Root-rich Derek Trucks Band plays Gainesville

In a good year, Derek Trucks spends more time on stage than most people do in their living room.

The 28-year-old guitarist and nephew of Butch Trucks, a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, has been known to log upwards of 300 days on the road, splitting time between gigs with his own outfit, The Derek Trucks Band, his blues-singer wife, Susan Tedeschi, The Allman Brothers Band and, recently, a world tour with one of his heroes, Eric Clapton.

If it sounds exhausting, it is.

"You give in to the insanity," he says of his schedule. "You enjoy it, and you explore it."

Trucks will perform with his band tonight at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Gainesville in support of its 2006 CD, "Songlines."

By any estimation, it would seem Trucks was meant to play guitar. He picked up his first one at age 9, and before he became a teenager, he had already performed with Bob Dylan and started touring with his own band, recalling shades of Duane Allman with his prodigious slide guitar playing.

Now, Trucks carries the mantle of one of the most celebrated guitarists in recent memory - he was the youngest musician named in Rolling Stone's "Top 100 Guitarists of All Time" and was on the cover of the same magazine's "New Guitar Gods" issue.

In 1999, Trucks was offered a chance to join his uncle in The Allman Brothers Band, a prospect he wasn't immediately sure about.

"About the time I got the call from the Allman Brothers to join, I think I had moved as far away as I could from that whole scene, musically," he says. "We were playing almost instrumental trio music, you know, as avant-garde as we could get at the time, kind of to intentionally push away from maybe those expectations and that audience."

But, eventually Trucks chose to stay true to his family history.

"As you mature, you realize that your roots are your roots, and it's foolish to deny it," he says. "Especially if they happen to be really strong and good roots."

Recently, while juggling the responsibilities of three bands, a wife and two children, Trucks received a call from Clapton and an invitation to play on the guitar legend's world tour.

Of course, no guitar player worth his salt would decline an invitation from the man who once inspired the graffiti, "Clapton is God." Trucks agreed. Trucks spent a year on tour with Clapton, absorbing all he could from a living legend.

"There were quite a few times when I'd just realize that these were the times to have your eyes and ears open, because there are lessons to be learned from someone who was the running partner of John Lennon and guys like that and is still here to talk about it," he said.

One lesson he learned from Clapton, Trucks says, is maintaining longevity. And so, while he is only 28 and faces no shortage of gigs, he doesn't plan on doing those exhausting 300-day stints forever.

"I'll be gigging, and I'll be gigging hard, but I have a 5-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, and I do feel like my course will be different," he says. "I want to be around for things."