Don’t ever say the Tedeschi Trucks Band lacks ambition.
The group, formed during 2010 by husband-wife due of Susan Tedeschi, has released four previous solo albums and won a Grammy and eight Blues Music Awards. But its latest project, “I Am the Moon,” makes all that look like a warm-up.
Based on an the ancient Persian poem “Layla & Majnun” — which also inspired Derek & the Dominos’ famed “Layla” album — “I Am the Moon” is a four-part album series, covering two dozen songs. The first volume, “Crescent,” came out June 3, with the others following on a monthly basis. Each is accompanied by a film released three days before the music. It’s sweeping enterprise that nods to the grand traditions of classic rock — part of guitarist Trucks’ lineage as a former member of the Allman Brothers Band (which his uncle, the late Butch Trucks, co-founded) and of Eric Clapton’s group.
The TTB even released a concert album “Layla Revisited (Live at Lockin’),” in 2021.
“I Am the Moon has given the group plenty of new material for its Wheels of Soul tour this summer, and Trucks promises a friendly collision between the fresh and the familiar during each show…
- In addition to making an album during the pandemic lockdown, the TTB put together a series of streaming concerts that kept the group engaged with fans until concerts came back last year. “Early on in the lockdown we decided we were gonna do everything we could to keep the band and crew and everybody taken care of and keep this thing as tight as we could,” Trucks, 43, says by phone from the couple’s home in Georgia. “We plan for a lot of things, but no one plans ton of work for 20 months in the middle of your life and your career. So we just stayed at it. We mixed a few records. WE did that ‘Layla’ live mix. We just kind of dug into everything we could…just trying to keep your brain moving. It was great to be at home, but there’s only so many times you can rearrange your house and living room. We gotta do something creative here.”
- Trucks credits vocalist Mike Mattison with the idea for what became “I Am the Moon.” “He had a great idea early on of having the core of the band kind of all dig into the same source material so we had something to sink our teeth into when we finally came back together. His idea was a book or a poem or a piece of work that was connected to the band in some way. We’d just finished mixing the ‘Layla’ live show and he mentioned digging into the Nizami Ganjavi poem. The part of the story that inspired the ‘Layla’ album was the guy being in love with somebody he couldn’t have, and Mike thought, ‘What did she think about it? What was Layla’s take on this?’ That was the light bulb moment for us. It made perfect sense for Sue and was just a different perspective on the whole thing.”
- As the recording sessions became more prolific, Trucks and company began to realize “I Am the Moon” probably couldn’t come out in a traditional fashion. “When we finally took stock of everything we had worked on it was like, ‘This is way too much material for a record. We’re in two hours and 20 minutes territory here.’ I had this sense that no one listens to that much music. No one would ingest it and there’d be a lot of really good music that would just slip through the cracks. So we started thinking about breaking it up into (separate) albums…and each one being like an episode of the story. It was fun to think creatively that way. A lot of our favorite records are 35 minutes, 32 minutes, 38 minutes, and there’s something about that length that really spoke to us. So we started sequencing (‘I Am the Moon’) with that in mind.”
- “I Am the Moon” is the first band recording with three recent TTB additions — bassist Brandon Boone, drummer Isaac Eady and particularly Gabe Dixon, an established solo artist who replaced the late original member Kofi Burbridge in 2019. “After we lost Kofi,” Trucks recalls, “we had a lot of difficult talks — me, Sue and the core of the band. What were we gonna do, and even were we gonna try and continue the same thing. (Burbridge) was too big a part of it to pretend we could just keep rolling down the road like nothing happened. When Gabe had the right reverence for Kofi and respect, and he knew Kofi, had seen Kofi. He knew how great he was but Gabe is his own musician. I think that was a saving grace for us as a band; if someone had tried to come in and do what Kofi something would have felt wrong about it.”
- This year also marks the 25th anniversary of “The Derek Trucks Band’s” debut album and the beginning of what’s been a prolific career for the guitarist. “Yeah, it’s hard to believe. It seems like multiple lifetimes at this point. It’s hard to wrap your head around. It’s feeling good, though. I can’t believe how much energy there is in the band coming out of two years of not working and being through such a weird time. It’s an insane world we live in currently, but somehow it feels like our little circle is healthy and breathing and doing well.”
The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Los Lobos and Gabe Dixon perform at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 29 at the Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave. Detroit. $29.50 and up. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com.
