Trucks keeps focus on his newest band

Derek Trucks has been professionally multitasking since he was a teenager. Before he was 20, the guitarist was playing with his own group, the Grammy-winning Derek Trucks Band, and had been adopted as a permanent member of the Allman Brothers Band.

In 2010, Trucks put his own band on hiatus and started the Tedeschi Trucks Band, an old-school roots rock group fronted by his wife, guitarist and singer Susan Tedeschi. And now that the Allmans have called it quits – they performed their final show last week – the Tedeschi Trucks Band is Trucks’ primary creative focus.

It’s the first time in his adult life, he says, that he’s not juggling several different projects at once.

“In some ways, I was excited to start a band fresh as an adult,” Trucks said. “It was nice starting something from scratch and building material from the ground up.”

Combining traditional Southern rock with elements of R&B, blue-eyed soul and blues, the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s first LP, 2011’s “Revelator,” won a Grammy for Best Blues Album. Their most recent release, “Made Up Mind,” is a slick showcase for Tedeschi’s smoky vocals and Trucks’ rip-roaring guitar work (Rolling Stone recently named him one of the greatest guitarists of all time, ranked just ahead of Carlos Santana and Neil Young).

Trucks says that he had “a good feeling” about the band when they first began playing together, but there was, he admits, slight trepidation about the idea of starting a creative endeavor with his significant other.

“From the time I met Susan, we’ve always talked about putting something together,” he said. “One of the reasons we waited so long – we were together for eight, maybe 10, years before we decided to put a band together – was just to make sure we were ready for it. … But when you like a person and you know how to communicate with each other and you’re working toward the same thing, it’s amazing to be able to do that with your spouse.”

Besides Tedeschi and Trucks, there are nine other people in the band – including brass players and backup singers – and Trucks says there’s something liberating about being on a stage surrounded by so many other musicians.

“It’s a force when it’s all firing,” Trucks said. “You get inspirations from so many places with a band like this. … There’s something about carrying a small army on the road with you that’s sort of empowering. Once you surround yourself with people that are creative and talented and start believing in the same thing, it becomes a family, and you want to pour everything you have into it. And that’s where the band is right now.”

And now that he’s found success with yet another band, Trucks says his main priority is to avoid adding anything new to his plate.

“There really are no limits to what we can do now, but I don’t want to pile anything else on,” he said. “I want to get bored for once and see what that’s like.”