Derek Trucks

“People have a tendency - you let your ego get in the way of the big moments.”

“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.”

“But the Allman Brothers made some great studio records.”

“My earliest memories are of traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to visit my uncle and his family in Tallahassee.”

“But I think what makes a band great is that you're not trying to be someone else ever. At no point do you want it to become nostalgic; you never want to be a cover band for anybody.”

“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.”

“When you're improvising, you connect with people in a way you don't in normal life, strangely.”

“I got a picture of me taken next to George Jones. I rarely ask for that, but he's someone I couldn't pass up.”

“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.”

“But every so often we'll get to this place where everyone in the room is fully focused on what's happening. You see it happens in sports sometimes, when there's a really important moment. It's a great thing when you can get to those places, when you look up you don't see a bunch of phones out.”

“My favorite artists are able to take things to the edge or just over the edge. Miles Davis and Duane Allman, for example. It's about not playing too many notes. Those guys had lots of phases to their careers, but they always played with economy and intelligence.”

“We got our old Neve recording console, it was owned by The Kinks for a long time.”

“One of those Rolling Stone Greatest Guitar Player lists came out and there was no Albert King. That's impossible! There are 10 people on there who wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Albert.”

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

“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.”

“George Alessandro in New Jersey builds these great amplifiers. He was working on my Super Reverbs for years and he's kind of a vintage Marshall specialist. He built this amp and it's kind of a cross between a Dumble and a Super Reverb but a little juiced up with a little more power.”

“When I had the idea to build a home studio, the purpose was to start making records.”

“A lot of the gear came out of some of the old studios here in New York City. We picked up a lot of old microphones, reverb tanks, tape machines, so yeah, we try to record the old way, which takes more time and energy, but it certainly feels better when you're getting to the end of the process of making a record.”

“Well I've been playing an SG forever, and I've got some other vintage Gibsons I like to use in the studio.”

“It's funny, sometimes life just comes down to bringing a little bit of light to somebody when you can.”