“We got about an hour in, and I was like, ‘I haven’t even pulled the slide out of my pocket yet!’” Derek Trucks is one of the greatest slide guitar players of all time but sometimes forgets he even has one – here’s how he decides when to use it

You could be forgiven for forgetting sometimes that Derek Trucks is a smoking-hot guitar player even when he isn’t wearing that trademark glass slide on his ring finger.

All of the highlights reels – understandably – focus on his work with the slide, turning his Artist Series Dickey Betts SG into an auxiliary member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band vocals division.

But some of his most stinging guitar solos are fretted, and for an example, you needn’t look further than TTB’s latest release, Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited: Live At LOCKN’, which captures the band’s 2015 set with Leon Russell and a host of guest stars – including the likes of Rita Coolidge, Pamela Polland, and Claudia Lennear – and Trucks brought his A-game for the occasion.

Like on the solo to The Letter, which is all fretted fingerstyle (because he’d be “lost” with a guitar pick), and, in the parlance of our times, is pure fire. And, yes, he’s playing this fretted, in Open E, which kind of blows our mind twice over. Trucks admits that he sometimes forgets he even has the slide with him.

“Yeah, I’m still in open E and it’s funny, I don’t even think about it anymore,” he says. “We change our setlist every night, and I don’t really think about those details when I’m writing a setlist, but there was, I think last night or the night before, an hour-and-a-half set, we were playing before another band, and I think we got about an hour in, and I was like, ‘I haven’t even pulled the slide out of my pocket yet! [Laughs] I forgot!’ I was like, ‘I should probably probably rip that thing out here sooner or later!’”

Tedeschi Trucks Band - "Midnight In Harlem" (Solo) - YouTube

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Seeing Tedeschi Trucks Band live and not seeing some slide playing from Trucks would be like seeing Little Richard and him not playing Good Golly, Miss Molly, or Motörhead not playing Ace Of Spades. But the truth is, Trucks leaves that decision on whether or not to use the slide to the last minute – if you could even call it a decision at all.

“Some nights you just feel more inspired one way or the other, definitely depending on the tune,” he says. “There’s some songs that just call for a certain things. A lot of the tunes, it’s last minute.

“You decide if you want it to be more angular or lyrical or what the the spirit is in the moment – or just what inspires you in the moment. But it’s fun to be able to kind of dip back and forth into those worlds.”

Tedeschi Trucks Band & Leon Russell – “The Letter” [Feat. Susan Tedeschi] - YouTube

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And it doesn’t mean a solo needs to be always slide or always fretted; it might change the grammar of the solo, how it’s phrased, where the accents go, but it still retains the same musical information – the solo is still delivering the same message.

It is like how Trucks’ friend and fellow Allman Brothers Band alumnus Warren Haynes put his own spin on Blue Sky by performing it live with a slide. Trucks says the tune will tell you what it needs.

“You hear guys like Jeff Beck and you’re like, ‘Oh, you you can play without a slide and make it sound like a slide,’” he says. “There are some nights where maybe you play more lyrical without the slide and a little more angular with it. It’s fun to be able to to kind of challenge yourself that way.”

In other Tedeschi Trucks Band news, Trucks recently revealed to MusicRadar that the band has recorded 17 songs for a new album, and is already playing them live. And some people in the crowd think they know these songs already.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited: Live At LOCKN’ is out now via Fantasy. Derek Trucks’ story of that fateful night’s set is coming soon to MusicRadar.