On Sunday night at The Egg in Albany, NY, The Derek Trucks Band performed their final show of 2009, and their last show before the scheduled hiatus in 2010. The concert featured two sets and three hours of classic & rarely-performed dTb tunes ("Young Funk," "Home In Your Heart." "Yield Not To Temptation," "555 Lake"), eclectic cover staples ("Anyday," "Leavin' Trunk," "Volunteered Slavery," "My Favorite Things") and gems from all throughout their 16-year run ("Joyful Noise," "Soul Serenade," "Already Free"). Click through to see pictures and read the reviews of a very special night in Albany...


photos by David Zylber

Reviews from the show are in, and it seems the critics were every bit as impressed as the rapt audience at The Egg:

Derek Trucks Band gives a brilliant blowout show
By GREG HAYMES, Special to the Times Union

ALBANY -- "So, after 16 years, ..." drummer Yonrico Scott started to say at the end of the Derek Trucks Band's show at The Egg on Sunday. But he didn't finish. He just said, "Yeah."

After 16 years of fairly relentless touring, and a banner year in 2009 that featured the release of the band's latest album, "Already Free," and a world tour that took them to more than a dozen countries on four continents, the Derek Trucks Band is taking a hiatus in 2010.

And Sunday night's slam-bang show at The Egg was the big farewell ... at least for a while.

But unlike so many other bands, guitarslinger Trucks and his boys didn't make a big deal out it. There was no parade of special guests.

No goofy, off-the-wall covers. No fireworks or lazers or exploding pianos. No big speeches. No speeches at all, as a matter of fact. As they always do, the Derek Trucks Band let the music do the talking. And it came through loud and clear that these six musicians love what they're doing...

...And what glorious, musical magic it was.

(READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE)

Top blues guitarist Trucks splits atom with soaring solos
By David Singer – Daily Gazette

ALBANY — Once a generation they come around and soar above all others. It could be an athlete, a writer, a leader of people. Derek Trucks, at 29, holds that mantle for the blues guitar, a gift and burden he bears from the likes of Duane Allman and others.

Sunday night at The Egg’s Hart Theater, Trucks parted the Red Sea with his solos, not once or twice, the number most fans expect to make a ticket price worthwhile, but a dozen-plus times. This is a little more than usual fare for him, likely because it was his last show before taking a year off from the road.

Trucks doesn’t force these frenzied solo moments, or warn us in any way. Typically his solos start gently, melodically tied to the song; he then happens upon a likeable riff and locks into it. It’s at that point he rises above his peers. Where top soloists dissect the riff down to its core and then pull out slowly, Trucks literally splits the atom, and, inside that microscopic space, he finds room to explore further — and he does all this without losing us.

His first launch was on the third song, “I Wish I Knew,” after Kofi Burbridge’s flute solo. His next large fall to temptation was during the mid-tempo “Yield Not to Temptation.”

He stepped out of his blues box a bit, bending the genre with his Eastern influences during “Already Free,” the title track to his latest release, which is currently nominated for a Grammy for contemporary blues album.

He followed with a heavy version of Dylan’s “Down in the Flood” to close his first set. Here he drew energy partly from his speed and ideas, but also from the rawness of his notes. He never holds onto a note long, but he holds each of them with authority and he makes every note matter. Even his rhythm support during keyboard solos was sparse but felt critical.

Other songs worth noting included “Sweet Inspiration,” “Get What You Deserve,” “I Wish I knew,” and the opener “Soul Serenade.”

Vocalist Mike Mattison sings with a raspy soul sound, mostly at full volume, jumping in and out of a falsetto for effect. Like bassist Todd Smallie and Trucks, they didn’t move their bodies much — if at all — but wore grins when Trucks started to raise the energy.

Trucks has kept the same core band for a decade to develop together through years on the road. The sound is evident, as is their sense of when to support Trucks, when to move in front, when to back off. He let the members solo during the rock ’n’ rollish “Leaving Trunk.”

In a long blond ponytail, Trucks looks more like a hippie jam-band guitar-picking student of Jerry Garcia than a Georgian blues slide prodigy. Unlike Clapton, who tips you off with his gunslinger position before hitting his fiercest moments, Trucks gives no body cues.

When playing with the Allman Brothers and with post-Dead configurations, Trucks does the same thing he did Sunday night with his own band: he makes the effort to share, to lift the music as a group, and he succeeds. But, despite his team-player approach, he ultimately overpowers everyone on stage and in the audience, as he did Sunday night. Everyone in Sunday’s sold-out show was fortunate to reap the benefits of his final show of the tour.

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