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The Unexpurgated interview: The Tedeshi Trucks Band’s Susan Tedeshi and Derek Trucks

The Tedeschi Trucks Band is an 11-piece band led by husband-and-wife duo Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. Tedeschi has opened for headlining acts like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones while Trucks has been touted as one of the most awe-inspiring slide guitarists playing today and has achieved musical success with The Derek Trucks Band. He’s also gigged with The Allman Brothers Band and Eric Clapton. The band will be in town next month as part of the line-up for the Timbre Rock & Roots festival.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band is an 11-piece band led by husband-and-wife duo Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. Tedeschi has opened for headlining acts like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones while Trucks has been touted as one of the most awe-inspiring slide guitarists playing today and has achieved musical success with The Derek Trucks Band. He’s also gigged with The Allman Brothers Band and Eric Clapton. The band will be in town next month as part of the line-up for the Timbre Rock & Roots festival.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE WINNING THE GRAMMY FOR BEST BLUES ALBUM IN 2012, BARELY A YEAR AFTER FORMING THE BAND?

SUSAN: It was wonderful. It’s such a great band and it’s nice to be in a band that talented and for everybody to be recognised.

WERE YOU EXPECTING IT AT ALL?

SUSAN: I hoped but Derek thought we would. He was like, ‘we’ll get one honey,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know.’

DEREK: I had high hopes for the band. It’s a really talented group. A lot of time and energy went into it but still, you don’t expect those things. You can imagine that it will happen but it’s pretty exciting when it does.

AND DEREK, YOU WON THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD AS A MEMBER OF THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND. WAS IT SURREAL BEING ONE OF THE YOUNGEST PEOPLE TO RECEIVE THAT HONOUR?

DEREK: I don’t accept it fully. It was really the original members of the Allman Brothers who were really sweet including the current line-up but I don’t pretend that I got that thing on my own. It’s amazing to be part of it. I’ve been in the band for 12 or 15 years and they were in the hall of fame 30 years before I joined it. It’s nice to be a part of it but I don’t take it to heart too much.

YOU’RE LABELLED AS THE GUITAR HEAVYWEIGHTS OF YOUR GENERATION, WAS THAT A GOAL YOU GUYS STRIVED TOWARD?

DEREK: When you get into music, it’s because you love it and there’s a certain sound you hear that you want to be a part of and you just dig in as far as you can. I never thought about how people thought of what I wanted to do or how you fall in the grand theme of schemes so you just dig in. When it happens, you don’t let it change what you want to do. I think people that listen to the hype too much and often end up losing what they have musically. So many great musicians come and go. You have to keep your head on straight. I don’t think aiming for a goal like that is very helpful. When I think of my heroes and musicians I look up to. It’s pretty unattainable stuff so you reach higher and move forward. I think that’s the only way to go about it.

WHO ARE THE GUITAR HEROES AND MUSICIANS YOU LOOK UP TO?

DEREK: Duane Allman and Elmore James, there’re really thousands. Me and Susan have a lot of common influences.

SUSAN: That’s why we liked each other when we met. It’s definitely a lot of the blues artists, the people that got down to the bottom of it: BB King, Albert King and John Lee Hooker. They teach you so much. It’s a beautiful art form. They teach you the basics but you can never truly grasp them unless you keep on working at it. You’re always learning. The guitar is a beautiful instrument that way. You can never stop learning.

SUSAN, YOUR ROOTS ARE IN GOSPEL MUSIC, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

SUSAN: I’ve always been a fan of great singers. I’m a huge fan of Aretha Franklin and I realized that she was rooted in gospel. Then later on, I discovered singers like Clara Ward, Harry Jackson and people like Donny Hathaway and Ray Charles who also started in the church. I was very enamoured with the sound and I’ve always wanted to scale my music that way as well.

AND DEREK, YOU’RE A HUGE FAN OF INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC?

DEREK: I got turned on to Ali Akbar Khan and Nikhil Banerjee when I was maybe 14 or 15. I really fell in love with the history and music and really the dedication and devotion as much as everything. A lot of the music is passed down multiple generations, hundreds of years in a family and there’s something pretty amazing about a melody that’s been passed down 600 years and still being performed. Music is truly universal that way, a great melody is a great melody. It amazed me early on that you could play some of these melodies for people on the other side of the world with completely different mind-sets and it’s just as moving to them. That kind of opened up a lot of doors for me in the sense that you can find your inspiration anywhere.

CAN YOU PLAY ANY INDIAN CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS?

DEREK: I played sarod a little bit. It’s a pretty complex instrument to tune but once you get it into tune it’s an amazing sounding instrument and an amazing instrument to play but it really does take up a lot of time and energy so when I get away from it for a while it’s hard to jump back in. It’s pretty unforgiving, it gets mad at you if you don’t spend enough time with it.

DO THESE DIVERSE MUSICAL INTERESTS ROUND OUT YOUR SOUND AS A BAND?

SUSAN: I think it does because there’s absolutely a little bit of every style of music that is represented within our band. You never know what will happen or where it will take you.

DEREK: Most of the players in the band come from a varied background, there are a lot of different influences and everybody has an appreciation for any real music. If it’s good it’s good.

SUSAN: It could be BB King, New Threat, or Miles Davis. They all relate on a lot of levels. It’s a really unique band that way. And they all enjoy different singers, especially the ones that I enjoy so they put up with me.

HOW DIFFERENT IS IT PLAYING WITH AN 11-PIECE BAND?

DEREK: It took a little while adapting from playing in small groups to an eleven-piece band and co-leading it. It took a while for everybody in the band’s sound to find a place. But we were looking at the big picture the whole time so if there was ever any musical frustration, you knew it was going to work out. You just had to be patient. Anything that’s work will take time. There was great chemistry out of the gate with the band. It took a few months for it to find its sea-legs and really get comfortable but once it did, the growth and evolution of the band really took off quickly.

HOW DO YOU FIND TIME TO WORK ON YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS?

SUSAN: The great thing is we feel like we can do a little bit of that within the band but just not on a full-scale level. I think we’ll get back to that in a couple of years maybe here and there. We’re trying to focus on one band at a time.

DEREK: To do something like this right you need to jump in with both feet, there’s no hedging your bets. You need to dig in and do it. It’s a great band and it really does take all your time and attention. There are a lot of personalities and music. We’re in the middle of making a record now and it’s really intense making sure that everything is sounding and feeling right, that everybody is on the same page and that everybody’s musically and personally fulfilled. It’s a big job. I was with my band for a long time so you certainly miss the people but I can’t imagine going backwards now. I think as an artist you need to keep shedding your skin and moving forward and you need to have a re-birth once in a while. I feel like with this project, we were able to accomplish that. It’s not an easy thing to do but once you get through that first portion, it’s a liberating thing.

SUSAN: With this band it’s such an amazing unique band because everybody wants to get in it. We all realize ‘wow, we all really love this band,’ and nobody wants to be in a different band or somewhere else. We’ve all been in many bands. We’ve been in everything from a car, a bus, a train or a plane to get to a gig and the one thing we’ve found out is that we all get along, we all have nice chemistry, and we all like the same stuff. We enjoy being together and playing together on the road.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A CLASH OF PERSONALITIES?

SUSAN: One thing people don’t realize is that we’re living together. There are 11 people in the band and there’s also the crew. There are at least 16 of us together all the same time. Everybody is an integral part of the puzzle and if one person’s out of whack, it affects everybody. So it’s a unique situation where there’s a lot of talent and there’s obviously people who can have egos but they don’t, they leave them at the door and if they don’t, they’ll hear about it because there are too many amazing musicians in the band with amazing attitudes and we all are just enjoying being a part of it. It’s really special. It’s not every day you get to play in a band. It’s not about who is leading or picking the songs. It’s about working together and making beautiful music on a daily basis and listening to each other and growing all the time.

HOW DO YOU MAKE TIME FOR FAMILY WITH ALL YOUR TOURING?

SUSAN: A lot of planning, a lot of family help and a lot of communicating. It’s not just 11 people in the band, there are 11 families. I’m very lucky to have Derek’s family and his mother is amazing. She comes out and helps us a lot on the road. It’s difficult but it’s a beautiful gift to have a lot of family.

DEREK: Yeah, we’re very fortunate. We have a house and studio on the property, my parents live right down the street and my brother and his family are eight doors down. It’s a small village. When we hit the road, my mum will move into the house so their routines don’t change which is nice. During the summer vacation, the kids jump on the bus with us. They are well-travelled. They know how to get around the tour bus and immediately pick out their bunks.

ARE YOUR CHILDREN PICKING UP MUSIC TOO?

DEREK: Yes, they’re starting to. My daughter is a natural showman so it wouldn’t surprise me, she’s always singing and writing songs and trying to play any instrument she can get her hands on. My son, I see the interest, he hasn’t jumped in full-fledge yet but it wouldn’t surprise me.

SUSAN: They’re both really big fans of music too so that’s nice. They both have their own tastes.

Timbre Rock & Roots is on March 21 and 22, 6.30pm at Fort Canning Green. Visit www.rockandroots.com.sg for more details.

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