Derek Trucks is an accomplished American guitarist, known for his exceptional guitar playing and fusion of various musical styles. Trucks has appeared twice in Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” The guitarist is from Jacksonville, Florida, where he grew up playing guitar at a young age, gaining prominence as a member of the Allman Brothers Band and later co-founding the Derek Trucks Band.
Trucks is also known for his collaborations with Susan Tedeschi, whom he married in 2001. Together, the couple leads the Tedeschi Trucks Band, formed in 2011. The band’s lineup features a horn section, and incorporates elements of Southern rock and gospel into their sound. Their debut album, Revelator that was released in 2011 won a Grammy Award for Best Blues Album. Throughout all their tracks, Tedeschi’s soulful vocals and Trucks’ impressive slide guitar work create a compelling and dynamic musical experience.
Exclusively ahead of this years’ Bourbon & Beyond Music Festival, Trucks’ new whiskey brand collaboration, Ass Pocket Whiskey, had their first ever release, a Heritage Kentucky Straight Bourbon. Trucks’ passion for collecting and tasting whiskey grew into the idea of wanting to create a smaller bottle of top-shelf whiskey so consumers were more likely to crack it open and enjoy it rather than “ruin” a larger collectible bottle.
We had the chance to meet up with Derek Trucks at Bourbon & Beyond and talked about his new bourbon brand, favorite Jazz Fest memories, and advice for aspiring musicians.
What’s your perfect day in Jacksonville, Florida?
That’s tough. A really good tailgate party before a Jacksonville Jaguars win, which has been rarer than it should be. A lot of our family is there so if we get the humidity below like 9000, a good meal, if my kids are healthy and happy, it’s pretty easily a perfect day. It’s pretty easy for me. A good day in the recording studio. There’s a lot of them.
What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without playing guitar?
The longest I’ve ever gone is probably the early few months of Covid. I think the first 2 or 3 months. I’d never not been on the road since I was nine years old. There was never a two month stretch of not gigging. It was a time to check in with your family and check in with your kids and reset.
It was really good because then when you get back to playing, you realize how much you enjoy it and there’s a freshness to it. I think it’s important to take breaks from time to time. I mean, practice is obviously important, but it’s good to not burn yourself out. It’s something you want to always love, so balance is key, I think.
What’s your craziest travel story?
That’s a loaded one. I’ve been on the road for 35 years now. We’ve lost crew and crew members to international prisons. We’ve had some tough stuff. This was, I think, Japan. Everyone made it home eventually. You’ve got to be careful when you’re overseas. Check your bags. Public service announcement. Double check. Buy a new bag. I don’t know what to tell you.
Tell me about your involvement with Ass Pocket Whiskey and how you participated in the development.
We started Ass Pocket Whiskey with a good friend, Casey, and Andy, our manager, people that knew that I was really into bourbon. I’ve been collecting and searching for it on the road for 15 years now before the bourbon craze totally blew up. You could find really good stuff for cheap. So, the people who knew my love of bourbon came to me about maybe doing a brand or a bottle and it just never made sense or felt right until we had this concept, which was to try to source really high-end collector level bourbon, but putting it in an accessible package.
The idea is it’s small, it’s not pretentious. It’s stuff that you would pay a high dollar for. If you break it down in a small package, you’re more apt to open it and drink it. We’ve kind of jumped the shark a little bit with it. I love it because we have a lot of great friends here in Kentucky that are in the bourbon industry. It’s fun being able to search out really good juice and trying to get it to our friends and family and people that enjoy good stuff.
Are you involved in the tasting and producing the final product?
Oh all of it. It’s a labor of love. We’ve had other chances to just slap our name on something. We have skin in the game. The first round of barrels that came up when we found the good juice, I bought it myself and we sat on it for a year until we felt really good about it. It’s real for us.
What are you listening to now?
We’re building a control room in our studio right now, rebuilding our studio. We have this incredible listening space. I’ve been listening to music across the board. I’ve been listening to so much music, just trying to find great recordings for the sonic quality and things that move you. There’s this great Sam Cooke record called Night Beat that’s really intimate but big sounding. A lot of classical music. Just things that kind of make you hear a little bit differently. You’re always searching. I bet we’ll find things here at this festival that we haven’t heard that’ll pique our interest.
Any hidden gems we would tell people to visit from the road?
I mean, there’s so many. This last tour we did, we went coast to coast and some of the cities in the Midwest felt more vibrant than I can ever remember them, like Milwaukee, we had a blast there. Omaha was great. I think the center of the United States is having kind of a resurgence, which is nice. Amazing restaurants and kind of really leaning into their brewing heritage and Milwaukee has amazing beer halls. That was kind of a surprise. There’s a lot of gems when you travel the world. Off the beaten path is usually the best.
Do you go out and explore when you’re on tour?
We explore as much as we can. But you know, when it’s a big group and you get on the road for about 42 days, you have to conserve your energy, too. We get around, we have a good time, but it’s an eye on the prize. The gig. The gig is first and second and third, then everything else.
Do you have any favorite New Orleans Jazz Fest memories?
I have a few favorite Jazz Fest memories. We had a few shows with the Allman Brothers that were really incredible. I remember one of the first shows we ever did with the Tedeschi Trucks Band was in the gospel tent. I just remember the energy in that thing being over the top, it was storming outside. It hit a fever pitch. I remember getting to see great musicians there. Snooks Eaglin and George Porter together, which was incredible. I got to see Alvin Batiste sit in with Ornette Coleman. That was a highlight for me.
Any advice for aspiring musicians? It’s very different now than when you started.
It’s a different world for musicians coming up now. When I was coming up, there was no internet. There was no instant access to those things. It was definitely a different world. There were a lot of clubs where you could cut your teeth and kind of hone your craft without people sharing it. I feel like listening and playing as much as you can, and if you have the bug, you’re going to go in hard. The cream rises to the top one way or the other. You just have to stay with it.
Colonel Bruce Hampton, who was a big mentor of mine, he was like, ‘as long as you’re doing it at a certain level of quality, at some point the pendulum will swing back and the interface will catch up with what you’re doing.’ Sometimes artists get lucky, and what they happen to be into happens to be the thing. Other times, you have to wait for it to come back around, but it will. If you’re doing something that’s honest and correct and good, people will come to it eventually. It might take ten, 15 years. It took a long time for us, but it happens.