One of America’s greatest progressive roots acts, the Tedeschi Trucks Band (TTB), can be considered a family operation, on various levels. Kinfolk associations are literally embedded in the band name and relationship of married couple Susan Tedeschi, the inspired vocalist, and Derek Trucks. Masterful slide guitarist Trucks himself is now the most high-profile offshoot of the Allman Brothers world, as the nephew of that band’s drummer Butch Trucks and also a prized member of a later constellation of the Allman organization.
We’ve heard Trucks stretch out with his highly musical virtuosity in the Allman aggregate at the Santa Barbara Bowl years ago, where we’ll hear him again with TTB on Wednesday, June 5. The eagerly awaited return to town marks their first post-pandemic visit, and the Bowl makes for a more-than-suitable, picturesque setting for their particular musical stew.
Another family connection with TTB, albeit more ambiguous and idealistic, relates to a certain palpable kinship feeling that the band generates with its most devoted listeners (we know who we are). There can be a sense of mutual trust and eclectic musical adventuring as the crowd follows the band’s adventuring between blues, post-Southern rock, R&B (replete with horns), gospel, and artful jam-band space explorations.
Through it all, Trucks has affirmed his place as one of the greatest slide guitarists on the scene, influenced in his early days not only by Duane Allman, but also by musical influences from around the world, including the slide tradition in Indian Hindustani music. As he told me in an interview, “Once I started playing, at 9 or 10 years old, you’re around musicians and are always picking their brains for what they’re into, and I really got turned onto a lot of stuff early that way, whether it was Ali Akbar Khan or John Coltrane or Sun Ra or Sun House or Skip James…. Luckily for me, electric slide guitar is not something that has been completely mastered or so overdone, like the electric guitar in general. It’s hard to find new ground on an instrument where there are a thousand masters.”
Tedeschi and Trucks struck up a symbiotic musical marriage along with starting a family of their own. She had a sturdy career in motion, as a bold and expressive power in her voice, tinged with a warm rasp and bluesy shadings similar to Bonnie Raitt, while Trucks was keeping his mostly instrumental band going strong in its niche circuit. They merged to create TTB in 2010, and their 2011 debut album, Revelator, won a Grammy for Best Blues Album.
Together, the pair are a dynamic pairing, with Trucks’s vocal-like slide guitar phrasings acting as a response to her vocal calls, and the powerful force of the 12-piece band — with double drummers, as in the Allman Brothers — is a critically integrated support system.
Their latest album, the four-disc I Am the Moon, touches on the band’s various directions, from warm-spirited songs like “Hear My Dear” and “Another Day,” to extended instrumental workouts like “Pasaquan.” “Gravity” has a loping Little Feat/N’awlins feel (which is handy since Little Feat will be joining them at the Bowl), and the title track is an emotional ballad that builds into a cathartic crescendo by song’s end.
It’s a family affair, going strong and steady, and thankfully Bowl-bound.
Tedeschi Trucks performs at the Santa Barbara Bowl (1122 N. Milpas St.) Wednesday, June 5, 6 p.m. See sbbowl.com.
