Derek Trucks is more at home with a guitar in his hands than a Ouija board, but the title cut from his latest album, Soul Serenade, is an exercise in spiritualism. The soul is courtesy of King Curtis, the Rastafarian reggae lives again through Bob Marley, and the guitar is in the spirit of Duane Allman. Saxophonist Curtis, murdered in ’71 by junkies he asked to move off his front stoop in NYC, was Aretha Franklin’s musical director and a prolific session man who played with a host of big names, including Eric Clapton, Wilson Pickett, and the Allman Brothers.
“I really dug the fact that he was also an instrumentalist band leader who relied on the full band sound rather than just his instrument,” the 24-year-old Trucks said. “(He was) another one of those guys who got lost along the way and not many people seem to keep his legacy rolling.” Marley came in because both “Serenade” and “Rasta Man” were in the same tempo and same key, and the version you hear on the record is the first time the band tried it.
The spirit and sound of Trucks’ late uncle, Duane Allman, is very much present on the title cut and on “Drown in My Own Tears,” which features brother Gregg wailing like Ray Charles while Derek reanimates Duane. Trucks said it was a result of him boning up on Duane’s sound when he first got the call to join the Allmans.
“I definitely wanted to try to channel his sound because it had kind of been there, but not really, since he had been gone, so the first tour that I was out with them I wanted to really focus on his sound and get that back in the Allman Brothers.”
That was about the same time that Trucks and company went into the studio to record the album. Truck’s former label, House of Blues/ Platinum Entertainment went bankrupt and held on to the masters, but “we finally wrestled with them long enough and freed it up,” Trucks said.
The guitarist wanted to make a record that was not a guitar record, one that wasn’t based on the acrobatics of the guitar player. “A lot of times, when the instrumentalist is a band leader it becomes all about that, and I want it to be much more of a musical record, more about the compositions and the band as a whole rather than just a spotlight on guitar solos,” he said.
Trucks gives his band free rein and plenty of time to improvise throughout the album — the title cut is over 10 minutes long. Because of that, some still will label the group a jam band. Trucks believes that’s one of those things that shift every few years, so you just roll with it. “Once your career and life is done, people will look back on it and the music and the stories and the legacy will be completely separate from a label like that,” Trucks said. “We’re still writing our history as we go, so I think it’s still wide open.”
Trucks and Co. play the Visulite Theatre this New Year’s Eve.
This article appears in Dec 31, 2003 – Jan 6, 2004.
Butch Trucks is Derek’s uncle. Not Duane. Though he may have referred to Duane as an uncle.