Episode 770 - Derek Trucks
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers 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
Marc:Bundle up.
Marc:Are you sitting there by a fire?
Marc:Are you wearing a hat?
Marc:Is it cold where you are?
Marc:Christmas is coming.
Marc:Hanukkah is coming.
Marc:So many holidays.
Marc:Do I need a list?
Marc:It's Kwanzaa now.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc: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.
Marc:I just know that there is a drastic shift in the tone outside.
Marc:Either it's chilly or cold or quiet or gray or...
Marc:Things seem to to just slow way down.
Marc:Emails start diminishing that the pace of those everything.
Marc:I just feel a cultural easing up, which is fine.
Marc:Getting into it, easing into it myself when I realized it's happening is a little, not traumatic, but I'm like, what's going on?
Marc:Is everybody okay?
Marc:Why is everything, how come no one's, where is everybody?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Is it the zombie apocalypse?
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Did something go off and everyone left?
Marc:Am I missing something?
Marc:Today on the show, we have Derek Trucks, the guitar wizard, the slide guitar wizard, who I was excited to talk to.
Marc:I didn't know what to expect because, you know, he is a child prodigy and he really took it to a he really you know, he did not become like some child prodigies become sort of like these freaks.
Marc:that are sort of paraded around by their parents or some morally corrupt manager to do their one or two tricks to cash in.
Marc:And that could have happened to Derek, but we talked about it.
Marc:His father wouldn't let that happen.
Marc:And very early on, he evolved into quite a thoughtful and professional and creative person.
Marc:exploratory musician, and he was great to talk to.
Marc:So look forward to that coming up shortly.
Marc:You know, it was weird.
Marc:Last night I watched that La La Land.
Marc:There's been a lot of attempts at doing...
Marc:Film musicals that have not panned out.
Marc:It's tricky business and not necessarily a particularly popular form.
Marc:But I got to be honest with you, this La La Land thing with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone was really moving and touching.
Marc:And the story was was great.
Marc:And the the framing of the musical was very traditional.
Marc: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 and loving somebody, but maybe not having them be the right person at that time and having those struggles.
Marc:There's a.
Marc:It's just I was surprised that the movie opened up and there was a big musical number and a dance number and in a traffic jam.
Marc:And I'm like, oh, boy, here we go.
Marc:But then as it evolved, because of the performances of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, which were very, you know, kind of very human and almost raw.
Marc:And then the music was, I think, a little understated.
Marc:There were some beautiful songs and the dancing was just enough.
Marc:And just the cinematic work was very simple, but very effective.
Marc:You know, close-ups were used properly.
Marc:And the emotions of it were just beautiful.
Marc:And the fantasy versus reality element was tremendous.
Marc:But it was really framed like, I think, a classic...
Marc:film musical now the thing that bothers me about it is that i i don't know if it's me or culture or what because i know the the movie's doing pretty well but uh you know that heyday of musicals i believe if i'm not mistaken and i could be because i'm no i'm no uh film historian but i think the heyday was really uh during some of the worst times in america
Marc:I think that the relief that the musical brought the world and this nation was at its peak when I believe the Depression was on and wartime was on.
Marc:Maybe I'm wrong.
Marc:You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to feel it that way because I think that the power of a musical and a love story and something so escapist in a way, but so directly connected to our hearts and to the human experience on that level,
Marc:uh but it elevates uh 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
Marc:It's a it's a sweet movie.
Marc:And that that Emma Stone is really good.
Marc:And I already liked Ryan Gosling.
Marc:But yeah, there's one song in there, the song that she sings at her last audition about her aunt.
Marc:Well, it was great.
Marc:And there was like a moment in there where I'm like, that's an interesting lyric.
Marc:That's you know, that's some honest shit.
Marc:So emails.
Marc:Did I burn up all my time?
Marc:No, I've got plenty of time.
Marc:It's my show.
Marc:This first email shadow governments.
Marc:Hey, Mark, I don't know about any shadow governments.
Marc:Maybe everything is very compartmentalized.
Marc:I was a CIA analyst for two years and then in Marine Corps Intel for a year after 9-11.
Marc:Everyone who I knew in the CIA were just good people, probably even the office a-hole.
Marc:who worked in cubicles and who wanted to believe we helped keep America and its allies safe.
Marc:We wanted to avoid DC traffic.
Marc:We loved escaping to Chinatown for long lunches when the bosses were on vacation.
Marc:We talked sports, pop stars, and how we were going to get our kids through college.
Marc:We had birthday party planning committees.
Marc:and waited to see who would eat the most rum balls at the holiday party.
Marc:Political diversity was no different than any other work environment I have been a part of.
Marc: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.
Marc:Love your podcast.
Marc:I wrote to you once before.
Marc:I think I might have offended you.
Marc:Sorry if I did.
Marc:Fight the good fight, James.
Marc:I don't know, all this stuff, lunches in Chinatown, you know, talking sports, pop stars, you know, how you're going to get your kids through college, birthday party planning committees.
Marc:This sounds like a front for the shadow government to me.
Marc:I don't know, James.
Marc:I'm kidding.
Marc:Thank you for clearing what the work environment at the CIA is up for me.
Marc:I don't know if I feel better, but I feel that you're being honest.
Marc:I feel better.
Marc:Thank you for serving.
Marc:All right, let's read a couple other emails.
Marc:I just wanted to balance it out.
Marc:Um, this one is, these are a little more emotional and I think there's a element of gratitude and hope, right?
Marc:Uh, subject line, Casey Affleck and the greeting was greeting you old Jew.
Marc:Always nice.
Marc:Well, you finally hit the interview that made me pull over and cry.
Marc:Casey, uh,
Marc: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.
Marc:I was raised in Gastonia, North Carolina.
Marc:My childhood was anything and everything desperate and disparate as anything you've read or heard from others.
Marc:No need to rehash the details.
Marc:Fast forward to now, I'm a full-blown alcoholic.
Marc:I self-medicate terrible panic attacks and depression with the drink.
Marc: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.
Marc:Kind of like a period, only if it were Satan's period.
Marc:I've been to rehab, 12 steps, all the bells and whistles.
Marc:Pretty solid for the past five years, but I haven't hit my point yet.
Marc:The interview with Casey has given me some hope.
Marc:As you well know, the shame and self-loathing of addiction is the boiling point.
Marc: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.
Marc:My kids have seen quite a bit of this.
Marc:Newsflash, you can't hide things from your kids, even if you think you are.
Marc:I have all the trappings of codependency, social anxiety, hyper intellect, but stifled by my own pains and general dysfunction.
Marc: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.
Marc:I had to pull over.
Marc:His whole stream of consciousness about that gave me hope.
Marc:I was so worried that I have hurt my kids to the point of no return.
Marc:When he talked about his kids telling him he's the worst dad with the reply, let me tell you about the worst dad.
Marc:Then he said they'd be okay too if they had to deal with that.
Marc:When he talked about Ben, rehab, and his whole family's recovery, I was sobbing in my car.
Marc:So congratulations, Marin.
Marc:Your show finally hit me in a good way.
Marc:So I say thank you for what you do.
Marc:I can guarantee you touch a heart every episode.
Marc:From the garage, you're saving lives, and you probably just saved mine.
Marc:I haven't felt the same since.
Marc:Somehow that interview relieved the crippling self-hatred just enough where I could see the other side.
Marc:I could see full recovery.
Marc:I love you and the world loves you.
Marc:Even the people who put spinach in your lox eggs and well-grilled onions love you.
Marc:From a place in my heart, I cannot describe Bonnie.
Marc:Thank you, Bonnie.
Marc:And I'm glad you had that moment and really stick with it.
Marc:Stick with it.
Marc:This one is this next email is a pretty funny one has to do with dads.
Marc:This is from Brett.
Marc:I spent most of my 20s growing resentful of my father.
Marc:When I turned 30, I decided to stop drinking and began dealing with my emotional life.
Marc:I broke the deafening silence with my father and attempted to build a relationship with him.
Marc:Your podcast and specifically your fearless dialogue around father son dynamics has been hugely helpful in understanding my complicated relationship with my father.
Marc: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.
Marc:You also have taught me to be more compassionate with my father.
Marc: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.
Marc:So thank you for reminding me, as hard as it may be, to always return to love and compassion and forgive our parents.
Marc:which brings me to the present and what compelled me to write.
Marc:I recently returned to my childhood home in Maryland to help care for my father, who has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
Marc:It is difficult for us to communicate during this challenging time, but one thing we can always connect on and share is WTF.
Marc: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.
Marc:I agreed and off we went.
Marc:You said you were reluctant to air it because the interview was cut short, but I'm so grateful you did.
Marc:A quarter of the way through the interview, I heard my father sniffling and wiping his eyes.
Marc:I asked why this was making him so emotional.
Marc:He is an only child and his love and escape was going to the movies with his mother.
Marc:He told me he and his mother saw every movie that Jerry and Dean did together.
Marc:I piped in and said, oh, you're feeling nostalgic about going to the movies with your mother.
Marc:To my surprise, he tearfully replied, no, not that.
Marc:It's how devastated I was when Jerry and Dean broke up.
Marc:I held back my laughter with all my might.
Marc: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.
Marc:My father has emotional connections with people in the movies and on TV.
Marc:These are his friends.
Marc:Thank you for giving us something to laugh about at this time in our lives when laughs are hard to come by.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Warm regards, Brett.
Marc:That's just like my dad, Brett.
Marc: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.
Marc:So I hope that doesn't cause any trouble.
Marc: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.
Marc:I also want to say the Tedeschi Trucks Band will be on tour throughout the U.S.
Marc:in January and February.
Marc:You can go to TedeschiTrucksBand.com for tour dates.
Marc:So here now are me and Derek Trucks.
Marc:Boy, you must have a good humidor on the bus there because this one's nice and soft.
Marc:Yeah, we have a little fella that we keep flush.
Guest:That's the thing?
Marc:I'm excited.
Marc:I didn't know I'd be smoking a Cuban right now, but I'm gonna do it.
Marc:So you're down south.
Marc:Where'd you grow up?
Marc:Jacksonville, Florida.
Marc:You grew up in Skynyrd land.
Guest:Yeah, so the funny thing is the Allman Brothers formed in Jacksonville.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Skinner later on.
Guest:And my dad, he was always, the Skinner thing was the more redneck side of things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the Allman Brothers were maybe, it was an interracial band.
Guest:It was a little more forward thinking.
Guest:So my dad was pretty anti-Skinner.
Guest:Like it wasn't, he just, he's like, fuck those rednecks.
Guest:He just didn't like the whole, I mean the rebel flag shit, all of that.
Guest:And so I grew up,
Guest:around that scene i mean all those guys artemis pile yeah ed king randall hall uh leon wilkerson i'd always see them and most of them were pretty nice fellas it seemed that i would play with them as a kid yeah you grew up around them because your uncle was was in the allman brothers your uncle was uh was butch trucks and your dad's his brother
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, 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.
Guest:They all still lived in the area.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The Skinner guys were always around.
Guest:But it was funny because my dad was just, he just wasn't having it.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he was at some of the Fillmore shows.
Guest:He saw Hendrix of the Atlanta Pop.
Guest:He's a music nut.
Guest:But that side of it, he would always kind of tamp down.
Guest:And later on, I would listen back to some of the records and be like, there's actually some good stuff there.
Marc:Sure, man.
Guest:And so the funny thing is now, where our studio is in the swamp in Jacksonville, my parents ended up buying the house four doors down from me.
Guest:And they're...
Guest:The house right next to them was Alan Collins' house.
Guest:It was like the Skynyrd party pad.
Guest:And when we moved in the neighborhood, some of our neighbors, I could tell they were a little apprehensive about having musicians.
Guest:And the guy across the street, he was like, I was the one that found the car in the ditch with his girlfriend.
Guest:Like Alan Collins drunk drove into the ditch with like multiple people in his car.
Guest:And then split.
Guest:It just split, went to his house.
Guest:And so when we moved in, I was like, yeah, we're a different kind of musician.
Guest:I was like, we'll keep it between the lines, I promise.
Guest:So it took us a while to gain slight acceptance as we're bringing the property values down.
Marc: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, because my generation of people, I don't want to get too heady, and we don't have to feel guilty about it anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But those guys could play all right.
Guest:They could.
Guest:They could.
Guest:And they wrote some great tunes, no doubt about it.
Guest:But when you put them up next to Dwayne and Barry and the exploratory stuff, it was a different order of being.
Marc:No, that's right.
Marc:They sort of commercialized the South in a way that fit a time, I guess.
Guest:Yeah, and I think for me, a lot of times it's...
Guest: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 they left a lot of wakes literally yeah a lot of wakes but you know i think people glommed on to the wrong part of their music and message and that right that kind of right blown out of proportion so i think sometimes the baby does get thrown out sure with the
Marc:Bathwater.
Marc: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.
Marc:When you first picked up the guitar, music was certainly familiar to you, I assume.
Guest:Yeah, there was always records spinning in the house, always good vinyl.
Guest:I mean, really, at that time, it was the Layla record, my parents, the Fillmore East record.
Guest:My mom was a big Joni Mitchell fan.
Guest:My dad, it was B.B.
Guest:King and Elmore James.
Guest:So those are the records I was hearing.
Guest:And when I started playing, you know, at that age, you don't really question things.
Guest:If it's fun and you take to it, you just do it.
Guest:It wasn't like I sat around practicing and loved it so much.
Guest:It was just like I'd play baseball.
Guest:I'd pick up a guitar and me and my dad would play a little bit.
Guest:What's he play?
Guest:Well, he just played enough guitar to like woo girls for a minute.
Guest:But he never played on stage, never professionally.
Guest:But he'd been around it because of his brother.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:He'd been around the music scene.
Guest:But then I started sitting in at this local blues bar.
Guest:How old?
Guest:Nine.
Guest:So it was quite a scene.
Guest:I remember the second or third time I was there.
Guest:First time it was just me and this guitar teacher I was playing with at the time.
Guest:And it was just the two of us.
Guest:And then...
Guest:And then it was with this local band, this singer named Ace Moreland from Oklahoma.
Guest:He was, I think he was maybe half Cherokee.
Guest:He was a striking looking dude and amazing singer.
Guest:Played a lot of wolf tunes.
Guest:Like the first Howlin' Wolf I heard was from him.
Guest:And I would start sitting in with that band, but the only guy I knew was a drummer.
Guest:So I just faced him.
Guest:I wouldn't even turn around to the audience.
Guest:Two or three songs a night I would play with them.
Guest:But I
Guest:I met Coco Taylor there when I was nine.
Guest:Ivan Neville, who reminded me recently, he's like, we played together when you were nine years old.
Marc:I remember that now.
Marc: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 instinctively knew.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, you know, and it was growing up, I mean, my dad used to put us, me and my brother, 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 Dwayne's slide and then this Elmore James record that was just kind of- Like the greatest hits?
Guest:Um, yeah, it was with like Hawaiian boogie and double album.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:With the two kids on the cover.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, so I think that stuff was just there.
Guest:And when I first picked up an instrument and my dad showed me how to play, uh, La Brera in A minor, just the melody, the simple melody.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's this thing, this light bulb that goes off.
Guest:You're like, oh, that's that sound I've been hearing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then a friend brought over a slide around the same time, and that even made more sense because I had been listening to Elmore and Dwayne, and my hands were small, so fretting a guitar was kind of a pain.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So the slide was just easier, and I could get to those notes.
Guest:And it's fun to try to...
Guest:pull those ghosts and those sounds out of an instrument.
Guest:I mean, that's kind of what we're all doing.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Until you find your own voice, but then it's essentially the same thing.
Guest:You're just, you're kind of, you're trying to mine for gold.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You're just trying to find this thing.
Marc:Well, that's the trick.
Marc: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.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:You know, like, cause you're a novelty act.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And I was really fortunate.
Guest:Um,
Guest:I think my dad always says he's an atheist, but the way he is moved by music and the way he thinks about music, it's one of the few sacred things to him.
Guest:It's like family and music.
Guest:But I would see him listen to a Ray Charles track and just goosebumps or tears, and I was like, something's up.
Guest:with you like there's more of the story but the way he would talk about seeing Dwayne 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 um
Guest:But so he was never into the scene or like exploiting your kid for gain.
Guest:It was like the music part is what was important to him.
Guest:And we would run into a lot of other kid guitar players that were doing the Stevie Ray Vaughan clone thing.
Guest:And there'd be these stage moms and dads that were like, you got to walk out in the crowd.
Guest:You got to talk to the audience.
Guest:And my dad is like, I'll never pull that stuff with you.
Guest:Don't you worry.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So wait, there was a whole sort of community of child blues guitar players?
Guest:You would just run into them.
Guest:And around that time, there was all these guys popping up when I was 13, 14.
Guest:The Johnny Langs, Kenny Wayne Shepherds, Bonamassa, all those guys.
Guest:They were all kind of- Were they?
Guest:Oh, he was a kid too?
Guest:We're all the same age.
Guest:You and Bonamassa?
Guest:So they flew Bonamassa down when I was-
Guest:12 he was 13 they flew him down to jacksonville though back when there used to be radio stations that had budgets right it's gonna be the battle of the kid guitar players north and south and they flew him down and it was just the oddest thing they put us with this weird house band yeah played the landing on the river it was just such a shit show what happened so there's
Guest:speaking out of school but there was one moment where uh you know and he's a kid so yeah i'm sure he's 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 here i was i didn't even do anything man
Guest: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 and man
Guest:I think I appreciate it at the time, but I certainly appreciate that shit now.
Marc:Yeah, I bet.
Marc:I bet it'll keep you humble.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Well, that's hilarious for me.
Marc:So, Kenny Wayne Shepard, John Bonamassa, that's his name, right?
Marc:You, and there was another one?
Guest:Well, there was a bunch.
Guest:Some made it, some didn't.
Guest: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...
Guest:There'd be this little wonder kind kid that was playing and most of them were doing the same stuff.
Guest:Like it was mostly Stevie Ray Vaughan clones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was something about it that just I had a total aversion to it.
Guest:And I love Stevie and I loved Albert King and all the stuff it came from.
Guest:But I didn't like kids wearing hats and playing with the same instrument.
Guest:I was like, it was a different thing.
Guest:So I think that helped me.
Guest: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.
Guest:And then fade away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was lucky that that stuff just kind of, I think your instinct.
Marc:But that wasn't your thing though, either.
Marc:You weren't a Stevie Ray guy.
Marc:You're probably the only one playing the slide at that time.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:It was a little different.
Guest:And I ran into some
Guest:some musicians early on that kind of pointed me down a different path uh there's this guy named colonel bruce hampton in uh atlanta georgia and he's kind of he says he's a minor league baseball coach for musicians like it a lot of people come through him and he he'll take talented musicians and he'll kind of shatter them into a thousand pieces and then they reform is just more realized humans really
Guest:what's his job i mean no he's a musician he's a singer player and from atlanta yeah and you met him where i met him we played a club with him uh when i was 12 he had a band called the aquarium rescue unit and it was otiel burbridge on bass who ended up playing in the almond brothers it was jimmy herring on guitar just super musicians yeah um but the colonel was this fascinating character duane almond got him signed to columbia when in 1970 yeah the hampton grease band
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his claim to fame is the second lowest selling double record ever on Columbia behind a yoga record.
Guest:So this is the type of character the colonel is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He can spew baseball stats all day long.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he would...
Guest:He would hit me with the right book or the right record at the right time or turn me on to Sun House or the aspects of Howlin' Wolf's thing that you should really be focusing in on.
Guest:Which were what?
Guest:Well, just Hubert Sumlin and just the band and the whole thing.
Guest:I mean, he had seen Wolf a dozen times and just stories.
Guest:He's the one that bought me a Love Supreme and turned me on to Sun Ra.
Marc:You need that guy.
Guest:Usually, it's an older brother, but in your league... No, but The Colonel, it was that.
Guest:And he would...
Guest:Every time I would see him, he would kind of check in.
Guest:He's like, I think you're ready for this.
Guest:And he'd give me a Krishnamurti book.
Guest:When he thought you were ready to take it on, he would hit me with this amazing record or this literature or whatever.
Marc:So when you go up there and you're 12 doing your Boy Genius Tour, what's the first thing he hit you with?
Guest:I think the first thing we connected on was probably Howlin' Wall for Bobby Bland, maybe.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was the stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, and then the deep Delta Blues stuff, like Book of White.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Sun House.
Guest:And that was... Sun House.
Guest:That's a great... That record, the Death Letter record.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:It doesn't get better.
Guest:It's insane.
Guest:That's the... Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's the... That's when you're really digging down.
Guest:You're hitting bedrock at that point.
Marc:I can't... Like, listening to Skip James is...
Marc:I, you know, I've never heard anything like that to this day.
Guest:It's eerie, man.
Guest:It's eerie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's another guy that came out of the same county.
Guest:Is it Bentonia in Mississippi?
Guest:This guy named Jack Owens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who was Skip's protege.
Guest:And he recorded into the 80s and 90s when he was 80 or 90 years old.
Guest: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 think he was 13 we just listened to delta blues all day and i
Guest:just tried to put him in it yeah did he get it oh yeah he's got good ears and he you know he's he's uh he's an empathy sympathy he he'll go in like he's a he's a sweet kid is he playing anything does he play a little bit my daughter plays a little bit more than my my son she's she's always writing and singing and she's pretty fearless that way it's kind of funny that we're
Marc:Talking about it.
Marc:And, you know, we didn't even mention Robert Johnson.
Marc:That's a rare thing.
Marc:That's an evolution of the knowledge of the blues culturally.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Because, you know, 10 years ago, even.
Marc:That's all there was.
Marc:Just Robert Johnson.
Marc:That's all anyone talked about.
Guest:And he's obviously great.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there were people that came before and after.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I don't listen to that record.
Marc:It's a difficult record to listen to because you've got to really kind of like get on it and like, you know, hear it.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Whereas some of the other stuff.
Guest:But when you hear Charlie Patton or those other guys, it jumps out of the speakers.
Marc:Bow Weevil Blues?
Guest:Bow Weevil, totally.
Guest:It's crazy, man.
Guest:Or Pony Blues.
Guest:And it's just this voice of...
Guest:Yeah, it's like a drunk frog or something.
Marc:It's unbelievable.
Marc:Yeah, Jack White's a big, I went to Jack White's studio to interview him and he's got a huge painting of that one portrait.
Guest:Yes, oh yeah, that's a powerful look.
Marc:Of Charlie Patton.
Guest:So we played Dockery Farms this last year where Charlie Patton, all those guys lived and came from.
Guest:It was one of the biggest plantations in Mississippi.
Guest:And all the buildings are still there, the cotton gin, all the stuff.
Marc:What, they preserved?
Guest:They keep them there on purpose kind of deal?
Guest:The last 20 years, they came back in and preserved it for that reason.
Guest:And it's a pretty heavy spot.
Guest:I mean, there's the commissary where Charlie Patton would...
Guest:Apparently, every Saturday, all the workers would get paid in script.
Marc:That's the money, plantation money.
Guest:Plantation money with Dockery printed right on it.
Guest:And there'd be about 1,000 people waiting to go in the commissary and get their pay.
Guest:So Patton and Willie Brown or whoever was coming through would...
Guest:park it on the stoop and play, get everyone worked up, and then there's a little bridge over the Sunflower River, and Charlie Patton would rent out the little cottage for the night.
Guest:They'd take all the furniture out.
Guest:They'd put mirrors, like eight mirrors up and around it with gas lamps so the place lit up from the inside, and they would have, it would be this throw-together juke joint, and they'd charge 50 cents to cross the river.
Guest:And he would just make bank.
Guest:And apparently Charlie Patton was amongst everyone there was just running.
Guest:Always had Sunday clothes on.
Guest:Had a car like he was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But while everyone's getting paid, he's playing on the stupid.
Guest:No one heard anything from Saturday to Saturday.
Guest:You're in the field working.
Guest:There's no electricity.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You don't hear music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, unless it's singing in the field.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So this is an electrifying thing that's going on.
Guest:Good device with the mirrors.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Good thinking.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And they said word spread, and it became like all the traveling Delta guys would go to Dockery and play.
Guest:Howlin' Wolf, Sunhouse.
Marc:That's where it all started to come together.
Guest:Pop Staples grew up on that plantation.
Marc:No shit.
Guest:It's a pretty heavy spot.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:It's worth checking out.
Marc:I think what we lose, because especially if you-
Marc:You romanticize that music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is the hustle.
Marc:You know, these guys did a lot of gigs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And not just music gigs.
Marc:They were working all kinds of angles.
Guest:Whatever it took, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whatever it took.
Guest:And, you know, even being at Dockery, you're a little conflicted because, you know, they had the original plantation house there.
Guest:And then there's all the stuff that's left there.
Guest: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.
Guest:Like, this doesn't feel right.
Guest:I mean, our group is pretty evenly split.
Guest:There's the Caucasians, and there were a lot of people in the band that were like,
Guest:There was some people were like, no, I'm staying in that house tonight.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And other people were like, you know what?
Guest:I can't do it.
Guest:It doesn't feel right.
Guest:One of them wanted to fight the ghost.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I was like, you know what?
Guest:I ain't touching that.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:But it felt that way being there.
Guest:Like, even the fact that it's preserved.
Guest:Like, people need to know about this.
Guest:But like you said, you can't romanticize it too much.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, when they're telling the stories, they're like, yeah, an old...
Guest:Mr. Dockery, he let everyone play.
Guest:I was like, yeah.
Guest:Let them play.
Guest:So they would keep ripping the house down.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But there's a lot of history to unpack with that stuff.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:When I met Susan...
Guest:We were on the road, and she had done a few gigs with John Lee Hooker.
Marc:What was her name?
Marc:She just had the Susan Tedeschi band, right?
Marc:That's it, yeah.
Marc:I remember them.
Marc:She's great.
Guest:So she had done a few shows with John Lee Hooker, and then my band got the call.
Guest:It was 99-2000.
Guest:New Millennium, New Year's Eve.
Guest:We just booked our highest paid gig ever in Telluride with my group.
Guest:And then we got the call to be the third band before John Lee Hooker at the Maritime for like no cash.
Guest:And I called our manager.
Guest:I was like, you know what we got to do, man?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:canceling that tell your right show really i was like we i was like i gotta see john lee hooker while he's still around right and i was like you had your priority i was in you 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 we invited her backstage before the show and we we go back there and he's uh he was so sweet he was like
Guest:baby, where are you living now?
Guest:And she's like, well, I'm going to move in with Derek if he lets me.
Guest:And he looks at me, he goes, he kind of stutters away.
Guest:He's like, you'd be a damn fool not to.
Guest:And I was like, all right, it's done.
Guest:Consider it done.
Guest:And he's like, well, if you're out here, I got seven houses.
Guest:You can stay at any one of them.
Guest: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 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 yeah 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 yeah
Guest:and we're standing off stage and john lee gave sue uh yeah 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 this is a good night yeah great night this is the way 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 beautiful it was a good day real blues new year all right so now you make your first record when you're how old
Guest: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 like we 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 yeah there's some blackmail material out there where'd you where'd you like i guess like you were just around these guys because if you think about it i guess
Marc:The blues community is not huge.
Guest:No, it's in the touring world, especially at the small level.
Guest:You're playing the clubs that are out there.
Guest:It's a small world.
Guest:You run into everybody.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You run into almost everybody.
Marc:When I was in college, they had a place called Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square that later became a comedy club, actually.
Marc:But I saw Willie Dixon there.
Marc:and I saw Big Mama Thornton there.
Marc:Then they were both almost dead.
Marc:And it was pretty heartbreaking but beautiful.
Marc:I hear you.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest: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,
Guest: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 BB 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
Marc:And he was really like, cause 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.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you were kind of a conductor up there too.
Marc: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 to some degree.
Guest:That's part of the deal, man.
Guest:It's hurting cats is what it is.
Guest:And I hadn't seen... Because I think Bebe had to do some of that, right?
Guest:Totally.
Guest:I mean, towards the end, his band knew him so well that they would just kind of follow whatever trip he was on.
Guest:But yeah, there was some unique moments.
Guest:Because I had met him...
Guest:quite a few times over the years, but never played with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the first time that we played together was on stage at Royal Albert Hall.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I remember just playing a BB lick and him yelling and then playing it back.
Guest:And I was like, oh, that was pretty sweet.
Guest:I was like, we just had a conversation, a musical conversation.
Guest:It's very specific licks with him.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:I mean, there's a thing.
Guest:There's a sound that he got out of the instrument that everybody after him dug into.
Marc:Because I've been realizing that lately, just in playing my own bad blues, is that the phrasing and the simplicity made some of these guys.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you get these newer guys that as time goes on, they keep filling in more and more gaps.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And sometimes you lose it.
Guest:And it really should go the other way.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:You should be paring it down and perfecting it.
Guest:And I remember just recently watching this documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and it's a sushi chef in Tokyo.
Marc:Oh, about the old man.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But he's talking about, he's like, the first 90% of mastering something is kind of the easy part.
Guest:You know, it's like you...
Guest:He's like, it's when you start shaving down those last 4%, 5%, 10%.
Guest:When you get to the – when the margins get smaller, he's like, that's when it's tough.
Guest: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.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or it's emotions.
Guest:Like they are playing – they have harnessed the energy of it and there's no throwaways.
Guest:There's nothing they play –
Guest:When they were at their peak, there was nothing they played that you could think of being any different.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not a note you would change.
Marc:Did you have to go back to find that?
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Like once you got the foundation.
Guest:No, I think I was really lucky where I think my natural instinct was that's what I cared about.
Guest:And some of it came from my father.
Guest:Like when he would listen to music, that's what he keyed in on.
Guest:You want to have that effect.
Guest:He told me a story about...
Guest: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 was just shredding yeah and just all over the stage yeah 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
Guest:And he would talk about how that would go on, and then Bebe would just lay out one note, and you could feel this wave of intensity.
Guest:Everyone knew.
Guest:You're like, oh, that was cold-blooded.
Guest:You can do that shit all you want.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it kind of reminds me of the old cartoon with the two dogs and the ones just yipping around in a circle, and it's just pow.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Oh, I'm sorry about that.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because I'm just starting to sort of realize it mentally just because I play what I play.
Marc: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.
Guest:But that's not the thing.
Marc:I know it's not the thing.
Guest:And you know, look, it's different for everybody.
Guest: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.
Guest:Like the Coltrane sheets of sound period, whatever trip you're on.
Guest:But at the same time...
Guest:When you play a note, a single note, it should all be in there.
Guest:Every bit of it should be in that one sound.
Guest:I remember during, you read those stories, when Coltrane was kind of at his peak of just mastery.
Guest:Giant steps, all of this.
Guest:There was this wave of people like, yeah, he can't play a ballad.
Guest:Somebody's got to bitch about something.
Guest:So then he puts out this ballad.
Marc:A whole record of ballads.
Guest:And it's just the most beautiful, heartbreaking shit.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:Yeah, he's like, you know what?
Guest:If you can do both, then go for it.
Marc:He's making choices.
Guest:It's choices, though.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:It's not out of fear.
Guest:He wasn't playing that fast because he couldn't stop and lean on a note.
Guest:It was because he was actually working through shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was breaking down musical barriers, and that's a whole different trip.
Guest:You know, there's, 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.
Guest:And then you, then you pare it down to the things that, you know, the nuggets.
Guest:You don't want to lean on them too much, but they're there.
Marc:But what's interesting about those boundaries, though, because even when you listen to your... When I listened to your first couple records, I mean, right away, even though you're a teenager, you're playing with big cats.
Marc:It's big production.
Marc:It's tight sound.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You're not in the garage.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And right away, you're pretty proficient, and you got an ear for production, obviously, and guys know how to produce you.
Marc:But then not too long after that, whatever sort of compelled you towards...
Marc: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?
Guest:You know what's funny about that is going back to Colonel Bruce Hampton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was around that time I got turned on to Ali Akbar Khan.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Great Sarod player.
Guest:probably one of the great musicians.
Marc:A sirote is like, that's not a sitar, it's the other thing.
Guest:It's like a fretless sitar.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So around that same time we were on tour through Mississippi, we went to the crossroads just to see the sights.
Guest:We're 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.
Marc:Yeah, the rock critic or music critic, yeah.
Guest:He produced his record by this guy named Junior Kimbrough.
Marc:Yeah, I know Junior Kimbrough.
Marc:It's great shit.
Guest:Yeah, I think the record was called Most Things Haven't Worked Out.
Guest:And at that time, I was listening to Delta Blues and Ali Akbar Khan.
Guest:It was Indian and Delta.
Guest:And the first track on the Junior Kimbrough record is this real droney thing.
Guest:And then he starts singing.
Guest:And it hit me.
Guest:I was like, those are the same inflections.
Guest:It's the same microtones.
Guest:It's like it's the same.
Guest:There was a humanity there that crossed over from this sound from India and this sound from Mississippi.
Guest:That goes back to Africa.
Guest:That goes all the way back.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It's like to the primal sound.
Guest:I mean, I remember the moment listening to it in the van where I was like, holy shit, this is all kind of the same thing.
Guest:And I was reading that book, Deep Blues, the Robert Palmer book, where he's tracing the different Delta musicians back to probably which tribe they came from through their music and through the way they looked.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:It's pretty fascinating.
Guest:You mean back to Africa.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And that stuff...
Marc:will never fail to hit you in that place i fucking sit and listen to robbie shanker 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
Marc:But for me, I'm like, I'm good.
Guest:One chord, go with it.
Guest:When I need a slate cleaner, 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.
Guest:And when I feel like I'm running out of gas, there's a few records that I can put on that almost always clean the slate.
Guest:And one of them is...
Guest:this ali akbar khan it's called his signature series volume two yeah and it's just it's just the most beautiful melodies and just something about the tone of that instrument and the way he goes about it it it reminds you what's special about music and why you do it it's just it's one of those like everything everything lines back up right and there's a few blues records you put on a howlin wolf record and the sounds like your speaker's about to blow up like oh yeah all
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Just dig in.
Marc:Quit being a baby and play.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Some of that stuff.
Marc:When you knew you had this natural knack for it, how did you, outside of having the colonel turn you on to shit, what was the process for you to evolve as a musician?
Marc:Was there ever a point where you would listen to something and you couldn't figure it out?
Marc:How did you grow more?
Marc:Did you ever take lessons?
Guest:You know, looking back on it, a lot of it was pretty amazing timing where I felt like I ran into certain musicians when I needed to take the next step or be pushed a little bit.
Guest:And, you know, being around people, when I was about 15, I met John Snyder, this producer that I played on this Junior Wells record with him in Louisiana.
Marc:You play with Junior?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Towards the end?
Guest:Yeah, it was called Come On In This House.
Guest:We 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, I did a lot of shows when I was a kid with him, 12 to 15.
Guest:14 with muddy no with bob yeah and they were looking for slide 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 rickstock
Guest:Yeah, it was Rick Danko and Garth, and it was... No way.
Guest:They did this tribute to Bob Dylan, one track.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it was called One Too Many Mornings.
Guest:And I kind of walked into it.
Guest:I knew the band, but I didn't know it like I know it now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I kind of walked into it cold, and it was one of those time slows down moments.
Guest:I was like, they are on to some totally different trip here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've never been around music like this.
Marc:What was it exactly?
Guest:There was just an ease to it, and no one's in a hurry.
Guest:And like, hey, calm down.
Guest:Like, it's cool.
Guest:Because at first I was just there.
Guest:I was just there visiting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then eventually they're like, why don't you play a solo on this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Levon had just had his throat cancer, so he couldn't sing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was playing harmonica, but chain smoking weed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a fascinating scene.
Guest:But I took one pass and Rick Danko was like...
Guest:He's like, that's good.
Guest:Just breathe through it a little more.
Guest:And I never had anyone like really produce a solo.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so your first instinct is, wait, wait, he's totally right.
Guest:Like I'm on a totally different wavelength than these guys right now.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I'd slowed down and I got to that place and I could feel, you know, you could just feel yourself.
Guest:The space.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just feel yourself get in it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I got done and I was like, hey man, thanks for that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:breathe through it 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 you 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
Guest:And he's like one of the great, most beautiful singers.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And honestly, I didn't know at the time.
Guest:So after I left that, I learned pretty quickly because I dug into those records, Big Pink.
Guest:And I just remember thinking...
Guest:Part of me thinking, I wish I would have known, but I'm kind of glad I didn't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I didn't go in as a total fan.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I went in just like, oh, cool.
Marc:He must have been like, that must have been like, when was that?
Marc:He didn't live much longer after that.
Guest:No, it was right towards the end.
Guest:Probably 96, I would say.
Marc:Sweet guy?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Ah, man, it's such an amazing, you know, tradition and history.
Marc:And it's hard to, like, the weird thing about, I mean, I like to play blues, and it's all I play.
Marc:And I get a lot of satisfaction out of it.
Marc:But I don't listen to it as much.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's a weird thing that.
Marc:I go in and out.
Marc:You do?
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:Because there's something that happened with the blues where it just became not only a populous music, but, like, any bar band could do pretty good blues.
Marc:Oh, well, I don't listen to anything that's done now.
Guest:No, I know.
Marc:I think that's sort of what kind of diminished it a little bit.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:No, I'm with you.
Guest:It definitely was taking down the wrong path, and people took the wrong things from it.
Guest:The simplicity they took from it.
Guest:You're like, no, no, no.
Guest:The point is the humanity of it.
Guest:That's the point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You were asking earlier, what shifted from just being a kid guitar player into
Guest:But it was that time where you mentioned the Indian classical stuff.
Guest:I remember watching this footage of Ali Akbar Khan, and then you read about he had a college in San Rafael.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just the way he talked about music, the seriousness of it.
Guest:And it's that.
Guest:There's Colonel Bruce Hampton giving you a Krishnamurti book.
Guest:You hear Bill Hicks for the first time, and then you have this amazing just collision of all these concepts that basically come down to...
Guest:quit whining, quit bullshitting people, and get to it.
Guest:And there was a moment around 14 years old, 15, where I was like, you know what, this came pretty easily to me up to this point, but if we're gonna do it, it's time to dig in, let's do it.
Guest:Well, that's what I noticed about... You've got to dedicate your life to this thing.
Marc:When I listen to it, and I refresh my memory, the stuff you're doing with Susan and the Tedeschi Trucks band is different than what you did earlier in a way because it leans heavily on her playing, on her lyrics, and it's a different vibe.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:So when you're just playing without her and you've got singers coming and going, but there's a core to it.
Marc:There was a point where you realized that...
Marc:You couldn't rest on your laurels, even though you were a virtuoso, in order for you to find your style.
Marc:Because I listened to it, and at a certain point, no one's playing like you because you've integrated all that shit.
Marc:That stuff becomes your playing.
Marc:That the way you can move from that Indian style to rock, to minor blues, to major blues, to country.
Marc:You've integrated it all, and it's yours now, right?
Guest:Yeah, and I think about it sometimes.
Guest:the way you listen to music i think about athletes 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
Marc:Well, that's the other problem with fucking blues is that you're going to cop riffs.
Marc:There's no other way.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And it's not even bad.
Marc:No, it's not.
Marc:But there are certain riffs that are heavily identifiable as people's riffs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then there's some people that just have some sort of magic twist on it.
Marc:Like, I'm a big Peter Green freak.
Marc:And those first three Fleetwood Mac records, that guy could play a minor blues.
Marc:I don't think anyone else could.
Guest: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.
Guest:And knowing the arc of his life and career now, Peter, you can look back and you're like, oh, there was...
Guest:like there's a lot of conflicting things going there's a vulnerability to his playing yeah but you can't you can't cop that yeah it was i think it was killing him absolutely and you hear that there's something incredibly compelling about that it's like most of our favorite musicians well there's something in there that right that they're working through you know but like not like but the weird thing is is with eric i mean you know clapton kind of like i liked all that male stuff
Marc:And I like the Blues Breaker stuff.
Marc:And I like some of the... And Cream was okay just because of the development of the riff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I think he's a proficient player, but I'm not moved the way I am with guys who flashed early and went away.
Guest:Yeah, no, there's something to that.
Guest:And there was times on that tour- You did a bunch of dates with him?
Guest:A little over a year.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest: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.
Guest:I remember one, we were in Denmark, and I was like- He could do it.
Guest:I was like, oh, that's there.
Guest:It's weird, right?
Guest:It is a weird thing.
Marc:I know, because I've seen that happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where even on-
Marc: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
Guest:There's something to that.
Guest:But there's a little bit of like... When did he do it?
Guest:When were the moments where you were... I remember one in Denmark, just some random show we did.
Guest:And we did 26 countries on that tour.
Marc:And he's playing the full catalog, bits and pieces.
Guest:We were doing a lot of the dominoes stuff by that point in the tour.
Marc:So you guys would get on stage together at the end, you'd do separate sets?
Marc:No, I was in his band.
Marc:Oh, that's how it went.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was three guitar players.
Guest:It was me, Doyle, Bram Hall, and Eric, which was pretty fascinating.
Marc:And you were touring Derek and the Dominoes, basically.
Guest: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.
Marc:So you were almost all slide?
Guest:yeah i was probably 60 40 uh-huh yeah and were you what so what were you learning from him anything well there was a few things i mean he was a great band leader yeah he was able to pull things out of the band yeah without directly asking for it uh-huh which i found pretty fascinating and there's i mean there is something about the longevity man of being able to
Guest:keep on the road and keep a career together that long and keep keep your game together like he could still play i mean i've been around a lot of musicians yeah 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 kept it going well i think that's what what his bag became
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And then when I met him, it was on the J.J.
Guest:Cale record.
Guest:I was a part of that.
Guest:And seeing the way, at least at that point of his career, he was kind of going back and paying homage to his heroes.
Guest:It seemed like a very thought out thing he was doing.
Marc:Well, he came back around to what we're talking about.
Marc:He eventually sort of looped back around to real simplicity.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he did that blues record, and he kind of stayed on that path.
Guest:He did the thing with B.B., which is amazing.
Marc:From the Cradle was the blues record.
Marc:It's funny, as weirdly contentious my relationship with him is, my mind, musically, I've listened to all this shit.
Guest:Yeah, no, I hear you.
Guest:And, I mean, think about this.
Guest:B.B.
Guest:King's first gold record was Riding with the King.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Guest:It's insane.
Marc:Were you about to say abomination?
Marc:No, totally.
Marc:I mean, it's insane.
Marc:But the weird thing about Eric, though, and I imagine you sitting there playing with him, was like, you know, you hear his runs and you're like, I know that run.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:You're playing a tune and you're like, oh, wait, we're playing Layla with Eric.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of a trip.
Guest:Because I was named after that record.
Guest:Right.
Guest: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.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I see my dad, the roofer, having high tea with Eric.
Guest:I was like, what a weird life we're leading.
Guest:Did he love it?
Guest:Oh, yeah, he was pumped.
Guest:He must have loved it.
Marc:Papa Trucks was pumped.
Guest:So wait, so what happened in Denmark?
Guest:He lit it up?
Guest: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 of his crawl, but he just... I was like, oh, that's... That guy's in there.
Guest:I get it, yeah.
Guest:That guy's in there, right?
Guest:And I don't know if it was just like...
Guest:Hey, motherfuckers, just in case you were wondering, I don't know if it was that or just the spirit moves you sometimes.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:I mean, I try to figure these things out because we play almost every night.
Guest:We're on the road 200 days a year.
Marc:What kind of guitar was he playing?
Marc:Strat?
Guest:Strat.
Guest:There was one night I got him to play a 59 Les Paul because somebody lent me one and he broke his out.
Guest:And I think the struggle of playing a guitar that was physically harder to play was awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was a night, too.
Guest:That was one of the other ones.
Guest:Wrestling with it.
Guest:Yeah, it was like he had to manhandle that thing.
Marc:But that was it, though, because that was his tone for years.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:I mean, the Strat was later, right?
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And that fucking Gibson, that was when he screamed, man.
Guest:No, when he had the SG and the woman tone, I mean, those are things people are still trying to sort out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:you mean tonally absolutely like 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 and
Marc:Neil Young, you know, like you're just wrestling like Neil.
Marc: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.
Marc:They're all old.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like literally every night he's like, I don't know if it's going to make it through the show.
Marc:No.
Marc:And that's part of the beauty.
Marc:I mean, right.
Guest:wrestling 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 123 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 yeah i mean there's some nights where it sings and you're like that's it right tomorrow's gonna be great and it's just horse shit right
Guest:It's like it disappears so quickly, man.
Guest:That's part of the beauty, man.
Guest:If you could lock it down, it would get boring quick.
Marc:So now when do you step up?
Marc:How old were you when you first played with the Allman Brothers?
Guest:Well, the first time I was on stage with him, I was playing this little club in South Florida on South Beach.
Guest:I was maybe 10.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were getting back together in, I guess, 89.
Guest:And they all came and set in.
Guest:With Dickie?
Guest:no it was it was greg my uncle warren yeah and uh alan woody and there was this there's this picture the the stage was above the bar so it's all liquor bottles and then this 10 year old kid and my 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
Guest: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 uh i remember greg and his guy pulling me aside and giving me one of duane's slides which was just a
Guest:life highlights everyone's giving you you're like you're the guy so here's here are the ritual uh yeah the artifacts yeah so that 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
Guest:Yeah, no, he's, you know, he's been dealing with some health stuff lately too.
Guest:But then I guess at 14, he flew me out to California and I played in his solo band for a tour or two.
Guest:And, you know, people always, you always get these questions like, anybody ever give you good life advice?
Guest:And I was like, no one ever really does that.
Guest:Like it never happens.
Guest:But there was one moment with Greg where...
Guest: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 baby baby bro yeah that was his it was dwayne's little brother you know yeah yeah and uh we we went for this ride up up towards the lucas uh studios lucas 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'm like oh this is i'm
Guest:amazing and 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 are not being vain like somebody needs to learn from it
Guest:And he showed me, he showed me his arm, you know, like scars, the track marks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, you can do a lot of things.
Guest:He's like, do not fuck around with it.
Guest:And that's, it's one of the very few, I was in a band with him for 15 years after that.
Guest:And there was never any moment like that.
Guest:Like it was just out of the blue.
Guest:And I don't know if he, I bet he doesn't remember it.
Guest:Like it was, it was in a pretty dark period for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, but he got deadly serious and it was a, it was a moment that I've, I remember clearly, man, because he,
Guest:I wasn't expecting any of that.
Guest:I was like, this is just a fun ride in a car with a hero of mine.
Guest:And then it got real serious.
Guest:But those are some things you take to heart.
Marc:Well, yeah, that was a guy that never got out of the grips of it.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And it was a real moment.
Guest:And no matter what happens after that relationship with somebody, you always appreciate those things.
Guest:Did it scare you enough?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I fucked around with a lot of things.
Guest:That's not one of them.
Guest:It leveled a lot of dudes.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, the sad truth is there's some amazing music that came out of that stuff, amazing art, but it took most people down with it.
Marc:Well, it's one of those things that I can appreciate it as...
Guest: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 how you're gonna find that space how you're gonna find that space yeah and but then you you're like wow there was a lot of casualties
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Coltrane was one of the very few that was able to just kick it cold turkey.
Guest:But then Love Supreme came out of that, man.
Guest:He sat in his room for four days and just sweated it out.
Marc:Sweated out Love Supreme.
Guest:Yeah, sweated out drugs and all the toxins and then came out with...
Guest:the theme to that and ready to record 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 one of the great singers to me that's the difference between that band and a lot of the other jam bands a sorry term but it's 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 it's like that shit holds up they could take it
Guest:hard left, hard right, then you take it to the hoop musically, and then you got this guy that can just belt.
Guest:I mean, that's kind of the magic formula.
Marc:Yeah, and did he ever talk about Dwayne with you?
Guest:A bit, yeah.
Guest:You know, there was some funny moments.
Guest:I mean, Dwayne's
Guest:Dwayne's spirit loomed large over that band the whole time I was in it, too.
Guest:I mean, there would be musical conflicts that would go on, and then you would almost see Dwayne in Greg's ear, and then he would be like, you know what?
Guest:Ah, take that back.
Thank you.
Guest:It was one time when Jimmy Herring was in the band for one year between Dickie and Warren coming back.
Guest:And we did Mountain Jam, which Red Dog, the original roadie who was there forever.
Guest:He was like, man, you guys got to take it out.
Guest:Like when Dwayne was here, he would just...
Guest: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 it 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
Guest:And it went, it went out.
Guest:Like it went sunra out.
Guest:Like it went just deconstruction and everybody was on board.
Guest:Not everybody.
Guest:So, so that night we get, we get back on the bus and it's, it's me and Othiel and, and Jimmy Herring and, and Greg, and then the drummers are on the other bus.
Guest:And we're up front like, oh, that was pretty, that was fun.
Guest:And Greg comes on.
Guest:He's like, all right, who's the fucking fish fan?
Guest:And I was like, not me.
Guest:I don't fucking like fish at all.
Guest:And he goes to the back of the, or no, it's after that he says, he's like, you know what?
Guest: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 no
Guest:I was like, what just happened?
Guest:I was like, he went back there, and Dwayne was like, you little motherfucker.
Guest:Like, he totally got yelled at 30 years after his death.
Guest:I was like, it was an amazing moment.
Guest:And what about that roadie?
Guest:Oh, he loved it that night.
Guest:He was pumped.
Guest:dude red dog was a legend man red dog was he was uh he was a vietnam vet got wounded sent home and then re-enlisted because he was like i'm never gonna 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
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's one of the roadies that should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Guest:Maybe he will.
Guest:There needs to be a petition for that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's a few guys in the dead camp, and Red Dog and Joe Dan from the Allman Brothers, they were lifers in a very real sense.
Marc:So now I listen to some of the latest record with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and it sounds great, man.
Marc:Now, what's the big difference in working with your wife?
Marc:You know, it's been so much easier than I thought it would be, I gotta say.
Guest:She's a good player.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, Susan is amazing.
Guest:When we put this band together, we intentionally kind of scrapped what her band did, what my band did, and we started just with a seed.
Guest: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 going to 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
Guest:I feel like it's finally got its sea legs.
Guest:When Tim LaFave came on board about two years ago, a bass player, I think he was kind of that missing link, a guy that could just play bass when he needed to, but harmonically he can hear anything.
Guest:I mean, he played in the 55 bar for years, just avant-garde trio with Wayne Krantz, like really exploratory stuff.
Guest:He did that last Bowie record, Black Star.
Guest:Tim is an amazing player.
Guest:But him and Kofi, the keyboard player in this group, they're the closest to musical genius borderline that I've been on stage with.
Guest:It doesn't matter what it is.
Guest:They're on your...
Guest:on your ass yeah yeah so that it that stuff we finally got we've gotten to the point where um it doesn't matter what happens on stage everybody's ready to just take a turn yeah any given moment in any tune like there's nothing nothing's off limits so yeah 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 it's a good place
Marc:Well, that's great.
Marc:So you feel like there's a whole world of possibility and there's room and you're still kind of pushing the envelope.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And the musicianship, there's no ceiling.
Guest:I haven't found the ceiling yet.
Guest:I haven't found the spot where it's like, all right, well, we can kind of do that, but not really.
Guest:So that's a good place to be.
Guest:And the two drummers, man, they are connected at the hip.
Guest:They have a thing.
Guest:yeah and you like two drummers i do but you know after a few years with the almond brothers and then towards the end of that clapton tory 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 it's i mean it it gets tribal i mean it gets i mean there's sometimes when that thing gets rolling and if you don't if you're not getting on it you're gonna get i can plowed under the earth so
Guest:I mean, there's a little bit of fear.
Guest:You're like, oh, shit.
Guest:I got to get on.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I better step on the gas.
Guest:And how's your draw?
Guest:Good?
Guest:People coming out?
Guest:Man, it's been slowly but surely things have been ticking up.
Guest: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.
Guest:We haven't had any huge jumps, but every single year for 22 years.
Guest:I mean, it's easy when you're starting at like 12 people a night to get up to 30, but
Marc:But you think you're picking up a little of that almond slack and a little bit of that, whether they're jam bandy or not, but that audience.
Guest:I think there's certainly a void that we're picking up on.
Guest:I think there was a time where me being in the Almond Brothers and doing other things in some ways would eat into our crowd because people were like, well, we just saw him here.
Marc:There's some of that.
Marc:There's that kid again.
Marc:yeah and then there's and then there's you know the the band as it gets better people start talking you know there's it's all word of mouth these 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 oh shit yeah right they're coming out right absolutely yeah
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:We were in San Francisco.
Guest:We did two nights in Oakland at the Fox Theater.
Guest:And Renee Fleming, the opera singer, is a huge Susan fan, which is an amazing thought.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest: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.
Guest:And then we get done with the show, and she's like, have you heard Susan sing?
Guest:I was like, this is beautiful.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:She must have loved that.
Guest:Oh, she was beaming.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, man, it was an honor talking to you, man.
Marc:Likewise, man.
Marc:Appreciate you having me.
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:I'm glad we did it.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Wasn't that nice?
Marc:I love that guy.
Marc:We text sometimes.
Marc:He sends me pictures and I send him things.
Marc:I think he's a pal.
Marc:Guitar genius and pal.
Marc:Oh, mine.
Marc:All right, I'm going to play some guitar, but don't tell Derek.
Marc:This is more in the Marc Maron massage music catalog.
Marc:Done with new agey effects.
Thank you.
Guest:Boomer lives!