At age 23, Derek Trucks has already accomplished more than most musicians do in a lifetime. The gifted guitarist has been touring since before he was a teenager, has three solo albums to his credit (his latest, Joyful Noise, is his first for a major label), is the leader of a highly talented band, and has performed with renowned groups such as Government Mule and Phil Lesh and Friends. And, oh yeah, then there's his other gig: he's one of the guitarists in the Allman Brothers Band.

While many players Trucks's age are more concerned with partying and the perks of the road, he appears to be focused squarely on his music. In an era in which image is king and musical integrity and skill are secondary, Trucks is the anti-Britney. He's on a mission to put musicianship back into popular music, and he's leading by example.

Trucks describes his group as “a Delta-blues jazz band playing soul music with a bunch of other things mixed in,” and indeed, Joyful Noise (Sony Music Entertainment, 2002) bears out that description. The record offers up an eclectic combination of blues, rock, jazz, and various world-music styles. The roster of guest vocalists testifies to its wide musical range; present are Ruben Blades, Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Solomon Burke, and Trucks's wife, blues singer Susan Tedeschi.

At a recent show at B. B. King's Blues Club in Manhattan, Trucks mesmerized the crowd with his fluid, intense guitar playing. His slide work is eerily reminiscent of Duane Allman, yet original at the same time. Trucks is anything but a flashy showman; his talent, however, is overwhelming.

I had a chance to speak to Trucks at length and was impressed by his intelligence, articulateness, and friendly, soft-spoken manner. Trucks is quite worldly for a 23-year-old and is very passionate in his beliefs about music.

Trucks was raised in Jacksonville, Florida, and began playing guitar at the age of nine. Within a year, he was playing out. “I learned a lot by ear,” he recalls, “I took about a half-dozen lessons with one of my father's friends. I just started sitting in with local blues bands, and then touring with them. It was definitely a trip.”

His uncle, drummer Butch Trucks, is one of the original members of the Allman Brothers Band. When Derek had been playing for only about a year, he got to sit in with the Allmans. “I think at first they were apprehensive about it,” he remembers, “but the guys came out to one of my shows in Miami Beach when they were doing their first record [after forming again for a second time in 1989]. They came and sat in. After that, I started sitting in with them. That was a great night.”

Despite his almost instant success, the joy of playing was purely a musical one for Trucks. He was not at all comfortable relating to the audience. “I wasn't drawn to being in front of people,” Trucks says. “It was definitely the music that got me in, and not the scene.” In fact, Trucks was so shy at first that he didn't even face the crowd. “When I first started playing, the only guy onstage that I knew was the drummer, so I faced him for the first month or two.”

Trucks still isn't that comfortable with dealing directly with the crowd. When I saw him play at B. B. King's, he spoke on the mic only once, to briefly introduce the band in the middle of the set. Other than that, he just looked down at his guitar and played. According to a Trucks spokesperson, there are people at his record label who wish that he would come out of his shell more while onstage.

Trucks, however, isn't sure that would be the right thing. “I'm kind of torn in between,” he says. “I like it being a little bit different because people either focus on the music or they don't come out. You have less people there for the show and more people for the music. I know that most people really listen with their eyes. If you take that out of the equation, you can get through to them a little more deeply.”

But he knows that he's walking a fine line. “It even offends people sometimes that there's not enough interaction, which I think is just a product of everything else being so overboard that way. When you look at footage of Miles, he was turned with his back to the audience half the time anyway, because it was about music being performed. It's gotten so far away from that. I think this band is trying to get back to that intensity and that idealism onstage.”

The first thing you notice about Derek Trucks when you hear him play or listen to one of his records is the gorgeous, fat tone he gets when playing slide. He achieves his sound with about as minimal a setup as you'll find. A Gibson '61 Reissue SG (sometimes he uses a Washburn E300) into an old 1964 Blackface Fender Super Reverb. That's it. No effects, no fancy preamps; just a guitar into an amplifier.

The only things that aren't stock about his setup are the Pile Driver speakers in his amp. Trucks's tech, Joe Main, tells the story of how Trucks started using them. “He blew his speakers out on a Saturday night, and so on Sunday his father and I were looking for speakers, somewhere, anywhere. We couldn't find anyplace open. So we went to a car-stereo store and found those speakers, and we put them in the amp, and Derek won't let me change them. They were designed to be in a car stereo; they weren't designed to be in an amplifier.”

“They kind of break up at a low volume,” says Trucks. “You don't get as much volume out of the amp, but it's a little warmer.”

Would Trucks ever consider a different amp, maybe even something digital? “I'm into trying anything; if it felt right I'd use it. I've tried a bunch of things, but I always go back to the Super Reverb. I've had that same amp for maybe 11 years.”

Part of Truck's distinctive sound also comes from the fact that he plays everything — not just slide — in open-E tuning. “I started playing open tunings at about ten years old and just never went back,” he says. Playing slide in open tuning is common, but playing nonslide guitar parts when tuned that way is extremely unusual. When he started doing it, Trucks had to relearn all his chords and scales. “There are definitely some chords that are really stock for normal guitar players that are a little bit difficult in open E, but there's vice versa,” he says.

Trucks uses a glass slide that he puts on his ring finger. He doesn't use a pick, just the fingers on his right hand. His style of slide playing was clearly influenced by Duane Allman. Although Duane died before Trucks was even born, Trucks admires much about the legendary guitarist. “His tone and intensity and complete abandonment at times — he was not afraid to just hang it out there. The tone, and just his feel, I really loved.”

These days, Trucks is influenced less by guitarists and more by horn players and vocalists. “There's always the obvious like Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane. John Gilmore, who played with Sun Ra for a long time, is one of my favorite tenors. There are so many, though. That whole Blue Note era in the '60s, almost any record you pick up is amazing. We burn out a lot of those. Clifford Brown is another favorite.”

Trucks is even influenced by the vocal stylings of his wife, Susan Tedeschi. “I end up trying to cop some of her vocal licks [on slide],” Trucks says, “and I notice some of our band sound rubs off on what she's trying to do.”

After years of sitting in with the Allman Brothers, Trucks finally got to join his uncle Butch as a full-fledged member of the band in 1999. With the Allmans, Trucks is required to fit into a more established role, in contrast to the artistic freedom he experiences with the Derek Trucks Band. “With the Allman Brothers there's so much tradition there that you don't want to abandon it entirely,” observes Trucks. “A certain amount, maybe, but there's also a certain amount of respect you have to have for the history of the band.”

Dickey Betts was still in the group when Trucks joined, so it was only natural that Trucks took on the slide parts and fit in to the Duane Allman/Warren Haynes role. But after Betts was forced out and Haynes eventually rejoined the band, both guitarists had to switch things up a bit. “When Dickey was there, the Allman Brothers sound was so intact that I had more freedom to sort of stretch that role. But now since his sound is gone, I have to take up the slack of just having that traditional sound so it sounds like the Allman Brothers.”

In fact, Trucks and Haynes, both master slide players, have to divvy up the parts and decide who will handle the “Duane” parts and who will handle the “Dickey” parts. “There are certain songs that we [trade] every night, every time a certain song comes along,” says Trucks. “On Tuesday, it's Warren's [turn to play a particular song]; on Wednesday, it's mine. There are some tunes like that and there are other tunes where we just decide ‘this is yours, this is mine.’”

Trucks was forthcoming when asked about the controversial firing of Betts in 2000. He thinks it has had a positive impact on the Allman Brothers. “I think with any relationship that goes 30 years — especially a relationship between four people — there's gonna be all kinds of history and baggage. If there's enough negative energy between a few people, then once that's taken out, everyone just feels a weight lifted.”

Trucks says that the stresses with Betts were felt mostly by the other original members, Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, and Jaimoe. “Once those guys were free of all that inner tension, then everyone just felt like playing again,” he says. “I can completely understand that. Having a band for ten years, I see where if you don't head things off it can really turn into a problem. I think with that band [the Allman Brothers], communication just got lost 20 to 30 years ago. Once that's gone, you're just kind of at the will of the universe.” [Laughs.]

As the leader of his own band, Trucks takes pains to keep the lines of communication open so that personality clashes like those that plagued the Allmans don't occur. While it isn't a classic democracy, Trucks always listens. “They're really respectful in that they let me have the last say,” he says of his bandmates. “But if somebody's strong about something, I'm completely free with letting the best idea reign. They're really gracious about coming to me and asking.”

The good vibes between Trucks and his band have kept them together over a long period of time. Bassist Todd Smallie has been with the band for ten years. “It's been great with Todd,” says Trucks, “because we've really grown together as musicians. We were introduced to a lot of stuff at the same time.”

Drummer Yonrico Scott has been with Trucks for almost as long as Smallie. “Scott's from Detroit. He did Five Guys Named Moe and The Wiz, and a lot of those big shows in the '90s as well as working with people like Freddie Hubbard and Stevie Wonder. So he's coming from that scene.”

Keyboardist and flautist Kofi Burbridge, who's been in the band for the past four years, is the older brother of Allman Brothers' bassist Oteil Burbridge. “He's one of those guys that has been on the scene for a long time,” says Trucks about Kofi, “but has never been in a situation where he can really be himself. In this band, one of the goals is to bring him out of his shell, because he's got so much music in his head. He's a musical genius for sure.”

Trucks says that the openness of his band has allowed Burbridge and Scott, who were creatively stifled in many of their previous sideman roles, to flourish, “When they got a chance to be in a band like this where their opinions matter — and when they say something, it actually gets listened to — it's pretty liberating. I see so many great musicians that just get stuck in a role-playing situation for 20 or 30 years, and they almost lose the will to play. With Yonrico and Kofi it was nice catching them right at that point where they were ready to break. So hopefully we got them when they did break, and all the music came pouring out.”

The most recent addition to the Derek Trucks Band is vocalist Mike Mattison, who joined the band in May of 2002. Overall, Trucks sees great value in the band experience. “We're trying to find the identity as the five of us. That's a lost art. I don't see a lot of great bands out there anymore, and I think it's really important. If you can write as a band, and travel and get along as a band, there's a synergy that you can't re-create any other way. When you're out there in the trenches together, living the life and doing 300 days a year on the road, that's a life experience that you can't get in any other setting.”

Due in large part to Trucks's association with the Allman Brothers and with Phil Lesh, his band is widely considered to be part of the jam-band scene. Indeed, at his show at B. B. King's, there were plenty of tapers and tie-dyed shirts in the house. Although Trucks certainly appreciates the jam-band crowd, he's not entirely comfortable with that label. “In a sense, it's kind of a misrepresentation of what the band is really about,” he says. “The influences on this band are not the Grateful Dead and the jam bands. They are Kind of Blue, Blue Train, Giant Steps, and Speak No Evil — with Delta blues and Indian classical thrown in.”

There's certainly plenty of soloing during Trucks's gigs, but he feels that his band approaches improvisation more like a jazz band than a jam band. “It's definitely coming from more of the realm of there being structure, but with freedom inside of the structure, and not just meandering. And I don't mean just meandering in a derogatory sense of jam bands, but, you know, I like the idea of the rhythm section having an idea and the soloist having an idea of the changes he's playing over.”

When I asked Trucks what his goals were for the band, his response reflected the passion that he has for his music. “I hope this band can be there for the next movement in music, which I feel is really needed right now. I feel that when you look across the board, whether it's commercial radio or all the other things that are destroying the art of live music, I think it's at a very dangerous place right now.”

Trucks is concerned that great live playing is becoming a lost art. “It's so sad to look around at all these great musicians who are out of work, and then you see the crap that's promoted on television and radio; it's pretty appalling. I understand that the pop scene is always going to be up front, but it shouldn't be 99 to 1. It shouldn't be 70 to 30. There's got to be some room for real music. Because once the real culture dies, the country will be in a real mess.”

He continued, “When you're force-feeding the masses the same crap, you're just dumbing people. You're dumbing people to music; you're lowering the standards. And not by a little, but by leaps and bounds.”

Trucks thinks that it's important that musicians focus less on the image thing and more on mastering their instruments. “You run into so many bands that are complete musical hacks. It's terrifying. In a conversation I had with [legendary producer] Tom Dowd before he passed, he was saying that back in his day, when they were recording a Coltrane record or whatever, everyone could read, write, and score music. From the producers to the engineers to the A&R guy. Now, no one can — not even the musicians. For it to fall that far in 50 years is pretty sad.”

Trucks blames the decline in musicianship on the commercial side of music. “I attribute it to music being used now as a means to make bread only. The musicians get out there, and there's no time [to develop]; there's no small chitlin' circuit anymore. There's no time to get warmed up. They just throw everything against the wall and see if something will stick.”

“There aren't any workshops anymore. There are no scenes. Everything's just deteriorated. It's all about that you have to make a certain amount of money and sell a certain amount of records. There are no development deals anymore. The reason the Allman Brothers formed is that someone at Atlantic believed in Duane and said, ‘Go start a band.’ You know, ‘Here's some cash, you got a few years, try to make something happen.’ That kind of stuff rarely happens anymore.”

In his travels, Trucks has observed a deterioration of the live scene. “In the past four or five years, clubs have been closing everywhere. You can just feel it in the music scene in general. The standards are dropping. There just aren't that many great bands out there anymore.”

Trucks lays some of the blame at the feet of successful musicians, who set a bad example for younger players, emphasizing materialism over musicianship. “I really don't want to know about your new pool. I want to know musically what you're trying to say, what you're trying to do. What does it mean? What are you trying to express? Not Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

Trucks is refreshingly earnest in his belief in the power of music. “Some of the greatest moments I've ever had were where somebody sat me down and turned me on to something entirely new. The first time you hear Kind of Blue or something, it's just a revelation; it freaks you out to your core. You're like, ‘Wow, I didn't know that was possible.’ It makes you look at everything differently; life as a whole. I think music is much more powerful and can be used in much more powerful ways than it is now. It takes the right musical leaders and the right bands and the right artists to get that message out there again. It's one of the few art forms that is completely intangible; it's here and gone, and it can change things.”

You can bet that Derek Trucks will continue to try to change things, even if he has to do it one gig at a time.