This is a public service announcement… with guitar!”

It’s very rare I get to invoke The Clash and have it be altogether fitting (I’ll acknowledge that I’ve done it once before), but today’s the day. So with that intro from Combat Rock’s “Know Your Rights,” let’s proceed to the matter at hand, an admission from an anonymous guitar player in his mid-30s. Let’s call him DT…

“Until Susan came along and made me get health care a handful of years ago, I never went to the doctor. I didn’t do those things. I just recently started going. I was like, ‘All right, we’ve got kids. I’ve gotta get on this.’ We think we’re supermen but it’s worth going in and getting checked out.”

Well, OK, if you’ve seen the cover of our current issue, then I suppose you’ve figured out the identity of the none-too-veiled guitarist is Mr. Derek Trucks.

When I began work on the cover story and Derek revealed the story of his recent surgery, I appealed to him to let me share an account of it in this issue. Part of my reasoning—which I didn’t articulate—is that his decision to take to the road with the Tedeschi Trucks Band just two weeks after surgeons removed a four-inch tumor from his spine reveals so much about his character, his commitment to the band and his upbringing. Indeed, he acknowledged, “I didn’t like the idea of canceling the last shows of the year. It feels like a weird way to go out. And a part of it is I remember my dad growing up—you just get up and go to work. It’s just what you do. If you can, you do it.” I have great respect for that perspective. It resonates with my own family experience, as I’m sure it does for many of you as well.

Of equal significance, though, is the fact that the discovery of his tumor came as a total surprise. This is where I told him that we could do some good—perform a mitzvah (with a nod to my fellow editor’s new monthly speaking series). It’s quite easy to overlook your regular physical maintenance. But you shouldn’t, especially as you get on in years (which is just when it becomes a bit more complicated, due to scheduling conflicts or the particulars involved with finding a regular physician for that annual check-up).

Here’s another quote from Derek, to bring it on home: “I have a really good friend, Don, who passed away a few years ago. I met him at the same venue we met Bobby Tis [Trucks’ longstanding road tech and studio engineer]. Don would come out to the shows for years, and then he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He fought it and lasted a long time. But he told me: ‘You have to go in and get checked-up, get the scans. If you catch things early, it makes a difference.’ So I told him I would do it but I never did. And then, when I finally went in for that MRI after they found it—as I was going into the tube—I was thinking about what he had said and I was like, ‘Sorry, dude. I should’ve done it sooner.’ But you know, it’s easy to put off.”

It is.

So don’t.

later days and peace,
Dean