One of my earliest memories is an abstract image of a blonde woman’s partially covered face. Just sitting on the floor in my parents' living room and gazing at the strange album cover leaning against a peach crate. It was long before the sounds contained on that record meant anything to me. Before the loose family connection or the mythology of the making of that record was known to me. I also remember how much that music moved my mother and father and how those sounds started feeling important to me as well. By the time that I started playing guitar, the sound of Duane Allman’s slide was almost an obsession. His playing on Layla is still one of the high-water marks for me. The spirit, the joy, the recklessness, and the inevitability of it. My dad would play that record for me and my brother to fall asleep to and further sear it into my DNA. It turns out I was named Derek because of that album. And then life kicked in and I moved on from it.
Meeting the late great Col. Bruce Hampton changed my trajectory. He turned me on to so much music, so many thinkers and books and just generally made me rethink everything I thought I knew. You shed your skin and you grow. But some things would always come back around. The way Col. spoke about Duane Allman put him in the pantheon of the greats. I would think back to those album covers from my childhood...BB King ‘Live At The Regal’, Derek & The Dominoes ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’, The Allman Brothers Band ‘At Fillmore East’, The Best Of Elmore James, Joni Mitchell ‘Court and Spark’. It didn’t matter how far away from those albums you thought you were, they were always lurking. Some of your influences just stick to you. And it was always when I was running away from them that they would come roaring back. That certainly happened to me when I got the call about auditioning for the Allman Brothers Band. It was the furthest thing from my mind at that time, I also never imagined that the guitar chair would ever be open in that band again. But the timelessness of the music finds a way to pull you back in. And, of course, being a part of their history was an honor of a lifetime.
Fast forward a few more years. We are home from tour and having a poker night at my house. My brother David, who I shared a room with as a child, my dad, my grandfather, and a few friends. A few drinks and many hands in, my cell phone rings. It's an unknown international number, safer to just let it ring. I decide to check the message a few minutes later and it’s a voicemail from Eric Clapton. Woah! I certainly wasn’t expecting that. He asked me to join his band for a yearlong tour, and maybe six months later we are in London for a string of Royal Albert Hall shows and my father is hanging out backstage with Pattie Boyd...Layla! A few days later Susan, our kids, my parents and I are visiting the Clapton’s estate outside of London. We walk into the foyer and there is that painting. Later in the day, watching my father have tea with Eric was a moment for sure. It was surreal.
But it all comes back to the music, those sounds, that feeling. We have had an amazing relationship with the folks at the LOCKN' festival. Some of the most magical shows we have ever played have happened there. Kofi, Kebbi and Branford Marsalis going at it as the sun was setting. Susan joining Willie Nelson on stage after he sees her watching from the wings. And maybe the most emotional and historically significant, the Mad Dogs and Englishmen reunion. So when the chance to collaborate with Trey Anastasio presented itself we knew it had to be special. I was trying to come up with ideas and just couldn’t land on anything substantial. A good friend of mine was hanging out with us backstage at Red Rocks and we were talking about the songs I was planning on asking Trey to play with us. A few of our tunes and a cover or two. When I mentioned a Derek and The Dominoes tune she said, “you should do the whole record!” And that was that. Susan and Trey both had a deep connection to that album and loved the idea of learning and playing those great songs. There are always a lot of nerves involved when you are digging into something like this, but the feeling when rehearsals start coming together is powerful. The joy of playing these songs that we all cut our teeth to with Susan, our band, Doyle Bramhall, and Trey is something I will never forget. The show went so well, I was a little worried about going back and listening to the recordings. Sometimes things just don’t hold up to your memory of it. But this did. Maybe even better.
One last thought. When Susan and I were riding in a cab in NYC on our way to the Trey/TTB rehearsals we were talking about the song ‘I Am Yours’. I was trying to remember if the lyrics were written by a Sufi poet. When I looked it up on my phone, I immediately had chills run down my arms. It wasn’t the writer of the tune that got me, it was the release date of the Layla album. November 9th 1970. The day Susan Tedeschi was born. Perfect.
- Derek Trucks