Artist

Tedeschi Trucks Band

Jacksonville, United States · Formed 2010

Tedeschi Trucks Band is a music group from Jacksonville, United States, active since 2010. Their discography on Gatefold includes 15 records.

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Albums tracked

In collections

2010

Since

Biography

They cut the whole thing in Derek's backyard at Swamp Raga Studios because nobody in a boardroom was willing to bankroll an eleven-piece touring juggernaut in an era when acoustic duos were playing arenas. Derek hauled in a Studer tape machine and Jim Scott to engineer, balancing Susan Tedeschi's gritty, gospel-schooled pipes against a slide guitar rig that does not use a damn pick or pedals. It was a logistical nightmare: two drummers, a full horn section, and the Burbridge brothers holding down the engine room. Corporate A&R would have called it a financial death wish. Instead, it sounded massive right out of the gate. The trap with big-band rock outfits is that they usually turn into bloated, thirty-minute solo circles where everybody steps on each other's toes. TTB dodged that ditch by running the whole circus like a tight, Stax-era rhythm machine where the horns punch and get out of the way. Susan brings the raw soul power that keeps Derek's modal jazz wanderings grounded in dirt, while Derek plays slide like an Indian sarod player caught in a Mississippi juke joint. They had their lulls when the songwriting leaned too hard on familiar road-dog blues-rock tropes, but when they actually focus in the studio, they sound like a living, breathing freight train with zero studio polish to hide behind.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Tedeschi Trucks Band

The pivots — what forced Tedeschi Trucks Band to reinvent.

The Big Band Gamble
Merging two established solo touring acts into an eleven-piece outfit seemed like financial suicide in 2010. They locked into Swamp Raga Studios with engineer Jim Scott to cut 2011's Revelator, relying on the ferocious rhythm section of Oteil and Kofi Burbridge to anchor the sound. The tracks had actual discipline, reigning in the endless jam-band tendencies to showcase Susan's vocal grit alongside Derek's open-E slide playing. By the time they dropped Made Up Mind in 2013 with heavy-hitter session subs like Pino Palladino on bass, they had proved this bloated lineup was actually a razor-sharp southern soul machine.
Internal Engines and Analog Tape
Stepping away from major-label oversight, the band inked a deal with Fantasy Records and took complete creative ownership. With Doyle Bramhall II co-producing select cuts and bassist Tim Lefebvre locking down the low end, 2016's Let Me Get By marked their first record written entirely within the band's ranks. Singer Mike Mattison stepped forward on lead vocals, turning the project from a married duo into an authentic ensemble revue. Tracking straight to two-inch tape at their home studio, the songs dropped the slick edges and leaned hard into ragged, funky horn charts.
The Persian Poetry Epic
Stuck off the road during the pandemic lockdown, the band tackled an absurdly ambitious four-part concept album based on the 12th-century Persian poem Layla and Majnun. The 2022 I Am the Moon cycle—rolled out across Crescent, Ascension, The Fall, and Farewell—redefined how they wrote together, with keyboardist Gabe Dixon and new drummer Isaac Eady driving the rhythm section. Free from tour fatigue, they let Derek stretch his slide work into cosmic raga-rock while Susan and the backing vocalists traded multi-part harmonies. It was their boldest studio swing, trading tight four-minute blues tracks for expansive, cinematic arrangements.
Tightening the Screws
After the sprawling, cosmic four-part epic, the group deliberately slammed the brakes on long-form jam tracks to chase focused, radio-tight arrangements. They recruited producer Mike Elizondo for 2026's Future Soul, bringing an outsider's pop discipline into Swamp Raga alongside Trucks. Every track was kept strictly under five minutes, building on an acoustic-tinged foundation with sharper, modern soul hooks instead of ten-minute guitar workouts. It proved that underneath the virtuosic live-show muscle, the songwriting core could still land a clean, concise punch.

Influences

The Allman Brothers Band — Derek grew up on their tour bus and spent fifteen years holding down Duane Allman's dual-lead guitar slot onstage. That dual-drummer attack and modal blues interplay on tracks like 'Bound for Glory' comes directly from the Fillmore East blueprint. Nobody plays slide in open E with that kind of vocal cry without studying Duane down to the knuckle.
Mad Dogs & Englishmen (Joe Cocker & Leon Russell) — Leon Russell's massive touring revue was the explicit sonic template for building an unwieldy eleven-piece soul circus with a full horn section and three backing vocalists. You hear that chaotic, joyous southern gospel-rock shouting all over Revelator and Let Me Get By. Derek and Susan even recruited Russell himself to perform the entire Mad Dogs set live with them at LOCKN' in 2015.
Bonnie Raitt — Susan built her whole vocal and guitar delivery on Raitt's template of whiskey-soaked vocals matched with tasteful, stinging electric blues licks. The phrasing on ballads like 'Midnight in Harlem' mirrors Raitt's balance of unvarnished vulnerability and gritty R&B strut. Susan has repeatedly cited Raitt's early 1970s Warner Bros. run as the manual for how to front a band without screaming.
Sly and the Family Stone — The Burbridge brothers spent their entire lives treating Larry Graham's thumb-slapping funk and the Family Stone's interlocking grooves as scripture. That deep, unified brass-and-drum pocket driving the uptempo cuts on Made Up Mind relies entirely on Sly's late-sixties rhythmic blueprint. It turns what could be a sterile blues band into a kinetic, dancing funk ensemble.
Ali Akbar Khan — Derek spent years formally studying classical Indian music under master sarod player Ali Akbar Khan at his college of music in California. Instead of running standard blues licks, Derek's slide solos use Khan's microtonal vocal glides and modal raga scales to float over western chord changes. That distinct eastern tonality is what keeps the guitar solos from sounding like recycled delta blues cliches.