You’ve heard them each call into WTOP separately with Derek Trucks in 2020 and Susan Tedeschi in 2022.
Now, the husband-and-wife blues rockers join us together as Tedeschi Trucks Band rolls into Warner Theatre in D.C. this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, followed by the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore on Saturday.
“We get along, so it’s fun to do interviews together,” Trucks told WTOP. “Every tour with this band you add material, you’re always writing material. The last few years we had four records come out at once, so there’s a pile of new stuff that we’re always incorporating. We’ve been at it so long that now we look back and realize that some of the best songs we’ve written as a band we haven’t played in five or 10 years, so there’s a lot to re-dredge up.”
They’re both still amazed by each other’s musicianship, gushing with mutual compliments.
“Some people just have a thing,” Trucks said. “Sue has a world-class voice and she plays guitar fearlessly. There’s not many people that sound like that. The one-two punch is especially unique — I’m working on one punch!”
“Oh, stop,” Tedeschi said. “Derek’s an incredible musician. Everybody knows him as this incredible guitar player, which he is, he’s one of the best in the world, but he’s actually an amazing bandleader and he’s really good at wrangling 12 musicians, which is insane, it’s like a bunch of kids. Honestly, he’s the one that will sit down and put together a set list, then we’ll look at it together, but he knows how to run this band. He’s incredible.”
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1979, Trucks grew up as the nephew of Butch Trucks of The Allman Brothers and quickly became renowned in his own right as a child prodigy shredding with the best guitarists in the world.
“I started traveling and playing around nine years old,” Trucks said. “I was just lucky to be around musicians who were open, they’d have me on stage, play a few songs a night, take you on the road, then the next thing you know you’re doing it … The Derek Trucks Band we put together when I was 14, doing 200-300 shows a year for a while, ended up joining the Allman Brothers while I was doing that, then we put this band together. It’s been a wild ride.”
He was named after Eric Clapton’s band Derek and the Dominoes, which released “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” on Nov. 9, 1970, the exact same day that Tedeschi was born in Boston. She would go on to become a blues-rock icon with infectious hits like “It Hurt So Bad” (1998) and a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 2000.
“It wasn’t really until after I graduated college that I really got into the blues and started sitting in at blues jams,” Tedeschi said. “I did the Battle of the Blues Bands at Harpers Ferry and because I won second place I actually got to go down to Jacksonville and play our first $10,000 festival, which was a big deal. … Then years later I met my husband, so we were just really lucky to fall in on the scene right at the right time. Blues was making a resurgence.”
They both remember hearing about each other’s talent before they actually met.
“When I was single, me and my bass player were trying to take these ladies out and all they could talk about was this girl they saw play last night, Susan Tedeschi,” Trucks said.
“I actually had a friend who was an incredible guitar player and he said, ‘The best living guitar player, we’ve gotta go see him, it’s Derek Trucks,'” Tedeschi said.
They finally met when Tedeschi’s band Double Trouble (carrying on the legacy of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan) went on tour as the opening act of The Allman Brothers, which Trucks had just joined as a family group.
“We really met on the road, which was incredible, I got to watch her perform every night,” Trucks said. “They wouldn’t let Sue come hang on the bus, she was forbidden to come hang out with me on the Gregg (Allman) bus, so I had to court her band. They were like, ‘He can come hang out for a little bit.’ It was a different kind of courtship.”
They got married in 2001 and formed their first band together called Soul Stew Revival in 2008. They soon rebranded as Tedeschi Trucks in 2010 to win the Grammy Award for Best Blues Album with “Revelator.”
“We did everything out of order,” Trucks said. “We got a house, got pregnant, then got married, then 10 years into a marriage we were like, ‘I think we could probably do a band.'”
During the interview, they fist-bumped to celebrate a quarter century together.
“We’ve been able to stick it out together for 23 years here,” Tedeschi said.
“Twenty five years on the road together is serious business,” Trucks said.
“That’s like 100 years for most couples,’ Tedeschi said.
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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