Bekka Sings Duane Allmann Dedication

[michelej1]

[This is from last year, but I just saw it. There's a mention of Bekka singing with her mom at the very bottom]

Florida Times-Union, The (Jacksonville), June 5, 2009

Butch Trucks on the Allman Brothers Band, past, present and future: 40 years later, he's still pounding out the rhythm for one of the country's truly...

Roger Bull
The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville

Jun. 5--Butch Trucks was there at the beginning, providing the beat for that very first jam that created the Allman Brothers Band. And 40 years later, he's still there. Along with Jaimoe, he's still pounding out the rhythm for one of the country's truly great rock bands.

The band has been busy in this their 40th year. Trucks, who's 62, talked with us by phone last week from his home in Palm Beach. He talked about the band past and present, how he's moving to France and how they won't be doing another year like this one again.

This is really your last major year of touring? Why?

Derek (Trucks, the band's guitarist) is a major reason we're doing what we're doing. Derek and Warren Haynes. They have their own bands.

We promised Derek. He has really, really worked hard to make room for the Allman Brothers in the middle of all this. We asked him to give us a year, then we'll back way down.

This year, we're doing up around 60 shows. Normally, it's maybe half that many, but that's still more than he wants it to be.

So we're going to cut way back.

You'll still play some, though, right? How about the annual run at the Beacon Theater in New York?

Sure we'll continue until my body runs out of juice. But we won't be at the Beacon anymore. They just announced that Cirque du Soleil is moving in there, sad to say.

We'll still do a multi-show thing in New York, but we're looking for another venue. With things the way they are, there's a lot of empty theaters on Broadway.

Where do you think the sound is today?

Right now, I'm having more fun, and I think the band is playing better than ever. The band with Duane and Barry, you're never going to touch that for originality. But as far as being able to play, this band is amazing.

What we're doing now is we're taking what we started with and taking it to places with Warren and Derek that we couldn't have. That band just wasn't good enough. Derek is just so full of influences and musical history. I heard him playing something other day that was a combination of Willie McTell and Ravi Shankar. I don't know how else to describe it.

You just never know what he's going to do next.

We're keeping them original, and that's why it's still fun. How the Eagles continue to play the way they do, I don't know. The same night after night. If I want to listen to a record, I'll sit home and listen to it.

Where did the idea for Wanee come from?

From me. I came up with it maybe eight or 10 years ago to do several festivals like this around the country. Basically, the idea got shot down by our esteemed partner.

That was Dickey Betts?

That's it.

Why did there always seem to be conflict there?

After Duane died, I think our last really great original album that made us who we were was "Eat a Peach." Our best selling album was "Brothers and Sisters," but then we were going country.

See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock 'n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.

Miles and Coltrane?

Sure, with songs like "Whipping Post" and "Dreams." If you listen to "Dreams," it's Coltrane's "My Favorite Things." That's exactly where it came from. We seldom play it without Otheil playing the bass line from "My Favorite Things."

But then when we got famous, we got more and more country. Country's cool if you like that kind of thing, but it doesn't have the complexity or, what's the word, subtlety.

When we started to head in that direction, the subtly that we were adding to rock 'n' roll started to disappear and we became bombastic.

But the worst thing was that we became famous. And when you do that, sex and drugs became just as important as the music.

Around '73, '74 we were the No. 1 band in the world and Dickey kind of took over. I don't remember most of it. I got on stage and didn't know where I was.

But you always seemed like the clean one.

I was the first one to clean up by the time the band split up in 1976. The trouble is that you get fans who tell you you're great no matter how big an idiot you are.

Is it even possible to be normal when that's going on?

No, it's impossible. Maybe a few people have done it. But you're young, you've got all this fame and fortune. It's very hard to hold onto any real sense of self worth. You lose all touch with reality.

I finally met this woman who was a schoolteacher in Tennessee and wasn't hung up in all that stuff. She saw something in me, I'm not sure what.

But we started dating, and I don't mean groupying. My old Southern Baptist kicked in and I realized this was not a girl you just took back to the hotel. We got very serious and then one morning I asked her what I did the night before, because I didn't remember.

She said, "You were an -- - just like you are every time you get drunk like that."

I asked her to leave, but then it started to sink in. That girl was right. I went back to her and said "We need to get married, but first let me see if I can go six weeks straight."

We've been married 33 years now. It look me a long time to get really straight, though. I don't even drink at all anymore. I don't drink; I don't smoke. I'm boring as hell. I just sit around and talk philosophy.

Let's go way back, what part of Jacksonville did you grow up in?

I lived all over. I was born on Walnut Street, I don't know where you call that. I went to elementary school at Annie Beaman, but that's no longer there and I don't know when it was closed.

We moved out to Ribault and I went there eighth through 11th grade. Then we moved to the Southside and I graduated from Englewood.

I know you were in Jacksonville for the 1969 jam that started the Allman Brothers, but were you here the whole time?

No, I went off to Florida State and spent a couple of years there. I'd really lost interest and wasn't playing any music, but then me and a couple of friends from Englewood started listening to the Byrds' first albums.

So we started a band, playing the Byrds and Dylan. It was folk rock. I think we were the first hippies at Florida State, and I guess my major there was staying out of Vietnam.

But we did some touring and after a couple of years of not going to class, they asked me not to come. Think about that. You've got to be pretty stupid to flunk out of Florida State.

But when the band broke up in 1976, I got back in on my life experience, since I had more gold records that the whole music school. I took all those courses I'd flunked the first time and really loaded up.

My first term, I made five A's and a C. You know what the C was in? Percussion. Second term, I made five A's and a B in percussion. The only thing I couldn't ace was drums.

But it wasn't the professor's fault. He was trying to teach me percussion for the symphony. I didn't bother to practice, and he knew it.

What's your life now?

I live in Palm Beach, but I've finally come to the conclusion that the great American dream, that all we have to do is buy stuff is not necessarily the key to happiness.

So we're selling this house. My wife and I have bought a medieval farmhouse out in the countryside in the south of France. We've gutted it, put in geothermal and solar panels. The well is fed by snow melt.

We've got 4 or 5 acres, we'll plant a garden and get some horses. And we're surrounded by sangliers, that's French for wild boar. They come down to the creek at night right below my third story window.

So I'll sit there with my thirty-ought-six, and if we need some pork, I just put the night scope on.

You're serious about the boar?

Oh, yeah, the countryside is absolutely filled with wild boar.

And you're serious about leaving?

You know, I guess I read too much. I just don't feel all that confident in the future of this country because we all bought into the bill of goods that if you just keep buying stuff you'll be happy. And it's the reason I have my doubts that we're going to come out of this mess.

It's not the leader. It's not "Oh, we elected Obama so everything's going to be great." The problem is systemic.

People have got to quit trying to lead this big lifestyle. We've got to make some sacrifices, quit spending more than we have.

And I know that if we do that, the economy will shrink, jobs will be lost. But if we keep doing what we've been doing, it's going to be bubble and bust, bubble and bust.

Looking back, it's got to be strange to be where you are now.

People ask me if I thought I'd ever be doing something like this. But back then, I wasn't thinking a lot.

What happened was that you had Duane Allman come to town and he was like this messianic figure, all full of fire. He found some like-minded people and we produced music that felt like nothing we'd ever felt before.

We didn't expect this fame. At best, we thought we might become an opening act.

It must feel good to have the same lineup for about eight years now.

This group works. Everyone is sober. Luckily Gregg pulled himself together or he would have been a dead man. His liver was the size of basketball, he was swollen. Finally, after years of people telling him that he was going to die, he believed them.

Everyone is sober, straight and professional, and there's no one who's trying to run things and tell everyone else what to do. Since 2000, that's it in a nutshell. That's why this band is fun again.

Is that another reference to Dickey?

Yes, it is. And look at the Beacon. Fifteen shows, 67 guests, two nights with Eric Clapton. That's as close to a highlight as anything in my career.

All 15 shows were dedicated to Duane. Without him, there would have been no Allman Brothers. He's the guy who started it all. The only thing we've really done for him was put "Dedicated to a brother" on "Eat a Peach."

We figured it was time to say "Thank you."

Probably the three best friends Duane had in the world when he died, outside of the Allman Brothers, were Clapton, John Hammond and Delaney Bramlett.

We had Eric and John there. Unfortunately, Delaney died a few months before the show. But Bonnie and Bekka Bramlett were there and we did a version of "Only You and I Know" and you'll never hear it like that again.

I still get teary when I watch that. What a great night.