Butch Trucks is about the most humble Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer you’re likely to meet. Trucks was the steady back-beat, the trusty drummer for legendary Southern rock and blues band The Allman Brothers through the bulk of its most prolific years. Credited with keeping the beat chugging along through classic albums like 1972’s Eat A Peach and providing the solid rhythms for dozens of record-breaking stints at New York’s renowned Beacon Theater, Trucks has quite a hefty resume to brag about. And the Jacksonville native isn’t ready to hang up his sticks just yet. Still enthralled with travelling, touring and creating music, Trucks has found a new vehicle to fuel his life-long passion: his newest ensemble, The Freight Train Band. Butch, now mostly living in France, took some time out recently to discuss his deep-rooted love of his music and his burning desire to keep on playing. After giving me a brief history lesson about the origins of his French home, his love of organic gardening and describing the rigorous tour schedule he’s currently embarked on, Trucks filled me in on what exactly keeps him playing.
Butch Trucks and the Freight Train Band roll into the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater (405 Cleveland St.) this Fri., July 22. The show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20, $30 or $45 in advance and can be purchased by phone (727-791-7400) or online here.
You performed at a well-attended, well-received show at Clearwater’s Capitol Theatre last New Year’s Eve and you’re returning to the same venue. How will this new show differ? What’s in store for folks who saw you in December?
The one thing we were able to do since last year is actually rehearse! We put the band together and basically our rehearsal was done by passing music around online. It was just impossible to get us all together so we basically did our first two or three tours with no rehearsal. We just walked onstage and let it rip. We decided that it would be a good idea, if nothing else, to get some original songs. When we were there last year, about half of the set was Allman Brothers tunes and the other half of the set was cover tunes…some Jeff Beck, John Scofield, but that’s the kinds of tunes we cover; things that lend themselves to jamming and improvisation.
Is that something you prefer?
One of the reasons why we’re doing the Freight Train is that since the Allman Brothers quit in October 2014, everybody’s out doing their own thing. [Lead singer] Gregg [Allman] is out there doing what he always wanted to do with his own band but he always thought we jammed too much with the Allman Brothers. But there’s no band out there to step into the void that the Allman Brothers left. There are certain songs like “…Elizabeth Reed” or “Whipping Post,” “Mountain Jam” and “Jessica” that we can really stretch out on. And plus, with the Freight Train, I’ve added another element: we’ve got three guitars! So we’ve added a third, harmony part to all those tunes that had two guitar parts. Now it’s bigger and fuller. We have more people who can jam and bring different ideas. That’s kind of the basis of what we’re doing but now we’ve got some original material, too. And we’re just having a ball. I haven’t done this in so long. We get up and it feels like it’s been 15 minutes and we finish a set and I look at the clock and it’s been two-and-a-half hours!
Does the original material mean there’s a record coming out soon?
I’m not really sure what we’re going to do. In this day and age, making records is a massive money loss proposition. Way back in the old days of AOL dialup when people starting stealing music on the internet, back then I was trying to tell everybody ‘you guys keep doing this, and the day is gonna come where the people that you want to get recordings from aren’t gonna do it anyore’. It costs too damn much money. An average Allman Brothers record ran between two and three hundred thousand dollars to make. And it came out of our pocket. Record companies don’t pay for it. They give us an advance and then that is the first thing they take out when they start selling records is what it costs to make the records. I’m not sure what we’re going to do. We may be able to find a studio that’s inexpensive enough and if we’re well-rehearsed enough we could go in and do it quick enough. We’ll probably make that decision before this year’s over. We do need to get something out there.
Do you still enjoy playing the Allman Brothers songs live?
Well if I didn’t enjoy playing them, I wouldn’t play them. Plain and simple. I’m really out there having a hell of a lot of fun. I’m out there playing with my son Vaylor who’s that kid on the cover of [Allman Brothers classic album] Brothers and Sisters. He’s not that cute anymore but he’s a hell of a guitar player. And Berry Oakley, Jr. is the bass player and a guy he’s been working for years named Damon Fowler who’s an amazing guitar player. I was playing a little blues club outside of Tallahassee two or three years ago and someone tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that there was a girl there who could sing and play guitar really well who wanted to sit in. So she got up and did “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers and just blew the roof off. She wasn’t even 21 yet…she just turned 21 last year. And watching her from tour to tour is just amazing. She’s still learning. She’s a really good singer. I do one song,a Bob Dylan song and if you can call it singing, well, OK. “Highway 61” is more like talking than singing.
How do you determine which covers to play?
Ultimately, I do. But I did it by telling everyone to give me a list of songs they’d like to play. And then I took that list and some of the tunes I knew, some I didn’t. If I didn’t know them, then I’d dig them up and listen to them and then we narrowed it down. Hell, if we would have taken all of them, we’d of had around 12 hours of material there. So we whittled it down and now it’s about two-and-a-half hours we play. And now we have the new, original songs, too. Damon wrote a really good up-tempo shuffle and Bruce [Katz] wrote a really nice instrumental called “Out From The Center.”
Is there a break or an intermission during your shows?
No, we play straight through. We just play until they make us quit!
You mentioned your son and Berry Oakley’s son is in the band. Is this sort of a next generation Allman Brothers? What was the response from them when asked to come in to play this material?
Aw, c’mon! Every one of them grew up on the Allman Brothers. What blew me away was how well the girl, her name is Heather Gillis, was 20 years old and she knew every damn song we ever did. That’s how we could do this without practicing. The first tour we did was a lot of Allman Brothers tunes because everybody already knew them.
So, you’ve been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you were listed on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 100 greatest drummers…what do those types of accolades mean to you?
Well…I don’t know. It all started way back with the Grammys. I finally won my first Grammy in 1994, I think, and I use it as a doorstop at my condo in South Florida. Back in the ’70s when we were changing the way music was played — taking jazz and adding to what Cream did and throwing in some Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and people like that, and in doing it with an integrated band in the South starting in the late ’60s, we were just raising the bar on what you could do with music and then, not only that, but we got famous. We became a top-selling and drawing band. And between 1969 and 1976, you know how many Grammy nominations we got? One. And guess what it was for? Best Cover Art. And I’m looking around at all the bullshit that’s winning and it kind of put into perspective what these awards are all about. It’s about popularity…it has nothing to do with the music. I’m looking at right now at a Grammy they gave us as a lifetime achievement award which is kind of special. But because of what happened with us with the Grammys in the early ’70s, the fact that we got stuck up there with the Hall of Fame thing kind of surprised me. I never expected it. They put us in there the very first year we were eligible.
Tell me about being one of the first integrated rock bands. Do you feel like you broke down some barriers?
The one thing I’ve heard from many, many people and I’ve read many, many times is the fact that we stayed in the South and didn’t do what all the other Southern bands had done and gone to New York or L.A. because that was the general feeling back then — if you don’t go to New York or L.A., you’re never gonna make it — and we started playing that music and we didn’t give a shit about “making it.” All we wanted to do was play that music.
So what’s the significance of the name of the band, Freight Train? That term has been used to describe your style of drumming before.
Way back in the mid-’70s, Dickey (Betts) was introducing the band and he introduced me and he said “..and back on the drums, we call him the freight train, Butch Trucks,” and that was the first time I’d ever heard that. But it stuck.
You seem like the type who plays well off other band members. Do you still enjoy playing in more of a spontaneous spirit?
Yeah, and that’s the reason why, after almost 50 years, I still enjoy playing “…Elizabeth Reed”; I still love it. Every night it’s something different. You never know what’s gonna happen. That’s what I’m doing. With these guys, if they start doing the same thing two or three times, I’ll just quit playing and let it just go. Let it go somewhere else and let everybody else follow. Let’s just do something new and different. Don’t get locked into doing the same damn thing. It’s the root of who I am. I’m just thankful I met Duane Allman. If I hadn’t met him, I probably would have been a high school math teacher.
What’s the difference between playing some of the outdoor festivals (like Wanee) and playing a seated theater? Are there any obvious differences?
Nah, it’s just different. [Laughingly refers to Spinal Tap in playing to the “intimacy” of a small theater.] In the early ’90s, The Allman Brothers had the drawing power to play two nights at Madison Square Garden in New York City but we chose instead to play 10 to 12 shows at the Beacon Theater instead. It just reminded us a lot of the Fillmore East. At Wanee, we were playing to five or six thousand people which was great but it was dark and we could hardly see the people.
For someone who hasn’t seen you play, what can they expect?
If you like the music of the Allman Brothers, you’re gonna like this. We’re trying to step into that void but adding our own twist. It’s not the Allman Brothers, but it’s coming from that same direction. It’s a jazz-influenced, blues-based, jam band…or as I like to say, just a very loud jazz band!
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2016.
