nice to have both, to have the strong roots to fall back on, and then be completely free to do whatever you want, when you’re looking forward."
Playing For Change
