“He could play a guitar like ringing a bell...” The Derek Trucks Band will perform at Farthing Auditorium in Boone tonight. Derek Trucks Slides Into Boone Southern Rock Guitar Legend at Farthing Tonight By Jeff Eason It must be pretty cool to be one of the musicians on Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list. It must seem even cooler if you are the youngest guitarist on that list. That’s the case for Southern Rock musician Derek Trucks as he begins his second decade of taking his trademark searing slide guitar playing back on the road. The Derek Trucks Band will perform at Farthing Auditorium in Boone on Thursday, October 28th at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12 for students and $17 for the general public and are available at the door. The doors open at 7 p.m. Despite making their living and reputation primarily through high-energy live shows, the Derek Trucks Band just released its first live album this year. Live at the Georgia Theatre captures the group’s entire performance from a night last October in Athens, Georgia. The album has been touted as one of the best live recordings of the past decade and continues a hot streak for Trucks that has seen his performances with the Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule garner rave reviews on pay-per-view television. The Derek Trucks features Trucks on guitar, Todd Smallie on bass and vocals, Yonrico Scott on drums, percussion and vocals, Kofi Burbridge on organ, keyboards, flute and vocals, and Mike Mattison on lead vocals. The core of the band has been together for the past decade but Live at the Georgia Theatre is the first album to feature Mattison on lead vocals. Trucks has been a guitar slinger and band leader for over a decade…and he is still only 25 years old. With a tour schedule that has included many years of over 300 gigs, Trucks has logged over a million miles on the road and has performed for hundreds of thousands of Southern rock fans. These days Trucks divides his playing time between his own band and the historic Allman Brothers Band. In addition to the honors bestowed upon him by Rolling Stone magazine, he has been voted the Rising Star Blues Artists and the Rising Star Beyond Artist in Downbeat magazine’s 2004 Critics’ Poll. When Trucks got his professional start in music—playing as a precocious eleven-year-old guitarist in the early 90s—his forte was blazing slide guitar riffs with more than a passing tip of the hat to the work of the Allman Brothers Band. He came by that Southern Rock Heritage honestly, however, as his uncle Butch Trucks was a longtime member of the Allmans. These days Trucks and his cohorts have branched out from their Southern Rock roots and play everything from blues to Middle Eastern sounding mystical jams. The focus is now on the performance and the band strives to make every live show unique. The band and its equipment is a far cry from the little $5 acoustic that Trucks bought and a yard sale when he was a kid and learned how to play. “It was nothing special,” said Trucks. “I had no desire to play. It was just the only thing that looked interesting.” Trucks’ family music connection came in handy as he had plenty of family and friends eager to pick up the little guitar and show Derek how to play a chord progression here and lead guitar riff there. “It happened pretty quick,” said Trucks. Indeed it has. For ticket information on the Derek Trucks Band performance at Farthing Auditorium, call the box office at (828) 262-4046.