Derek and the Dominos – "Anyway" (1970)

But if you believed in me

Like I believe in you

The Allman Brothers Band had two drummers – and so does the Tedeschi Trucks Band, which I recently saw perform at Wolf TrapNational Park for the Performing Arts.  

In my humble opinion, that’s the best thing about the group – I wish more rock groups had two drummers.

Click here to see the Allman Brothers Band using their twin drummers to very good effect in a 1970 performance of “Dreams.”  (By the way, the key to the Allman Brothers sound wasn’t Duane’s guitar – it was Gregg’s Hammond B3 organ.)

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The Tedeschi Trucks Band takes its moniker from Susan Tedeschi and her husband, Derek Trucks – whose late uncle Butch Trucks was one of those aforementioned Allman Brothers Band drummers. (I find it interesting that Tedeschi is nine years older than Trucks – she was 31 and he was 22 when they got married.)

Tedeschi and Trucks

There’s no doubt that Trucks is a guitar virtuoso of the highest order – the guy can shred with the best of them.  But there’s no there there in his guitar jams.  They’re full of sound and fury, but ultimately they signify nothing.

Did the audience care?  To the contrary – the less there there was in his solos, the more his fans hooted and hollered.

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Trucks’ meandering guitar jams were bad enough.   But the most tedious element of the concert was the joint drum solo by Tyler Greenwell and Isaac Eady during the band’s interminable live rendition of “Pasaquan,” a l-o-n-g instrumental track that’s found on part one of I Am the Moon.  

Click here to see Tedeschi Trucks playing “Pasaquan” at Wolf Trap.  But be aware that doing so will consume 19 minutes and 15 seconds of your life.  (Maybe you’re young enough that you can afford to waste 19 minutes and 15 seconds of your life.  Unfortunately, I’m not.)

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Derek Trucks was recruited by his uncle Butch to join the Allman Brothers Band for their 30th anniversary tour in 1999, and he played with the group through its final live appearance in 2014.  So it’s not surprising that his guitar solos have an Allman Brothers-flavored sound.

That worked when Tedeschi Trucks covered “Statesboro Blues” (which was a staple of the Allman Brothers Band’s repertory) and “Anyday,” a track on the one and only Derek and the Dominoes album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.  (Duane Allman was the primary guitarist on that recording.)

But the group’s cover of the Rolling Stones 1973 single, “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” sounded a bit odd with an Allman Brothersesque guitar solo by Trucks.

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Click here to listen to Derek and the Dominoes’ studio recording of “Anyday.”  I don’t think there’s much doubt who did the song better.  

Derek and the Dominos

Of course, it’s not really fair to compare one band’s live version of a song with another’s band’s studio recording of that song, but there doesn’t seem to be a decent live recording of Derek and the Dominoes playing “Anyday.”

Click here to buy “Anyday” from Amazon.