THE MOST FUCKED UP THING I’VE EVER SEEN: Tedeschi Trucks Band
Sep 20, 2011
In which the TTB's Mike Mattison relates a sound foosball drubbing.
BT MIKE MATTISON
On the road as a singer with the Derek Trucks Band - and now the Tedeschi Trucks Band - for a combined total of almost ten years, I have seen some seriously fucked up shit: Curbside drubbings; colorful, unthinkable racial incidents; a girl with an actual third-eye and that dude in Nashville front-and-center who exhaled a hit of crack smoke right into my face.
But the most fucked up things, the stuff that sticks with you, are the minor emotional tragedies: Aeschylus played in miniature backstage, on the bus, in the barroom.
One of these tragedies happened in Grand Junction, Colorado.
The Derek Trucks Band had finished its set in a bar I'm quite sure no longer exists. Derek and I wandered back into the venue to do what musicians sometimes do in Grand Junction: Get a drink or have one bought for us.
We looked... unappealing. Probably in sweat pants. Derek maybe wearing his signature "you-don't-really-see-me" Atlanta Braves brim. Two tired musicians trying to waste an hour before bus call.
There was a guy named "Scott," drinking whiskey. He recognized Derek, called him "Trucksie." A little familiar but, hey, it was almost 1:00 a.m. "Trucksie," said Scott, "Loved your show! Let me buy you a shot." Scott ordered two shots. Trucksie, always the populist, suggested Scott might want to order me one, too. Scott complied. He tapped me on the back. He said, "You're the keyboard player right?"
"No," I said, "I'm the other black guy onstage."
"The Drummer!"
Yes, I said. Yes, I'm the fuckin' drummer.
Clink! Clink! Down-in-one! Pfffaaaah!
Scott: "You guys play foosball?"
I was still a little new to touring. I'd done some traveling in my time, but never as a professional. Never as a person who could be followed from city to city by looking at my website. Anonymity and I were friends. Still are.
One forgets that "Trucksie," well, people have an eye on him. An eye on his talent. An eye on his at-oneness with the electric guitar. Ideas about who he is, you know, inside. That he's onstage because maybe there is some fluke. That maybe he's a douche. Or a secret Republican. Or that he's human just like us.
Scott, again: "Do you guys play foosball?"
Trucksie: "Sometimes."
Scott gestured at the bar, the smoke, the four other people huddled over their drinks. "This bar is my bar. This foosball table," he smacked a goal-handle and made it whiz, "I own. Nobody wins here but me."
It was an interesting statement. A statement everyone on earth would like to make about some aspect in their lives, except maybe masturbation.
"Me and my boy," Scott grabbed a confused-looking gawker. "Against you and him." He pointed at me, the Drummer.
"OK," said Derek.
What we usually ascribe to guitar-players - the ones that really can play - is an uncanny ability to make the right musical choices in the midst of a veritable tsunami of beats, chord changes and sonic anomalies. Aesthetics aside, if you want to jam guitar-style, you've got to have the eye-hand coordination of an NHL goalie. People don't think about it, but it's true. This should be on your mind especially if you own a foosball table in the only after-hours bar in Grand Junction, Colorado. Use your noggin.
It wasn't pretty. Derek made a show of it, statesman-like, trying to maintain equilibrium. As a child I had had a foosball table in my basement, but to be frank I've always been a singer - the eyes and hands only move in concert when I'm trying to get food into my face. I fed Derek from the back-three, the scoring was up to him.
Scott slammed one home. "Oooh! Trucksie! I told you this was my table."
I cringed a little.
Trucks kind of started trying and we skunked them out 10-2.
Scott: "Again."
Me, the fuckin' Drummer, fake yawning: "I think it's about my bed-"
Scott's girlfriend suddenly appeared. "Jen!," said Scott, "This is Derek, the guy who was playing-" he gestured at the stage.
What happened next is kind of what happens in The Three Stooges when Moe holds Curly's head at arm's length while Curly wheels his arms in a perpetual windmill.
"Again!," screamed Scott.
After about seven of these, Scott's girlfriend started crying. "Scott, please, don't!"
It's not like we were being nasty. In fact, we tried to excuse ourselves multiple times. And, for the record, and this sounds condescending, but: Scott was good.
"Again."
His girlfriend started to scratch at his playing hand. "Not during the game, Jen!"
Trucksie and I even held up our hands and attempted to lose, but by then the slippery slope of disappointment had already inhabited Scott. It had taken hold of his person. Also, he had been drinking Old Grandad constantly.
It only took an hour. But the foosball table, at 2:00 a.m. MT, Grand Junction, CO, no longer belonged to Scott.
I don't think there is a moral to this story. There never is, really, in a tragedy. The night was fated, before we had ever even met, in the stars.
The Tedeschi Trucks Band's latest album Revelator is out now on Sony Masterworks. www.derekandsusan.net
(Photo: James Minchin)
Tedeschi Trucks Band - "Midnight in Harlem"
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