American Routes Shortcuts: Tedeschi Trucks Band

Published June 28, 2024 at 4:00 AM CDT

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band

Susan Tedeschi grew up outside of Boston in a family of grocery store owners. Derek Trucks was raised in Jacksonville, Florida, listening to the Allman Brothers, his uncle Butch Trucks’ band. Worlds apart, Susan and Derek each honed their chops at local jams and pursued musical careers destined to collide. Susan attended the Berklee School of Music, toured with the Dead, and released eight solo albums. Derek played guitar in a later lineup of the Allman Brothers for fifteen years and released ten albums under his own name. Now married with two kids, the solo musicians joined forces in 2010 to form the Tedeschi Trucks Band. I spoke to them in 2017.

Susan Tedeschi: In New Orleans, I was opening for the Allman Brothers with my solo band, and Derek had started with the Allman Brothers that June, and we met in July. So he’d been with the Allman Brothers about a month.

Derek Trucks: A veteran

ST: Yeah he was a baby, he was 19 or 20, and I was 28.

DT: She was cradle robbing.

ST: Hey!

Nick Spitzer: Well you know what they say, it’s not the age, it’s the mileage that counts. Sort of the opposite of cars.

[music]

ST: At first I was really nervous because he was watching my sound check, and I got really very intimidated by him. But he was very sweet, and he really liked a lot of great music, and he was very bright. I was actually kind of blown away by how mature he was for his age and how sweet he was.

DT: You know, I think a lot of people when they first see Susan are kind of struck by the difference between the way she looks and speaks and the way she sings and plays. It’s like, it’s this little package, and then she opens her mouth, and it’s kind of musically frightening. So I like that. Leading up to that point, I had just gotten out of a relationship. I was enjoying being on the road single, and I was like, “No way I’m jumping back in unless the person I meet listens to Howlin’ Wolf, Mahalia Jackson, Wayne Shorter.” I had this long, goofy, impossible list. But sometimes you step in it.

[music]

NS: So move us up a little bit to being on the road together, and well, I guess you got married before you put your bands together, is that right?
DT: We waited a long time before we decided to put a band together.

ST: Yeah 9 years. It might not have worked if we had done it sooner. I think we matured and also got a lot of our own solo stuff out of the way. You know, like getting out and doing your own thing for a while is good for you.

DT: I mean we were both in the thick of our solo bands when we met, and you know you get to a certain point where you feel like you’ve kind of said what you wanted to say, and maybe you want to maybe try something different, and that’s certainly where I was when we started talking about putting this group together.

[music]

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