Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993 TAG: 9304160151
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BLUES BOY ISN'T INTO KID STUFF
He ought to be in school. Not hanging around bars.He should be spending his time playing Nintendo. Not mastering the blues.
(He's too young to play the blues, anyhow.)
But then, Derek Trucks is no ordinary 13-year-old.
First of all, he fronts his own touring blues band - which isn't kid stuff. The group includes musician veterans who previously played with Dickey Betts, Gregg Allman, Tom Petty, Bad Company and the Rossington-Collins Band.
Derek himself plays bottleneck slide, eerily reminiscent of the late Duane Allman, and has shared guitar licks with such luminaries as Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Little Feat, Stephen Stills, Buddy Guy, Lou Graham of Foreigner, Jeff Healy and Johnny Winter.
Further, Derek is being courted by Capitol Records.
No sir, no ordinary 13-year-old.
Of course, the young Trucks has had a head start. His uncle is longtime Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks. Still, inside connections aside, the eighth-grader at Southside Middle School in Jacksonville, Fla., deserves some credit.
He took an interest in music four years ago when he bought a garage sale guitar for $5 and bugged his father to teach him how to play. Derek learned all the chords his father knew in two days.
A few formal lessons followed, and the prodigy guitarist was off and sliding. Derek sticks mostly to slide guitar. Soon, his father, Chris Trucks, was managing his son, helping him hire a band and booking him into nightclubs in north Florida.
By age 12, Derek had been written up in Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines and the Washington Post, touring clubs across the country and occasionally opening for bigger Southern rock and blues acts. He comes to the Iroquois Club tonight.
In a telephone interview last week from Jacksonville, Derek came across as mostly unaffected by the attention and his unique situation. Derek does, in fact, play Nintendo. He also collects baseball cards and loves sports.
He was articulate and thoughtful. It was apparent he was accustomed to being interviewed. Yet, he still sounded at times like any 13-year-old, giggling when he didn't have a quick response and often substituting "It's hard to say" for opinions he'd rather keep to himself.
Derek said he is in advanced classes and maintains A's and B's, despite missing usually two days of school each week. He travels the club circuit Thursday through Sunday and makes up any missed school work when he gets home. "It's pretty easy," he said.
Other than a few close friends, he said his classmates are unaware of his musical stature. "They know I go out of town a lot, but they don't know why," he said.
"Most of the kids in school don't even know I play."
Few of them are much into music anyhow. Fewer still are into blues. They lean more toward Nirvana or Mariah Carey, he said. His love of the blues comes from his uncle in the Allman Brothers and from obsessively listening to the Allman's "Live at the Fillmore East."
Few of his peers, too, could relate much to Derek's situation. How many eighth-graders can casually discuss the cost of renting a tour bus? "It's kind of expensive to do a bus," he said. Derek and his band usually travel by van or RV.
Or how many kids his age have an advance from Capitol Records to record some demo tapes that could lead to an album and a recording contract? Capitol is serious about Derek, too, because the label wants Chuck Leavell to produce. He is known for his work with Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, among others.
Derek is excited about the pairing, not only for the chance to work with Leavell, but also because he hopes success with Capitol will get him out of playing clubs. His goal right now is to become a concert act.
"Bars get kind of old, you know . . . the scene," he said.
He also wants to become a better all-around guitar player. Derek rates himself as a good slide player, but could use some work as a lead player. He doesn't sing.
Playing alongside Dickey Betts or Eric Clapton certainly should help.
Derek said he isn't intimidated playing next to such legends, although he admitted meeting Clapton for the first time made him a little nervous. "He wanted to see my fingers, I guess to check for callouses to see if I really played."
If the callouses aren't enough, Derek has a ready response to critics who say he's too young to play the blues. "Most of the famous blues guys are pretty rich. I wouldn't say they have the blues," he said. "I don't think you need to have the blues to play them."
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