Send "Tedeschi Trucks Band " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 People are hungry for a good song—a verse and a chorus you can count on, but with something different about it too. The same old pop formulas can wear you out after a while. The familiar and the surprising, in perfect balance: that’s a holy grail for any endeavor.Here’s another perfect balance: Susan Tedeschi, whose soulful voice can handle blues and ballads with equal, rich ease, and Derek Trucks, her husband and certainly the best slide guitar player on the scene. Both have been leading separate bands during the first ten years of their marriage. But now the couple has joined forces, writing together and melding their groups into a single, 11-piece all-star band. The first recording by the Tedeschi Trucks Band blends wonderful, natural performances with great songs. Ideal balance. Revelator is outstanding in the extreme. Just listen to how classic yet fresh is the song “Until You Remember”. From the opening horn chorale to the super-quiet slow-burn verse to the stately piano chords on the chorus, this is a song with a purpose. Tedeschi’s vocal is completely under control but also huge—open-throated, crying, proud. Trucks’ slide solo sounds utterly vocal, bending and moaning even more than Tedeschi. And as the two mix sounds on the out-chorus, well, it’s sublime. “Midnight in Harlem” rings like another classic. It starts off with a relaxed soul vamp, over which peeks just the sly grin of buzzing slide guitar, then a tasty organ lick. Nice. Techeschi’s rich cabernet voice kicks in. She handles the beautiful melody in such a cool, unrushed manner, owning it but never pushing to hard. More uptempo numbers also score. “Come See About Me” might suggest Motown, but it’s a rockin’ original with a swamp groove that percolates with clavinet, guitar and horns. The slide lick that links the tune together is irresistible, and the pulse set up by bassist Oteil Burbridge and twin drummers J.J. Johnson and Tyler Greenwell is rock solid. “Love Has Something Else to Say” rides above a super-syncopated Latin groove, with the horns interacting with the soulfully harmonized vocals. Everything is in place on Revelator. Kofi Burbridge’s keyboards are pitch-perfect in every small spot: a simple organ lick, a bed of Wurlitzer shimmer, the concert hall echo of acoustic piano. Background vocals around Tedeschi are sparingly used, but the duet elements of “Shelter” are a critical change of pace. Trucks never whips out his guitar prowess indulgently, instead choosing to serve every song, individually....full text |
| Allaboutjazz |
| The Derek Trucks Band has grown into a finely-tuned big band, adding the guitarist's wife, singer Susan Tedeschi, to the masthead and front lineup, resulting in a fresh sound that eschews every blues and soul cliché that could be feared from such an ambitious project. All of the principles bring with them a loam of experience that informs every molecule of this music. Guitarist/vocalist (and fellow Allman Brothers Band alum) Warren Haynes, on his Man In Motion (Stax, 2011), has basically done the same thing with less memorable results. All walk the path of The Butterfield Blues Band, Electric Flag, and Blood, Sweat and Tears, in beefing up their sound and musical firepower. Opening with the intricate and driving "Come See About Me," Revelator draws inspiration from the dual-drummer format of the Allman Brothers Band to lay down a layered thickness of rhythm and beat à la the late Richie Hayward, from Little Feat. Trucks contributes a slide guitar line, upon which Tedeschi paints on the soul, while the horn section fills in all of the blank spots, giving the performances great depth. Playing in an open tuning, Trucks demonstrates that only Sonny Landreth can play slide guitar comparably—but, while Landreth is technically near-perfect, he lacks the fire that Trucks consistently summons from the spirit of Duane Allman....full text |
| Thehurstreview |
| There are eleven musicians who play in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and if you don’t believe me, just look at their album cover; there they are, lined up and ready to be counted. I feel this is worth mentioning because, just by listening to the music, you wouldn’t necessarily think there were so many players in the ensemble. And I mean that as a very good thing. As the debut recording from this troupe, which consists of one knockout blues singer, one honorary Allman Brother and universally-heralded slide guitar deity, and nine supporting cast members, including two drummers and a horn section, this could well have turned into an album of interminable “jam band” tedium, or little more than an excuse for one indulgent solo after another. Imagine my surprise, and my delight, to find that, while the record is stacked with great performances, there really aren’t a lot of extended solos. There are simply a lot of great songs– the perfect foundation for this new unit, and, I hope, the first of many (official) joint outings for Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. If the emphasis on songs over jamming seems surprising, I should hasten to add that Revelator is not a sparse or close-to-the-bone affair, and has really nothing at all in common with the Gillian Welch album of the same name. That album is hauntingly spare. This one is thick, heady Dixie funk with hearty doses of gospel, blues, New Orleans line music, and Southern (Allman-esque, I suppose) rock. It is nothing if not generous, heavily saturated with authentic emotion and yes, fiery performances. It’s the first time the two principles– a husband/wife team who have guested on each other’s fine solo albums many times before– have ever released an album under the Tedeschi Trucks umbrella, and they invest a lot of passion and effort into making this a launching point for the band as a band; the chemistry of their playing and the high quality of the songs themselves are important. That said, the band members flesh out this sound without drawing attention to their own chops; it’s something of a platform for Tedeschi’s voice, but only because she’s really carrying the heart of these songs....full text |
Tedeschi Trucks Band lyrics
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