Quotes from Derek Trucks

I remember the first time hearing a recording from Minton's Playhouse; it was Charlie Christian and a young Dizzy Gillespie, and he was just the best musician in the room.

You hope to catch the band on a good night and you hope that it sounds good when you hear the tapes back, and you hope that when you mix it you still have the feeling that you had when you were onstage, but it seems like it never quite works out that way!

I live in Jacksonville, Florida, but Atlanta always feels like the hometown gig.

You hear it in the great musicians, whether it's a drummer or a horn player or a guitar player - you hear them take those breaths. You can feel that there's something they're trying to tell you.

I remember recording with Johnny Sandlin at his place right outside Muscle Shoals and he turned me on to a lot of those musicians at an early age, like Roger Hawkins and David Hood and just a ton of great players.

I have only a couple of Super 6s now, but I do have quite a few black-face Fenders around the studio. They all have slightly different character and tone, so I keep collecting them.

I'm a big fan of other guitar players, Duane Allman and tons of them, but I don't really love totally guitar-specific albums.

B.B. King wanted people to carry the torch. He wanted people to keep that music alive, and he would talk about it.

We all notice that the nights that are the most magical are the ones where everybody is taking a deep breath and kind of relaxing into it and relying on the people around you.

Y'know, you can sit in a room, practise all day, learn your scales and blaze blues riffs: it's easy to hide behind that. But I think with the slide, it's a little bit tougher.

We were just touring Europe, and I noticed that we'd go to all these beautiful places, and everyone's just taking a picture of themselves. I don't understand that at all. And I feel like that extends to music. I think we've lost the script a little bit.

I think on some level, you always carry your first and biggest influences with you, whether it's the Allman Brothers or Col. Bruce Hampton, people that you learned a huge amount of what you do from. So it's always there.

Slide can sound like the most beautiful woman's voice.

When you're dealing with the age of Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, then everything becomes very selfish and cynical.

I think the first time I was at Red Rocks was my first gig as a member of the Allman Brothers Band, June of 1999.

It's a funny thing... I started touring at nine or ten years old, and for the first ten, fifteen, almost twenty years of your career, you're the youngest guy on stage and the youngest guy in the room.

I don't really love the guitar hero trip, anyway, so it's not something I'm actively searching for or after. I don't like what it's about.

I think we appreciate the musicianship we're surrounded with. Too many bands - it's an ego trip for the leader.

You can't have the Allman Brothers without Butch Trucks and Gregg Allman. Those are just irreplaceable spirits.

You hear a great Art Blakey drum solo or Elvin Jones, and you can tell when they're taking a breath. You can tell when they're loading up for something big. There's just this humanity in it, and I think that's important as well.

The tune 'All My Friends,' we recorded because our friend who wrote the song, Scott Boyer, passed way, and Gregg Allman had passed and he had recorded the song on his first solo record.

I've always been of that mindset - when you're writing tunes with people, there's a traditional way of chopping things up, and then there's the way that feels right. If people contribute, you hit 'em accordingly.

I felt like for it to really turn into something, you have to jump in with both feet. And it always turns out a little different than you imagined it, but that's kind of the beauty of it, when you feel musically confident enough to just kind of follow where it goes.

When things come up, you deal with them. However uncomfortable that is, let's have this discussion right now.