Tedeschi Trucks Band

Tedeschi Trucks Band, the 11-piece ensemble led by husband-wife team Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, have proven themselves one of the hottest, most uplifting acts on the road today. Formed in 2010 when Derek and Susan decided to set aside their successful solo careers and join forces, Tedeschi Trucks Band has since been touring the globe - and accruing fans and accolades in the process. Fronted by Trucks' signature slide-guitar sound and Tedeschi's pliant, honey-to-husky voice, TTB -- as their fans know them -- delivers a hearty roots-rich musical mix with the power to renew faith in live music. Their joyful, spontaneous energy, and overflowing musical talent, have helped Tedeschi Trucks Band reach pinnacles of accomplishment that most bands spend a career trying to reach.

In February 2012, TTB's debut album Revelator -- praised as a "4-star masterpiece" by Rolling Stone -- won the Grammy for Best Blues Album of the Year, while Trucks himself, along with TTB bandmate Oteil Burbridge, were honored with lifetime Grammys for their membership in The Allman Brothers Band. Following the accolades and in a span of just ten weeks, Derek and Susan were invited to perform at the White House, joining Mick Jagger, B.B. King, and Buddy Guy to celebrate the blues -- at the Apollo Theater, joining Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and a host of blues guitar heavyweights in an all-star tribute to bluesman Hubert Sumlin -- at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where Trucks helped to posthumously induct blues legend Freddie King -- and at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, joining Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Tony Bennett, Stevie Wonder and others to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day.
In May, Tedeschi Trucks Band will release their first live album Everybody's Talkin' - a blend of originals and vibrant covers with the collective spirit of a typical TTB concert. The band is currently touring throughout the US and Canada for the balance of 2012, while also working on their next studio album.

A Florida native, Trucks has emerged as one of the most respected guitarists of his generation. With his blend of blues, soul, jazz, rock, and world-music, Trucks pushes the boundaries of slide guitar. Before Tedeschi Trucks Band, he led his own project, The DerekTrucks Band, for over 15 years. While playing as a full member of The Allman Brothers Band for the last 13 years as well as touring with both Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana. Most recently, Trucks was voted by a panel of musicians and industry experts #16 of the top 100 Guitarists of All Time (Rolling Stone - November 2011), the youngest person ever to make the list.

Singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi was born in Boston and has always been musically inclined, playing in bands since she was 13. Tedeschi's knack for combining her passion for American roots music, especially electric blues, Southern soul and black gospel, with an awe-inspiring vocal prowess has resulted in a successful career, series of award-winning recordings (having been nominated for six Grammy awards), and a devoted following. Blessed with an ability to dig deep and deliver powerful R&B belters or wrap her voice around a gentle ballad, Tedeschi is a talented guitarist as well, steeped in the electric blues tradition.
In fact, it was during an Allman Brothers tour in 1999 that the two first met. They fell in love, married in 2001, and began a family in Trucks's hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. By early 2010, with two children in grade school and both of their careers in full-swing, they made a vow to put their individual musical projects on hold and devote themselves to a new joint ensemble they would co-lead, what Trucks then described as a "collective that will allow everyone in the band a chance to shine. We're not sure yet what it will sound like exactly – we're just going to let it come together and not force a vision on it."

A year-and-a-half process followed, during which Trucks and Tedeschi minimized their live commitments to such high profile events as Eric Clapton's Crossroads, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Fuji Rock Festival, and a noteworthy collaboration with legendary jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock. The couple's primary focus through most of 2010 held fast to the goals of assembling a new band, writing new material, and recording an album of performances true to their new musical approach.

Trucks recalls stepping into the process but with no set deadline in mind. "We spent a whole year putting a band together with different lineups, different approaches, different mindsets, and during the same time began songwriting. After about six months we had over 30 songs to choose from."

On June 7, Tedeschi Trucks Band will release its debut recording Revelator, the result of eighteen months of dedicated musical focus. True to Trucks's promise, the album is a confident yet unforced triumph offering a cohesive vision: an idyllic, musical world in which the echoes of so many great traditions— Delta blues and Memphis soul, Sixties rock and Seventies funk—flow together naturally, blending with an entirely original, modern sensibility.

And true to a title that suggests both the gospel-flavored intensity and stunning, soulful impact of its twelve original tracks, Revelator includes smoky, blues-dipped rockers and heart-stilling ballads that show off, respectively, the gutsier and softer side of Tedeschi's vocal ability, plus a series of emotive, story-telling solos shaped by Trucks's uncanny agility on slide-guitar. With its focus on tighter song structures and lyrics rather than extended improvisations, the album serves as dramatic leap forward for Tedeschi and Trucks—one which makes sense in looking back.

"This album is an evolution of what we've all been doing before," says Trucks. "Before with what Susan and I were doing, those were live bands that charged down the road, playing constantly and occasionally finding time to record. Now with this album, everything's been thought out a little deeper, figuring out the music and what the tunes mean—more time given to the whole process. I think my album Already Free in 2009 was the first step in the direction of working with professional songwriters who take their craft as seriously as instrumentalists do.

"Revelator is the first true realization of that process, in which the sum of the parts—the songs, the band, Susan and myself—were greater than just the parts themselves."

More than any other recording project, Revelator found Trucks taking on the role of bandleader, lead guitarist, songwriter, and producer—spending equal time on either side of the glass in Swamp Raga, the recording studio he built behind their house in Jacksonville, Florida. "It's relaxing being at home but it can't just be sitting there. You have to live up to what the studio is, and with this level of musicianship, and with this gear, it forces you to be on your toes."

Trucks also recruited Grammy-winning engineer Jim Scott, whose genre-bending credits include popular albums by the Dixie Chicks, Johnny Cash, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Trucks co-produced the album with Scott, about whom Trucks says: "It really mean a lot when Jim would listen to something and say 'Now THAT sounds like a record to me.' He has a great way of sensing and knowing when a song had arrived and that nothing else was needed."

Most notably, Revelator features the newly formed Tedeschi Trucks Band, an eleven-member ensemble overflowing with talent and musical familiarity. Harmony singers Mike Mattison and Mark Rivers have joined forces with brothers Oteil Burbridge (noted for his years as bassist with the Allman Brothers Band) and Kofi Burbridge (longtime keyboardist/flutist with The Derek Trucks Band), a pair of drummers J. J. Johnson and Tyler Greenwell, plus trumpeter Maurice Brown, tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williams, and trombonist Saunders Sermons. (Additionally, Ryan Shaw and David Ryan Harris supply harmony vocals to various tracks on the album, and Alam Khan adds his masterful sarod playing to 'These Walls.') The fact that this aggregation includes so many musicians related by experience—and blood—clearly adds to the notion of Revelator as a true group album, the product of a musical family.

The fact that the DNA of the Tedeschi Trucks Band includes so many musical couplings has a lot to do with it. "It has such strengths, everyone's a great songwriter in this band and everyone's so good at listening to each other," Tedeschi says. "There are also lots of pairs in the band—like the drummers. They're fabulous together, creating space for each other. Then you have Oteil and Kofi who have known each other since they were born—when those two brothers are locking in together, it's amazing, like ESP taking over. And Derek and myself know each other so well and inspire each other."

Trucks recalls that during the group's tour in the fall of 2010, "It felt like everyone was trying to find their place. I found our New Years show in Jacksonville was the first time it all came together, it became very adventurous. We started playing with the realization that even with a big band, it can still turn on a dime."

Tedeschi and Trucks plan to tour the U.S. and Europe on the heels of the release of Revelator, performing the music from the album as well as old favorites. Trucks echoes Tedeschi's sense of anticipation and pride in their new collective. "I'm really looking forward to hitting the road and letting things grow until each show feels like an event. It's nice having all these new songs but also having that looseness and spontaneity that comes with a great group of musicians. There are few bands that do that—hold on to that element of surprise. One moment could be a train wreck but the next, it's church."