Young Trucks mixes a magic cocktail.Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard This is starting to feel like Allman Brothers Outreach Month. Allman Brothers guitarist Warren Haynes was here April 15 with his band, Gov't Mule Gov't Mule is a southern rock/jam band formed in 1994 as an Allman Brothers Band side project, but has taken on a life of its own. Like many jam bands, Gov't Mule does not get much radio airplay but is popular due to constant touring and intense fan loyalty. . And tonight, Allman Brothers slide guitarist Derek Trucks Derek Trucks (born June 8, 1979) is an American guitarist, bandleader (The Derek Trucks Band), and member of The Allman Brothers Band. Early life Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Trucks took up the guitar at age 9, and soon many came to see him as a child prodigy. will hit town with his group. Trucks, who splits his road time between the two groups, is on tour now promoting "Soul Serenade serenade [Ital. sera=evening], term used to designate several types of musical composition. Opera and song literature yield numerous examples of the serenade sung or played by a lover at night beneath his beloved's window; outstanding is ," which the Derek Trucks Band recorded in October 1999 and February 2000, between "Out of the Madness" (1998) and "Joyful Noise" (2002). Reviewing "Soul Serenade" for Harp, Ken Micallef wrote that Trucks' guitar sound, "though owing a scary debt to Duane Allman Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American lead guitarist and noted session musician. Allman is noted for both his slide guitar and improvisational skills. , is also his own, a singular snarl of blaring blues notes, ripping bottleneck runs and frenetic blues-rock-jazz logic." Micallef was making a point about Trucks' stylistic diversity, but what he wrote makes "Soul Serenade" sound a lot more java-jangly than it really is. Jim Farber was closer to the truth in a brief review for Entertainment Weekly. He said Trucks "shuns the show-off `shredder' style in favor of a melodic and erudite er·u·dite adj. Characterized by erudition; learned. See Synonyms at learned. [Middle English erudit, from Latin brand of jazz-rock." And Jim Macnie got it just right in his Downbeat down·beat n. 1. Music a. The downward stroke made by a conductor to indicate the first beat of a measure. b. The first beat of a measure. 2. Informal A period of stagnation or inactivity. review when he wrote that the Derek Trucks Band builds "thorough improvs via melodic motifs, creating an atmosphere of thoughtfulness and spirituality. John Coltrane “Coltrane” redirects here. For other uses, see Coltrane (disambiguation). John William Coltrane (September 23 1926 – July 17 1967), nicknamed Trane, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. and Duane Allman cast equally long shadows." The thing is, all three reviewers heard different things in the same album, and all three are right. Produced by Trucks and influential jazz producer John Snyder (Paul Desmond Paul Desmond (25 November 1924 - 30 May 1977), born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, was a jazz alto saxophonist and composer born in San Francisco, best known for the work he did in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for penning that group's greatest hit, "Take Five". , Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Junior Wells and others), this is a jazz album and a blues album. And it rocks. The album opens with "Soul Serenade/Rasta Man Chant," the band's 10 1/2 -minute interpre- tation of songs by King Curtis and Bob Marley. Both songs are classics in their genres, and the Trucks band fuses them in a down-in-the-Delta way that will become a classic in its own right. Once Bill McKay kicks in on the organ (listen for it at about the two-minute mark), and drummer Yonrico Scott and bassist Todd Smallie lay down a steady beat, and flutist Kofi Burbridge starts fluttering around like Charles Lloyd playing the shakuhachi shakuhachi Japanese end-blown bamboo flute. Its notes are produced by blowing across the open upper end, resulting in a distinctively breathy tone. It has five fingerholes. , the music swirls and floats between the two tunes in a liquidly rhyth- mic way that's almost hypnotic. It just builds and builds and subsides, ebbs and flows, never losing the strands of the looped-together melodies. That one track by itself would be reason enough to buy this album. But there are six more, including Henry Glover's "Drown in My Own Tears" with a vocal by Greg Allman, Mongo Mongo Any of several peoples living in the African equatorial forest. They speak a dialect of a common language, Mongo or Nkundo, which belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. Santamaria's "Afro Blue," Wayne Shorter's arrangement of a traditional "Oriental Folk Song" and two collaborative originals: "Elvin" and "Sierra Leone," with Trucks playing sarod sa·rod or sa·rode n. A many-stringed lute of northern India that is played with a plectrum. [Urdu, from Persian sar on the latter. Despite the differences in melody, style, instrumentation and rhythm, the seven tracks flow from one into another seamlessly, as if they were all laid down in a single session or a single collective breath. Which they almost were. "Soul Serenade" was recorded in two brief sessions, three days in '99 and five days in 2000, virtually free of overdubs except Allman's vocal and Trucks' sarod track. "We would set up in the studio and run down two or three tunes in a row ... like in a show," Trucks said. "The re- cord went down really quick and really painlessly." The good news is that Trucks - the nephew of longtime Allmans drummer Butch Trucks - already is a veteran touring musician. He got his first playing gig at age 11, formed his first band at 12, finished high school through on-the-road schooling - and he's still several years to the good side of 30. If he and his band keep on truckin' as they do here, they'll lay down a lot of good tracks before they're done. Paul Denison can be reached at 338-2323 or pdenison@guardnet.com. CONCERT PREVIEW Derek Trucks Band When: 9 p.m. today Where: McDonald Theatre, 1010 Willamette St. How much: $17 CAPTION(S): Derek Trucks, slide guitarist for the Allman Brothers and nephew of Allmans drummer Butch Trucks, will bring his own project, the Derek Trucks Band, to the McDonald Theatre today. |
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