Derek Trucks

Derek Trucks :


All About Jazz: It seemed like a full circle moment when I read that you did the final mix of Already Free at Electric Ladyland. One could argue that Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" might have been the greatest Dylan cover of all time. Beyond guitar playing, Jimi Hendrix was so creative in the studio, even Dylan was knocked out by what he did with that song. Putting your producer hat on, what's your take on the opening of "All Along the Watchtower" in particular, and Hendrix in the studio in general?


Derek Trucks: You know for me, after working with Jay Joyce, the producer on Songlines (Columbia,2006), it really opened up my head to the art of producing and the art of making records, as opposed to playing live which was my sole focus up to that point. So with that hat on, and thinking along those lines, those Hendrix records are all the more impressive to me. He was the one in that generation, I mean there were a few guys making great records, but Hendrix was really the one who took that model, with the experimentation you could do in the studio, and really made it fine art. Some of the shit is really over the top, and he's really stretching the technology as far as it could go, it's hi-fi it's low-fi, it's comic book, it's classic melodies. And with a tune like "All Along the Watchtower" and what he does with a lot of tunes he plays, he takes a great song and he makes it epic. He makes it an anthem.

Our guitar tech, Bobby Tis, was a huge help in building our studio. His father (Bobby Tis Sn.) was the chief engineer at the Electric Lady Studios for 13 years, and he drew up the blueprints and transformed it from a rehearsal room to a world class studio. So it just seemed natural to go to Hendrix's old apartment and old studio and mix it. He's been such an influence, and the fact that Bobby Tis worked at Electric Lady—so from our home studio to his home studio to finish it off, that was definitely part of the thinking—I like when you can tie those loose ends together. And it adds to the myth of a record too.

Source : http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31943

If you take the Hendrix live tapes and put them up against his records, it’s a different world. His legend would not have been nearly the same had he not done that. He really pushed the medium. To me he was one of the handful of guys from that era who really took that on, making great records. There was Dylan and lot of other groups that wrote great tunes and pushed the envelope in other ways but Hendrix did it on a lot of fronts. He was pushing it in the way he made records and what was acceptable for a record. It was pretty adventurous stuff he was doing as well as playing like an alien and writing amazing tunes. I think that’s a big factor that people miss. I think the art of making albums has kind of disappeared for a long time, especially in our realm.

Source : Jambands

Lors de son entretien, Derek déclare en outre que ses groupes de rock préférés sont l'Allman Brothers Band, Hendrix et les Beatles.