Fifteen or sixteen years is a long time to have been listening to a guitarist who’s just hit thirty-three, but I have clear recollections of people on the old Allman mailing list raving about this teenage wunderkind and I picked up Derek Trucks Band live shows through the old Mushroom Express tape tree and various personal trades as well.
With mentions in successive versions of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time (though I’d be ranking him considerably higher than the #16 ranking he got last time) Derek Trucks is among the best guitarists going around at the moment, and while the Derek Trucks Band might be in limbo at the moment, between his gigs with The Allman Brothers Band and the Tedeschi Trucks Band (with his missus, Susan Tedeschi) he’s got plenty to keep him occupied.
He’s been playing paid gigs since age eleven, delivering a blend of blues, soul, jazz and rock, with significant Latin and qawwali influences and was described in The Washington Post as "sounding like a cross between Duane Allman on a '61 Gibson Les Paul and John Coltrane on tenor sax"...