Some risks are worth taking. When Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi decided three years ago to dispense with their much-loved individual bands and pool their talents, they had no way of knowing what the public reaction might be to the new hybrid. They found out quickly enough when Revelator, Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 2011 studio debut, excited their sizable, devoted fan bases and the movers and shakers of the music industry alike, landing TTB both a Best Blues Album Grammy and a Blues Music Award for Album of the Year. Their live followup, Everybody’s Talkin’—documenting what many were already regarding as one of the most superb concert acts around not even two years into their existence—continued that forward momentum and picked up a Blues Music Award for Best Rock Blues Album (Susan, Derek and TTB itself each took home separate Blues Music Awards in 2012 as well).
Now, with the release of Made Up Mind (Sony Masterworks, August 20, 2013), there isn’t a shred of doubt that Susan Tedeschi, her husband and creative collaborator, Derek Trucks, and their superb bandmates are on to something—something very big.
For Derek and Susan, TTB’s strength in numbers—the band presently comprises 10 members (plus a revolving cast of bassists)—virtually guaranteed that a wide range of influences would steer the music to new, previously unexplored places. That diversity is evident throughout Made Up Mind. “I felt that with the personnel in this band, it was just a matter of time before all of these ideas started leaking out,” says Trucks. “As things progress, and as the band grows, I think that is inevitable. But we had a lot of confidence that it was going to be really good right out of the gate.”
It took a while for that gate to swing open, but it was worth the wait. Derek and Susan didn’t want to rush into things, and paced themselves until they were certain that each musician they brought into the fold was an equal, someone who would elevate the band to new plateaus musically. Today, as the result of carefully building it from scratch, Tedeschi Trucks Band is nothing less than one big happy family, a traveling roots music circus of sorts, roving from town to town and pulling out all the stops along the way, never knowing just what will be the highlight of tonight’s show or which band member will be the one to shine in the next moment. Each member of TTB is a strong enough force to be a bandleader in his own right, but the chemical reaction that takes place when they all come together results in a mighty sound that’s even greater than the sum of its considerable parts.
Both Kofi Burbridge and Mike Mattison, for example, were longtime members of The Derek Trucks Band, Mike as lead vocalist and Kofi—who contributes his harmonic expertise to arrangements—as keyboardist and flutist. The horn men—Kebbi Williams, Maurice Brown and Saunders Sermons—are each outstanding players who together give Tedeschi Trucks Band a soulful thrust and who, separately, are soloists of extreme agility and creativity. Saunders also proves himself an asset in the vocals department on Made Up Mind—his duet with Susan on the track “Part of Me” opens the band up to even more possibilities. Mark Rivers is another formidable vocalist and the drummers, Tyler Greenwell and J.J. Johnson, provide a virtual twin rhythmic engine. The first time the pair sat at their respective kits and started to bash away, everyone in the room knew immediately that this was a drum team that was meant to be.