Track 18: "Rastaman Chant" by the Derek Trucks Band

I think it was 1997 at Music Midtown in Atlanta (whatever happened to that festival, by the way?) when I first saw the Derek Trucks Band live. He was only 18 at the time and I was absolutely floored by his band and especially his guitar playing. I immediately became a fan and think Derek Trucks is one of the most gifted musicians on the planet.

The guy's been fronting his own band since about age 12 and has been a member of the Allman Brothers Band (his uncle, Butch Trucks, is one of the founding members) for the past several years. But it's been really cool to see how his own band has evolved over the decade that I've been listening to them.

Here's a link to a story on Trucks back in 2002 http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch02/1202/arc1226918842.shtml

Trucks' slide guitar is obviously rooted deeply in the blues, but his band has always been adventurous. and through his band I discovered jazz legends like John Coltrane and Miles Davis. The band's latest two albums "Songlines" and "Already Free" are both fantastic and have sort of cemented the band's direction in world-soul music, but they literally touch on everything-- Middle Eastern, Indian, jazz, Latin music, blues, soul, gospel, and Southern rock--in creating their own sound.

I saw the Derek Trucks Band do a New Years Eve show at Charlotte's Visualite Theater in 2000>2001, and that show still ranks pretty highly for me. At the stroke of midnight they launched into this slow building song that eventually erupted before winding back down. The groove and melody literally stuck in my head for a good month or so.

I knew the song sounded familiar and it wasn't until I heard the Bob Marley version (Marley wrote the song) of "Rastaman Chant" play on the PA before a concert almost a year later that it hit me.."so THAT's the song that the Derek Trucks Band did at New Years."

I've seen the DTB several times since, but "Rastaman Chant" was regrettably not part of the playlist. So when the band released "Soul Serenade" in 2003, I was elated to see that "Soul Serenade/Rastaman Chant" was track 1. (For the sake of being able to meet You Tube's 10 minutes or less requirement for video uploads, I had to cut the "Soul Serenade" intro to this tune.

Hopefully the groove and melody will be stuck in your head for a month or so as well...