Since the mid-’90s, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks have both had successful music careers, she as an acclaimed singer/songwriter and he as an electrifying guitar player with his group and the Allman Brothers Band, among others. The two met on tour in 1999, married a couple of years later and had two children, but their hectic solo schedules often kept them apart. To rectify the situation, they formed the Tedeschi Trucks Band, an 11-member ensemble that recently released debut album Revelator (Sony Masterworks), which was recorded at the duo’s home studio. Knowing how much they like to do things together, we asked Tedeschi and Trucks to guest edit magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with them.
Derek: I’ve always been a baseball fan, and it was cool to find out that I have a family member who pitched in the majors. Virgil “Fireball” Trucks was a fast-pitching righty, sort of like the Roger Clemens of his day. One year, he actually had two no-hitters in the same season. Last year, after Roy Halladay did the same thing, Virgil got some recognition for being one of the only other players in history to pull that off. He’s in his 90s now, but he’s still living in Birmingham, so I went to see him a few years back. He’s not really up on our music or anything, but I just wanted to meet him and hear some of his stories firsthand, like how he came back from World War II and found himself pitching in a game to clinch the pennant for the Tigers just two weeks after he got home. Now my son Charlie is a baseball player and fan, too, so for him to know that a Trucks was a major leaguer is a big thing.
Video after the jump.
One reply on “Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Simple Things: Virgil Trucks”
[…] up the album release, Tedeschi and Trucks did some guest blogging in which Trucks found fit to note that his great uncle (Butch’s uncle) was a baseball star in the mid-1…. Virgil “Fireball” Trucks was a pitcher who spent most of his career with the Detroit […]