Wanee and Warcraft: A Conversation with Butch Trucks
Taylor Hill
2006-04-11
The upcoming Wanee Festival in Live Oak, Florida on April 14-15 will be the Allman Brothers Band’s first appearance after their annual Beacon run. In the days just prior to Wannee, drumming legend Butch Trucks, took some time to speak with jambands.com from his South Florida office about the state of the band today, guest possibilities for the upcoming Wanee Festival, how to take over an apartment building, and why he’s not teaching high school math. Trucks has that drawl and that dry Southern humor that makes people from the South the greatest storytellers on Earth. He had plenty of stories to share, and all I had to do was sit back and listen while the interview became far more interesting than my questions could make it. A lot has happened, obviously, since Duane moved in with him in March of 1969, and Trucks seemed to touch on all of it, the good and the bad, with grace, candor, and the ability to laugh at it all this far down the road. TH: So I’m reading wikipedia.com, and rumor has it you’re a Level 60 Human Paladin on World of Warcraft BT: I’m actually looking at him right now. His name is Ryd, on Bleeding Hollow. I just got some Judgment Armor – we were doing Molten Core last night. It’s one of the things that keeps me sane. One of the problems about touring is you’ve got all damn day long with nothing to do, and I think it’s one reason that so many artists wind up being alcoholics or drug addicts, or watching soap operas. There’s not a whole lot to do sitting around a hotel room all day long. I’ve just gotten fanatic about playing these damn games. It keeps me occupied. It’s really fascinating. I did about five or six years on EverQuest and had several high-level, including a level 70 Cleric, and always, I don’t believe in buying a damn character, it’s kind of dumb. To me, the fun is in building the character. I also have a Level 60 Priest. I have two accounts, and two computers. Right now, I just logged on my priest, and I’m about to head over to Silithus and do a bunch of quests that my Paladin can do by himself, but it takes him a long time. He has to do a lot of sitting and drinking mana water ‘til he can go again. If I have my priest sitting around and keeping him healed then everything goes a lot faster. Yeah, Wikipedia, somebody told me about that, this damn online encyclopedia. I went and read that, and I read something about how I like to read and study philosophy and literature and I have a Level 60 Paladin in World of Warcraft. There are more important things in my life, but hey, whatever turns them on. TH: Six of the sixteen bands at Wanee have members of the Allman Brothers. I don’t think franchise is the right word, but do you take pride in the fact that the Allman Brothers keep having, for lack of a better term, band babies? BT: Absolutely. It’s definitely not a franchise, but we’ve been around a while. The first band that’s gonna play is my oldest son’s, Vaylor’s, he’s the little kid on the cover of Brothers and Sisters, it’s his band. They’re playing on the side stage and his band is opening at 3:45 on Friday afternoon on the side stage and I’m hoping to be there in time to catch it. There’s all the people everybody knows about, Derek and Oteil and Warren and their bands. It would be fun to put Frogwings back together, but that’s not possible for the near future. TH: Who will you have onstage with you at Wanee and who will you play onstage with? BT: I just don’t know. I really don’t know. I figure Friday night is just gonna be mostly us. Saturday, Derek has to leave to go to England and start rehearsals with Clapton. He’s doing rehearsals with Clapton on this European tour and touring with him this summer. Derek’s in there for Friday night, but he’s leaving on Saturday and Jack Pearson’s going to join us, so I see Saturday as more of a “grab anyone who is there for the two days” and get them all on stage and let’s just have some damn fun. We’ll see who it is. I’m sure Medeski will get up and play for a little bit, and I think Robert Randolph’s around, and if Robert Randolph’s around you can count on him playing. We’ll see who’s still around on Saturday night, and as far as the two days, when the other bands are playing, when the urge gets you, you just get up and play. That’s what’s so much fun about these kinds of things, they’re for the most part spontaneous. You just go around, listen, and join in when you feel like it. TH: What did you think of the 2006 Beacon run? BT: I think it’s the most unbelievable music I’ve ever been involved in. I cannot explain what happened. I can’t. It was 14 sellout shows and every single night it was like we were men possessed. It was…for years, I’m used to getting up and maybe one out of five shows things really click and you kind of get in that space where you can’t make a mistake – that hittin’ the note, whatever people want to call it. But this year it was every damn night. I’ve never played with that much power, I’ve never had that much fun. That’s the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on. I have no explanation for it. I don’t know what happened, but I sure hope it keeps up. Whatever it was, I sure as hell hope it keeps up. As long as it does, I’m gonna keep playing. When it doesn’t do that anymore, or at all, that’s when I’m gonna quit, but man, right now, it’s not only fun, but it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. TH: Widespread Panic, R.E.M., Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers Band, and the list goes on. What makes Georgia such fertile musical soil? BT: I really don’t know, and we didn’t really come from Georgia, that’s just where we moved to. We actually put the band together in Jacksonville, Florida. We moved everything up to Georgia because that’s where our record company was, where our manager was, all that kind of stuff. Back then, the general consensus was, if you wanted to make it, you had to go to L.A. or New York, and we had friends, one good example was (Blues Image), they were friends of ours out of Miami, lost all their Southern roots and turned into this California band that was a one-hit wonder. We had all been in bands, I think this is the most important thing, is that we’d all been in bands where we’d had record companies or producers or people telling us “play this music.” One of my favorite lines was I had this record producer told us this one time “Do all this stuff right here and in six months I’ll have you fartin’ through silk.” We hated the music, it just really sucked. We just really didn’t like the stuff. Not only were we not farting through silk, we wouldn’t even play the stuff live, it was embarrassing. It was just terrible stuff. Once we started the Allman Brothers the music was just so profound, it was so moving. We knew that we had found something really special. The music became absolutely the focal point of our lives. Success, money, all of that stuff, that just, all of a sudden, big deal. Money ain’t gonna buy you those feelings. We were in a real fight with Atlantic Records in the beginning because they wanted us to get Gregg out from behind the organ, and stick a salami down his pants and let him jump around the stage like Robert Plant. They made no bones about it. They said, “You know if you guys just gonna stand there on the stage and play music you’re not gonna be successful.” And we said, “We don’t care. And we’re not going to change it, and this is what we’re going to do, and if you don’t like it, don’t put the record out. But we’re going to keep playing it this way.” And that’s what we did. The success that came along surprised the hell out of everybody, most of all us. We never expected it. I think what happened, when we finally started falling apart, was when we got caught up in the success crap and stopped paying attention to the music. In the mid-70’s, 73-75, we were the number one band in the country and got caught up in that damn rock and roll fantasy of everybody telling you how great you are. We kind of lost our sense of ourselves, our sense of what it was all about. When we split up in 1976 we were the number one band in the country, but it was just miserable. We were having a miserable time, we didn’t like each other, we didn’t like the music, nothing. We had lost our focus. The focus was the music. When we put this thing together back in 1989 it was with the caveat that this is about music, and as soon as we get away from that it’s time to quit. What we just did at the Beacon was absolute proof that we’re still focused on the music. We’re lucky enough to make a good living at it – we’re not making anywhere near the money we did in the 70’s. We were doing stadium tours back then, selling out MSG five nights in a row, that kind of crap. But most of that wound up going up somebody’s nose, or wound up going up…well, never mind. That’s another story. But anyway, it is the music. I don’t think that we’ll ever be able to touch that original band with Duane and Berry for originality. That was the band that created it all. But as far as musicality, as far as being able to play, finding new vistas and new places to go, I’ve never been in a band like this one. It’s just awesome. I’m having the time of my life. We were just at the Beacon and you get onstage three hours a night, and I feel like a 20-year-old, and it’s 3:00 A.M. before I can calm down enough to get to sleep, and those 21 hours in between the shows, I’m aching from head to foot because of arthritis in my right knee from 37 years of playing, and arthritis in my right elbow from 37 years of playing, but, some reason after the first song you don’t feel it. Everything is so much fun. And you just put up with the pain in between the shows. TH: What did it mean to form an interracial band in the Deep South in 1969? BT: You know something, it’s not something anybody even thought of. The only thing I can say, the only time it was brought to our attention, was one time in South Alabama and we stopped for breakfast. The sheriff was there, and the sheriff’s wife happened to be our waitress, and we spent the next three days in jail. That’s what triggered it. The sheriff’s wife refused to serve us, and I was watching it go down, she just kept going to her husband and saying “You got to do something about this. I ain’t gonna serve no nigger.” It’s not something that we ever thought about. It’s – people tell us. It was us. It was just guys, you know. We had to deal with some of that kind of bullshit, but we just dealt with it. I don’t know, it’s just part of our history now. As far as what it meant, I guess it meant that we had to put up with that kind of stupidity on occasion. But it was rare, and as far as we were concerned, it wasn’t part of our thinking. We weren’t an interracial band. We were just six guys playing music. TH: In previous interviews, you’ve referred to the “magic years” of touring as “20-year-olds going out with this religion.” What did you mean by that? BT: That was exactly it. Duane Allman was very much like a messianic type of character. I can still remember the day – if I hadn’t met Duane Allman I’d probably be a damn math teacher in high school somewhere. I’m not kidding. I can still remember the day that he reached down inside of me and flicked a switch and got me to stop apologizing and start playing. The music, for me it was a great deal like going to church. I grew up a Southern Baptist and bought all that dogma and all that crap for the first eighteen years of my life. They talk about religious experiences, I have them all the time as a musician, and I never had one as a Southern Baptist. This experience of being above yourself or out of yourself. At least you get your mind out of the way and just let yourself go. I see a lot of people doing it in churches, dancing, singing, clapping, and you can tell that they’re completely in the moment, not thinking about their problems, or paying bills, or whatever. I think you can call that a religious experience. I have mine playing music. TH: How would you explain the Allman Brothers Band to someone who has never heard your music before? BT: I don’t. I quit trying a long time ago. All I can say is, if you like music, you got to come hear it, I can’t explain it to you. How do you explain love? How do you explain…there are some things that are just inexplicable. You just have to experience them. When the Allman Brothers are really clicking, I mean, you just got to be there. Not only do you have to be there, but you have to be open enough to get it, to understand. I’ve had people come to concerts, be Rolling Stones fans, and that kind of thing, and they don’t understand what we’re doing. They don’t get it. And that’s fine, but a lot of people luckily do get it. And we had a room full of ‘em 14 nights at the Beacon. TH: I know you’ve probably been asked 10,000 times, but what’s the story behind the mushroom tattoos and what does it mean to you? BT: Well, what it means is that I have been and am a member of the Allman Brothers. When we first started the band, we moved up to Macon and somebody showed up with this bag full of psilocybin, and, uh, we used to go rehearse all day long and then come back and take some psilocybin and play cork ball at four o’clock in the morning in our apartment. Somehow, rather than calling the police on us, everybody in that apartment building just moved out. It was very weird. Every day we’d come home from rehearsal – and it was really funny – we would line up as they were moving their furniture out and we’d give them applause. They’d get really pissed. That happened several times. If they had just called the cops on us, we’d have been absolutely shit out of luck. In 1969, in Macon, Georgia, with all the crap that we kept around there, they’d have thrown us under the jail! They’d have probably lynched us. Somehow or another, I don’t know, maybe they were afraid of us, and rather than calling the police, they just moved out. So, little by little, we just kind of took over. It was a large, old three-story house that had been turned into a bunch of apartments. Little by little we took over the apartments, either us or friends of ours. We called it the Hippie Crash Pad. The mushroom came several years later when Dickey Betts was out getting himself tattooed by Lyle Tuttle, this internationally renowned tattoo artist. They would drop acid, both, and sit there and Lyle would just do free-form work on Dickey’s body. We were just sitting around and everyone started talking about “Hey guys, we’ve got to get a tattoo.” And I just said “No. Uh-uh. Ain’t happening. I mean no. I ain’t interested in getting myself tattooed.” But they kept it up and kept it up and kept it up and finally, I said “Ok. Tell you what, guys. If you can come up with something that’s small and out-of-the-way, then I’ll get a tattoo, but I’m not getting anything on our arms or chest, or something like that. We came up with the idea of the mushroom, and putting it down on our calf out of the way, and from that time on, anytime somebody joined the band, we’d send them out to Lyle and Lyle would tattoo ‘em. That’s it. That’s the story.
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