Budnick- One other interesting thing of course is those both of you performed in the band as a counterpoint to Dickey. So I’d imagine that in certain tunes you’ll have to rethink your approach.

Trucks- It should be a trip and we’ll probably have to relearn a lot of our parts too. Hopefully we’ll get a chance soon to start hammering it out if he’s going to do the Beacon run.

Budnick- Speaking of which, I very much enjoyed the way that the band rearranged “Jessica” for the summer tour.

Trucks- That was nice, and that was a great tune for Jimmy too. A lot of times I would notice that was the one tune that opened the crowd up too him. A lot of nights we’d throw that early in the set and people would get off on it and lighten up and realize that he was a bad ass. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes you have to drop a bomb until they see can it.

Budnick- That was one of the highlights for me of the summer. That tune really demonstrated the possibilities of the line-up.

Trucks- Definitely. That and “Mountain Jam,” which was also great and a lot of fun. That was really loose. Maybe the third day of rehearsal somebody just put on the record. We all listened to it and then just fired up all the equipment and went for it. We opened up the first show with it in a way a statement: this is a different era, here it is. I thought it was a good move to do that tune.

Budnick- Let’s move on and talk about one of two news discs that you’re on, Frogwings’ Croakin’ at Toads. I’d like to hear your perspective on how that band came together and evolved.

Trucks- Butch called me up, said he wanted to do something and I just thought of players. Jimmy and Oteil first came to mind and then it all just fell together. I didn’t have any ideas about singers. I think Oteil mentioned Edwin McCain. Edwin did it for a year and then his record company stepped in and X-ed that out for him. So everyone called Popper, which seemed the natural thing. Then they added Kofi, and that’s an amazing group of musicians. It’s great to be on the road with them.

I guess it was the pre-Allman Brothers, the farm team for a while. No one knew though, that was never in anyone’s thoughts. Even when Oteil got the gig, me and Jimmy, the last thing the two of us thought was that we would be playing in the Allman Brothers. That was out-er than Sun Ra coming back and asking us in the band. We had no idea that was going to go down and we laughed about it while we were on the road. It was getting to the point before the Allman Brothers when me and Jimmy would feel so comfortable that when we would play we would just go out as far as possible. We’d detune and there would be no songs. We were baffled by the fact that they even let us play in the Allman Brothers together. At times it was really hard for us to hold it back and play in all night. There were many times when he would look over and I would look over and it was tough to hold it in.

Budnick- Were there any nights when the two of you just cracked and really took it out there?

Trucks- There were two or three nights where we really just let go. Right before the drum solo in “Mountain Jam” we detuned and went all the way out. Sometimes Oteil would go with us and sometimes he wouldn’t. There was one night though, I believe at the PNC Arts Center, when all three of us went and there was just no hope of coming back. It was funny because I think Gregg said something about it on the bus and then came back about twenty minutes later and said to me, “Don’t worry, me and my brother we used to have fights about that all the time. He loved going out. But you guys do whatever you want to do.” It was funny. It was worth it.

Budnick- You’ve had a close relationship with Jimmy Herring for a while now. How did that initially come about?

Trucks- I’ve known Jimmy since I was eleven or twelve years old. We opened for the Aquarium Rescue Unit and from that point on, I’ve kind of been in that realm with the Colonel. Since then I talk to the Colonel at least once a week, it’s kind of the family. It’s one of those connections I made early on with Jimmy and Jeff and Oteil and Bruce. There’s been a lot of time spent and music shared. It’s a great thing. Those guys really opened me up to a lot of things, from going beyond just listening to normal shit to a lot of the higher forms of music, the other stuff, the stuff not everyone is hearing. I feel very fortunate to have hooked up with those guys at a young age.

Budnick- Which reminds me, I can recall reading a quote that Colonel Bruce attributed to you, one of my favorites. He said that after listening to Coltrane with him, you tuned and said, “Man that sounds good even after it stops.”

Trucks- I remember he took me out and bought me a few records- Hampton Grease band on vinyl, Sun Ra at the Village Vanguard, and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. We were just sitting on the couch listening to it and we didn’t say a word through the whole thing. We were driving away from the house and then about twenty minutes later it hit me about what went down. I was completely listening but still kind of oblivious to it while it was happening. It was about twenty minutes later that it struck me. I remember him repeating that back to me a few times. He’s definitely been a teacher in terms of showing me a lot of things and turning me on to music ands books and everything else.

Budnick- Let’s return to the Frogwings. What are your memories of that last tour, the one that appears on Croakin at Toads?

Trucks- There were some really good nights. There were definitely some of those nights when Jimmy and I did get to go all the way out. Jimmy never likes anything he does unless it is complete broken and out. I remember though that after the one of the shows he really wanted to get a tape and he was running around after the tapers, that was funny.

There are so many crazy Popper stories, he’s a madman. He always carries a piece. He came late to a rehearsal and we were all waiting for him. Then he came in and broke out his excuse- it turned out he was on the bottom floor of his hotel and while he was checking the chamber of his gun he accidentally shot it off through the floor. So he had to pack his shit and sneak out of the hotel. That was pretty funny. I think with those guys though, every day something completely insane happened.

Budnick- Have you listened to the Frogwings disc? Do you enjoy going back and listening to what you’ve done?

Trucks- I don’t listen to myself play very often. It’s like listening to yourself talk. I did listen to the Allman Brothers band disc once and I enjoyed that. Actually the record that we finished, our third record, I’ve listened to that one quite a bit. It’s the first of our records that I really enjoy listening to, so hopefully we’ll get it out soon.

Budnick- Since you mentioned Peakin’ at the Beacon, what did you feel were the highlights of that disc?

Trucks- I just remember there being some real authentic Allman Brothers moments. It sounds like something I would have listened to before I joined the band, so I was happy with it. I hope we do an Allman Brothers Band album in the studio with some new material, that whole thing, but as far as what it was, I feel really happy with it. I thought Dickey sounded great on it, I thought he played his ass off. I thought his tone was completely him and I’m glad that era of the band was captured.

Budnick- Speaking of which, I caught at least one major Soulive quote on the album.

Trucks- (laughs) I think Eric [Krasno] was there that night so Oteil and I kept throwing in Soulive quotes. I think while Gregg was introducing the band I was tossing them in underneath and that made it on the record. Those guys are great. I love just being around them and hanging. I’m glad they’re getting out there and starting to really hit it the way they deserve to. They’re as good as any band going now as far as I hear.

Budnick- Aside from Soulive what other musical snippets do you and Oteil typically offer up?

Trucks- We toss in a lot of different things. A Sun Ra tune the band would sing before he would come out. The words are “When the world is in darkness and darkness is everywhere along came Ra.” We play that melody quite often. Then there’s tunes like “Afro Blue” and thirty others that we sneak in every once in a while.

Budnick- Let’s jump topics again. I remember when I spoke to you last time for the web site, you had just recorded with Jazz Is Dead. At that time you told me that before you went in that night to perform with the band you hadn’t heard much Grateful Dead. I’m curious, before you toured with Phil Lesh, did you listen to much of the band’s catalog?

Trucks- I got the call from him two night before the Chicago show when I first played with him so I didn’t really have any way to get any Dead CDs between the day that he called me and the show. So I was just as blind going into that as I was with Jazz Is Dead. It was an amazing experience, he was so wonderful to work with and it felt comfortable from the first second.

Budnick- So what is your approach when you step into that type of situation?

Trucks- Luckily for me I’ve been kind of sitting in blindly since I was nine years old. That’s kind of the way I learned to play- just get thrown into a situation with somebody hollering out either a key or a time signature and then going for it. I think in a way it’s a good way to learn. With Phil that was the extreme of it because we weren’t doing it in front of a small audience and they weren’t exactly normal tunes. A lot of them have strange chord changes and odd time signatures and weird shit going on that you wouldn’t expect. When you’re in the middle of that and you don’t know the tune you’re hyper sensitive to things and you have to kind of feel where people are going. With Phil he almost makes you feel a change before he changes, so it was pretty comfortable. Much more natural than I ever thought it would, and a great, great experience. Every day I would get a tape from him- we would do seven to nine different tunes every night and he would lend me some discs and I would study all day and play the show that night. It was definitely a trip. I enjoyed doing it and definitely hope to do it in the future when time permits.

Budnick- The same holds true from Frogwings I assume, if everyone’s schedules can be cleared.

Trucks- That’s always tough to accomplish with all of us on the road but when it happens, I’ll be there.

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