It's funny, sometimes life just comes down to bringing a little bit of light to somebody when you can.Collection: Funny
Y'know, you can sit in a room, practise all day, learn your scales and blaze blues riffs: it's easy to hide behind that. But I think with the slide, it's a little bit tougher.
When things come up, you deal with them. However uncomfortable that is, let's have this discussion right now.
You can remember almost every Elmore James solo by heart because he was playing songs. Nothing's wasted. Nothing's throwaway.
I'm a big fan of other guitar players, Duane Allman and tons of them, but I don't really love totally guitar-specific albums.
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.
It's always nice with two guitarists in one band to have some contrast.
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.
Slide can sound like the most beautiful woman's voice.
B.B. King wanted people to carry the torch. He wanted people to keep that music alive, and he would talk about it.
I think on some level, you always carry your first and biggest influences with you, whether it's the Allman Brothers or Col. Bruce Hampton, people that you learned a huge amount of what you do from. So it's always there.
My grandfather's from Pinson, Alabama, all the Truckses came from there.
He was very sweet, but just his persona was intimidating. He was Gregg Allman. I think a lot of people had that feeling when they met him.
You can't have the Allman Brothers without Butch Trucks and Gregg Allman. Those are just irreplaceable spirits.
And you can't have an Allman Brothers gig without an Allman brother. I've heard people try to argue that you can, but I'm not buying it.
The Allman Brothers Band has a long, storied history and I wouldn't count them out. It's just not in the cards for me.
People have a tendency - you let your ego get in the way of the big moments.
But the Allman Brothers made some great studio records.
I've always been of that mindset - when you're writing tunes with people, there's a traditional way of chopping things up, and then there's the way that feels right. If people contribute, you hit 'em accordingly.
It's been a slow steady climb since my solo band got together almost 20 years ago. Me and my manager Blake were just talking about this, how every show has a few more people at it, every record has done a little better.
To be part of the Allmans for 15 years was a huge honor. I mean, it's a legendary band. I got to be around a lot of people and make a lot of great music.
When you do a different city every night, it's easy to repeat things. There are songs you want to play for people and get excited about so you don't always switch things up.
A lot people hit the road trying to make some cash. We are out here trying to do something that we really believe in. That's what all of our musical heroes always did.
My earliest memories are of traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to visit my uncle and his family in Tallahassee.
My dad was a roofer; my mom worked in elementary school.
The tune 'All My Friends,' we recorded because our friend who wrote the song, Scott Boyer, passed way, and Gregg Allman had passed and he had recorded the song on his first solo record.
Well I've been playing an SG forever, and I've got some other vintage Gibsons I like to use in the studio.
When you're producing your own record, you do your best to be objective and take a step back from it from time to time.
I have only a couple of Super 6s now, but I do have quite a few black-face Fenders around the studio. They all have slightly different character and tone, so I keep collecting them.
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.
We all notice that the nights that are the most magical are the ones where everybody is taking a deep breath and kind of relaxing into it and relying on the people around you.
I was nine when I bought my first guitar at a garage sale.
You hope to catch the band on a good night and you hope that it sounds good when you hear the tapes back, and you hope that when you mix it you still have the feeling that you had when you were onstage, but it seems like it never quite works out that way!
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.
I used a '57 Les Paul on one track, 'These Walls', which features Alam Khan on sarod. I tuned it way down because the sarode is naturally in C but I tuned the guitar down to D and he came up to D. It was all a pretty simple setup.
We got our old Neve recording console, it was owned by The Kinks for a long time.
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.
It was pretty surreal because The Allman Brothers' 'Eat A Peach' and 'Live At The Fillmore East', and the Eric Clapton 'Layla' record was the music I grew up hearing all the time.
I remember a festival we did in Denmark with the Clapton band where you suddenly realize it's an actual band - and you're on an equal stage playing music together.
When you think about your heroes, it absolutely shapes how you play and who you are.
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.
I remember the first time hearing a recording from Minton's Playhouse; it was Charlie Christian and a young Dizzy Gillespie, and he was just the best musician in the room.
But I don't pretend I earned a Lifetime Achievement Award.
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.
The one thing the Allman Brothers Band does not do is phone it in. They bring it every night and that's something I draw from.
When you're improvising, you connect with people in a way you don't in normal life, strangely.
There's some songs you write like you would write for a four- or five-piece band. But there are times when you start writing and you can immediately hear the full band.
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.
When I had the idea to build a home studio, the purpose was to start making records.
I think we appreciate the musicianship we're surrounded with. Too many bands - it's an ego trip for the leader.