Quote Blog

As I have finished all three of my books, I have been asked to read another 100+ pages of reading this week. I have chosen to read "Skydog - The Duane Allman Story" By Randy Poe

So far I have read 23 pages of this biography.

I chose to look into the life of Duane Allman since he was the largest inspiration to my favorite player Derek Trucks. When Derek was 13, he would get on stage with Duane often to sit in with the Allman Brothers. This was all thanks to his uncle, Butch Trucks, who was the drummer for the Allman Brothers. 

The early musical influences of Duane Allman were very interesting as they were heavily mixed between the slide blues musicians of the time such as Muddy Waters and the finger style musicians such as BB King. Both of these musicians had extremely different tonalities and stylistic approaches to playing the guitar. The thing with Duane was that he had developed a sound that he wanted to develop in his head. Duane had started playing the guitar after he had heard his neighbor doing so. He and his brother began around the same time, however Duane was much more driven and had a clear idea in his head as to what he wanted to sound like as a guitarist. Therefore, Duane passed his older brother, Greg Allman, in progress on the instrument and later became the lead guitarist for the Allman Brothers.

What was unique about Duane's playing was that he phrased like a finger style blues player, yet played all of his phrasing using a glass slide, something that Muddy Waters would have used. The time that Duane developed this sound, was a time that nobody else had even come close to the thought of clear melodic lines played with a guitar slide. For me, this is huge as it opens up a huge vault of guitar licks that I had never thought of playing thanks to the different tunings that Duane had used. 

"Duane Allman played what he wanted to hear. There have been bottleneck-guitar players forever, from the Twenties through the Sixties, but Duane began doing things no one had ever done before. He had a tone and a style that were uniquely his. He was just a stunning and singular musician who was gone way too soon." (21)

Thanks to this unique style that Duane had developed, Derek Trucks has come along and latched onto this idea and, in my opinion, has hugely improved upon the idea. Derek Trucks in the last year has become a huge inspiration for me in many different ways. The first of which is his belief that " As long as you and the people can feel it, then it is good music " A common issue that I and other musicians get sucked into, is this idea that in order to be "good" we have to play with technicality and with a lot of theory attached. This belief is wrong, as it is the simple music that all of us can relate too!