Derek Trucks Band "The Derek Trucks Band" (4.5*)

Hearing The Derek Trucks Band was recorded in 1996, when the leader was all of seventeen, you mightn't be expecting something this impressive but Derek had, by that time, been playing professionally and semi-professionally for six years. He'd had bassist Todd Smallie on board since '94, drummer Yonrico Scott since '95 and singer/keyboards player Bill McKay had been around for a while as well, so we're talking a debut recording by a seasoned outfit, regardless of the leader's relative youth.

Recorded around a year before the album's release in October 1997 the album certainly isn't lacking as far as aspiration is concerned. Out of a dozen tracks, eight might be original compositions but there are also a couple of fairly ambitious covers in the form of John Coltrane's Mr. P.C. and Naima, Miles Davis' So What and Wayne Shorter's Footprints.

Thirty-five seconds of Sarod (Trucks playing the Indian instrument) leads straight into a blistering, turn on a pin reading of Mr. P.C. that’ll be familiar territory to anyone familiar with Derek’s later work. Suffice it to say he had his chops more or less down back this far and has spent the intervening period honing and polishing. Gary Gazaway contributes a horn part to 555 Lake that punctuates a warm vocal (in fact the album’s only vocal) from Bill McKay and there’s some fine ensemble playing on D Minor Blues and #6 Dance.

Things get ambitious with the covers of Footprints, Naima and So What with the group composition Out of Madness (Scott/Smallie/Trucks) thrown in between the first two to break things up and, impressively those ambitious covers come across as pretty much of a piece with what had preceded them, as well as the Evil Clown and Egg 15 that follow. Forty-one seconds of Sarod Outro brings a rather remarkable debut to a close.

Whether or not Derek Trucks is (as has been hypothesised by, among others Gregg Allman) the reincarnation of Duane Allman there’s no doubt he was, right from the very earliest stages of his career, ploughing a row very similar to the one Duane might well have chosen himself, aided by a flawless rhythm section capable of turn on a pinhead precision. Given the time lapse since the album came out, and given exposure to subsequent work, your jaw mightn’t drop quite as far as it would have if you’d heard this back in the day, but it’s a classic recording that’s thoroughly worth investigating.

Tedeschi Trucks Band "Everybody's Talkin'

Half way through the opening Everybody’s Talkin’ someone unfamiliar with Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and the Tedeschi Trucks Band might be wondering what all the fuss is about. Their debut album Revelator had taken out the 2012 Grammy for Best Blues Album, which says something, and was described as a masterpiece in Rolling Stone, which doesn’t exactly have the critical clout it once enjoyed.

So what’s all the fuss about?

If that’s the reaction, and you’re thinking the Nilsson cover’s a routine workout through a song that hasn’t quite been done to death but isn’t far away from that status, if you haven’t reached the tasty solo from Mr Trucks that kicks in around the three minute mark, shuffle forward to the Swamp Raga intro to Midnight in Harlem, and things become much clearer.

Let things run through to the end of the trademark Trucks solo that concludes the number and you may well be convinced, if not, leave things in place into the growling guitar intro and blasts from the three-piece brass section that kick off Learn How to Love and we’re just about in I rest my case territory.

You might think that’s a little extravagant, and when you’re talking an eleven-piece touring outfit musical extravaganzas are definitely on the cards, but when you start with Derek Trucks, one of the best slide guitarists going around, and throw in his missus, Grammy-winner in her own right Susan Tedeschi, you’re probably guaranteed something reasonably classy from the word go.

Just how classy (assuming Midnight in Harlem hasn’t blown you away) becomes obvious as Learn How to Love veers off into an instrumental break that has both guitars firing off each other, riffing in with Oteil Burbridge’s bass lines and punctuated by that brass section and...

There’s plenty of light and shade possible with all those elements, and as Bound for Glory kicks off I’m reminded of the old adage about what you leave out being as important as what you actually play. Around the four minute mark everybody else drops out as the Burbridge brothers step to the fore. Kofi on keys, Oteil on bass with the rest of the band gradually sneaking back in over the next couple of minutes. 6:30 in and there’s a swell of acknowledgement from the crowd that leads into a Derek Trucks solo that builds past the nine minute mark before his missus is back with the vocal line, Mike Mattison and Mark Rivers harmonising in the background, and there’s still close to three minutes to go. That’s enough time for Mr Trucks to sneak back in for another little shredding solo before the track reaches a triumphal conclusion.

So we’re not talking the old three or four minute routine here, folks. Everybody's Talkin' runs to five and a half, Midnight In Harlem a tad after ten and a half, Learn How to Love about a minute shorter, and close to thirteen for Bound For Glory.

Even the shortest track, an interesting reading of the old Muddy Waters Rollin' and Tumblin' clocks in just under five. Around ten and a half minutes of Nobody's Free gives Susan Tedeschi a chance to give an impressive set of pipes a thorough working over, as does Darling Be Home Soon. Until I heard this reading I didn’t realise it was a case of not being able to wait an extra minute if you dawdled and waiting since you toddled/For the great relief of having you to talk to.

That’s enunciation alongside soul, folks. Going back to the Lovin’ Spoonful original and the Joe Cocker cover and you realise, yes, it is dawdled and toddled and scratch your head wondering why you didn’t notice that before.

There’s not much question about the lie of the land in the band’s cover of Bobby Bland’s That Did It either, as Susan lays down the law. She did a great take on this one during the Allman Brothers’ Beacon run in 2011 and it has become a TTB staple as well. Take a listen and it’s obvious why that has happened.

From there we’ve got a fifteen and a half minute romp through Stevie Wonder’s Uptight, and eleven minutes of Revelator’s Love Has Something Else To Say, with Bill Withers’ Kissing My Love inserted before Wade in the Water concludes proceedings.

Those track times indicate plenty of jam-style interaction, but the thing that stands out (at least it does to this listener) is the understatement and taste that goes into the soloing and as someone hits the spotlight the rest of the band slots in totally simpatico. Classy stuff.

If you’re familiar with his playing, of course, you might be looking for a bit more Derek action, but this is an outfit that has been carefully put together with attention to detail, room for the individuals and egos are definitely parked outside the door on the way in.

As it is, there’s a generous helping of Derek, but where he had to carry most of the spotlight in the old five or six piece Derek Trucks Band, this time around he has a more than capable second guitar foil in the shape of Susan, additional light and shade in the shape of Kofi Burbridge’s keys and flute, a mighty fine horn section, a rhythm section that really cooks (well, you’d expect that with Oteil Burbridge on bass and a two man drumming department), a fine singer, two classy backing vocalists and Oteil to take the odd turn at the microphone.

When you look at it that way, there’s not going to be the same guitar dominance we came to expect through the old DTB era, but get that line up on stage and cooking and the result, as anyone who has seen the Tedeschi Trucks Band live will know, is a rich mix of musical influences, given room to interact as an ensemble of fine musicians interact.

The attention to detail that’s evident throughout extends to the recording process. Where other outfits might have been happy to record one or two shows and cull from there to get their album, Derek (in this interview) reveals they started by carrying our own console along and getting an extra trailer with a couple guys to run it, recording a round dozen shoes and ended up using three of the shows pretty evenly, three or four tunes from each. And then we spent time listening and mixing to be sure it felt seamless from track to track.

The result is, arguably, the best live recording I’ve heard since, well, the Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore East or The Band's Rock of Ages, a big band tour de force heavy on electric delta blues with side trips into the realms of funk, gospel, jazz and world music.

A definite five stars, and a hard act to follow, but if anyone’s going to manage it, this is the outfit to do so.

Tedeschi Trucks Band Enmore Theatre Sydney 21 April 2011

I guess there are plenty of couples facing down the old problem of dual careers and a growing family, and there are all sorts of workarounds to tackle the issue, but when the dual careers involve reasonably high profile musicians with existing and more or less separate careers the logical solution is to find a way to merge them.

That mightn't have been the actual starting point that led to the formation of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, but I suspect that it was there lurking under the surface as things sorted themselves out. After all it's not as if Derek Trucks doesn't have one eye on the future.

Other people would probably have used the money differently, but Derek put his earnings from two years on the road with Eric Clapton's touring band into the construction of Swamp Raga Studios in the back yard of his Jacksonville home, and while 2009's Already Free was recorded there, one album every couple of years probably doesn't rate as a reasonable return on investment unless you see it as part of a substantial learning curve an artist can afford to indulge himself in.

Trucks is on record as saying that he's learning the tricks of the studio as he goes along, so while the need to combine separate careers mightn't have been the starting point, it may well have been a case of discovering that, Hey, this works pretty well as a couple of tracks were being laid down.

From the initial decision to combine the talents of two artists who are significant attractions in their own rights, of course, the problem is one of differentiating the new lineup from the previous configurations of two separate bands. For a while there it seemed like things were working from a try it and see combination of the old Derek Trucks Band and the former Susan Tedeschi Band, but eventually things had to settle down.

A look at the new look Tedeschi Trucks Band reveals two survivors from the former DTB (keys/flute wiz Kofi Burbridge and vocalist Mike Mattison) and one member of the STB (drummer Tyler Greenwell) along with a couple of not exactly surprising enlistments.

The chief of those is bassist Oteil Burbridge, who, apart from providing a strongly grooved anchor provides a visual counterpoint to the invariably undemonstrative Derek Trucks.

With the lineup sorted it becomes a matter of repertoire, and here again the obvious approach would be to take a bit from here, a bit from there and glue the disparate elements together with some newer material, the sort of thing you could work up as you go along.

That's not, however, the way things have gone here. While there are a couple of covers, notably the old Leon Russell/Joe Cocker Space Captain, which I've personally found almost invariably underwhelming and Sing A Simple Song (which worked a treat for Sly & The Family Stone, roared along nicely for Jeff St John and roared along wonderfully here) most of the rest of the set was new, presumably purpose created material, the best of which was the Mike Mattison penned Midnight In Harlem.

The release of Revelator, the first Tedeschi Trucks Band studio album would clarify a few minor matters like song titles through the rest of the set, but from the opening Bound For Glory, everything thundered through just fine, with repeated solos from Mr Trucks producing roars of approval from a crowd who were, presumably, there with a reasonable expectation of what they were likely to get.

And if they weren't there for Derek and Susan, they'd have had high expectations of the opening set from Robert Randolph & The Family Band, who would, more than likely, have stolen the show from any act short of potential superstar status.

If you'd gone straight from Live at the Wetlands to last year's We Walk This Road you might well have suspected that those long passages of high intensity sacred steel virtuously had been relegated to the background, but that approach to things probably has limited appeal as a commercial recorded proposition anyway.

If you want that lengthy high intensity instrumental thing, of course, once you've got Wetlands you possibly don't need too much more, and if you do there are plenty of live recordings over there at archive.org, so there's a definite need to do something different with the studio recordings, which have turned out doing a pretty good job of slotting Randolph into the evolving tradition of Afro-American music.

 In the live setting the opening We Walk This Road, complete with growled Blind Willie Johnson lead in (I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing normally, but in this setting it really works) led off towards the desired direction, maybe not for as long as you'd have preferred but the intensity was there.

The March and Ted's Jam both got airings as the Family Band went through their paces at a thunderous roar.

Which brings me to the one major disappointment of the night, and it affected both bands.

Now when you go to a Robert Randolph or Derek Trucks show, you're almost invariably there for extended high volume guitar workouts, but you do like to hear a bit of light and shade, and you do like to be able to discern what's going on vocally.

Maybe it was the venue, possibly it was my seat in the upper tier, but whatever it was the vocals were more than a tad on the muddy side, which wasn't such a problem during the numbers but definitely became an issue when spoken patter between songs came into play.

But, in the long run, it's about the music rather than the patter, and while the vocals could have been clearer the instrumental work through both sets was quite sublime. It's a high volume, high intensity sublimity, particularly when Derek cuts loose with those swathes of sheeting squalling slide soundaramas that are his trademark, but each and every solo brought roars of approval from a crowd obviously enjoying what they were actually there for.

As for the rest of the band, Susan Tedeschi makes a fine visual focus at the front, that semi-demure school librarian appearance contrasting nicely with a vocal intensity that would have satisfied most Janis Joplin fans.

But where, in Joplin's case, there was a tendency to screech when she headed for the heights, Susan's voice is smoothly melismatic as she heads for the upper register, and, as stated, the intensity when she really gets into it, as she did on That Did It (at least I think it was That Did It, based on a single hearing during the Allman Brothers' Beacon Theatre run last month) contrasts nicely with the librarian next door appearance.

Oteil Burbridge pinned things down nicely on the bass, contributed a vocal on Manic Depression and delivered a visual counterpoint on stage left, while brother Kofi's keyboard contributions, largely delivered from the darkness on the edge of stage left, contributed light and shade, filling in any holes in the sonic spectrum.

Throw in some interesting percussive interplay between drummers Tyler Greenwell and J.J. Johnson and the vocal harmonies from Mike Mattison and Mark Rivers and you’ve got a combo with plenty of sonic variables to play around with. It’s early days yet, but I’m sure there’s a lot to be revealed as things knit together in an outfit that’s stunningly good already and is only going to get better.

Suggestions that Robert Randolph would be joining the band come encore time failed to materialise, though that may have been due to an unannounced or unexpected visit from Warren Haynes, also in the country for Bluesfest, who came out to contribute to an energetic reading of the old Delaney & Bonnie Comin' Home.

With Revelator out in early June, I’m looking forward to further revelations...

Tedeschi Trucks Band "Revelator" (5*)

Tedeschi Trucks Band "Revelator" (5*)

I'm well and truly past the stage where I expect to have my mind blown by someone's latest release, so if my reaction to this very classy debut by a great band seems somewhat restrained don't let that fool you.

As is the case with Robert Randolph, there's a slight issue when a guitar-slinger noted for extended high intensity soloing hits the studio, and those looking for the trademark Trucks shredding exercise may well be disappointed here. The solos are there, of course, but they're carefully melded into a mix that shares the spotlight around. Understandable when you've got a vocalist of the calibre of Susan Tedeschi, and it's not as if the rest of the outfit lack class.

The result is, in many ways, rather similar to a really good bottle of red wine, and organic red wine at that. The album definitely feels like something that's been very carefully put together with attention to light and shade so there's always something interesting going on.

Kicking off with Come See About Me (no, not the Holland Dozier Holland hit for The Supremes) the dozen collaboratively-written tracks (thirteen if you opt for the iTunes version) deliver a succession of grooves that will form a pretty good platform for expansion in the live setting.

Highlights? Well, start with Midnight in Harlem and Bound For Glory, the horns at the start of Until You Remember reminded me of Allen Toussaint's horn arrangements for The Band's Rock of Ages, and the hidden track tucked in after Shelter's pretty tasty, but the best summary of the album comes in the video take on Learn How To Love, with the band in action in Swamp Raga Studios. A collective effort that's been carefully assembled by a highly talented outfit who look to be having plenty of fun doing it.
Needless to say I'll be looking forward to the next one.