TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND – LET ME GET BY
LINER NOTES
Welcome.
That’s how the music of Tedeschi Trucks Band makes me feel: welcomed. The needle lands on the record and their songs greet the ear with a warm handshake and a smile. The songs are familiar, and remain so, with a spirit that doesn’t seem to fade. Like the deep musical wellsprings from which the group draws inspiration—gospel, soul, blues—their songs carry messages of positivity and uplift, spiritual messages that matter, and don’t fade in significance. The music of TTB, like all music that is built to last, has something new to say on each listen.
That’s what I feel, and this is what I’ve come to know: TTB has been building that sound for five years now, since their first gig on April 1, 2010 at the Savannah Music Festival in Georgia, with the husband/wife, Gibson/Fender team of Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi co-leading what began as an eight-piece group. Let Me Get By is their third studio recording, the next step on a path of creative exploration, crafting a musical identity, and doing it on their own terms.
Words like independent, autonomous, and self-reliant are good ones to start with in describing the current TTB story. That is who they are and how they’ve progressed. In a time when the vast majority of musicians and music projects allow practical and economic considerations to limit creative impulse, TTB bucked the general trend from the outset, developing a road show that drew on the barnstorming, holy-roller kind of energy that only tightly knit bands filled with family and friends can deliver.
In many ways, TTB has become its own family—the eight-person lineup now features a dozen musicians who all perform and travel together, and increasingly contribute to their repertoire as well. They’ve found strength in numbers and the growth came naturally—new members were added if it made sense on a musical and personal level. Their music became wider and deeper as a result, more experiences to draw upon, more places to take the music at the drop of a dime. Performances became more open to surprise, with any member—frontline or back—able to step up and change the direction of the music. The horn section and the harmony singers have become cohesive, powerful voices in their own right, and more sophisticated arrangements are now a part of the group’s vocabulary. With the twin drums of J.J. Johnson and Tyler Greenwell, and the funky keyboard mastery of Kofi Burbridge, the rhythm section has evolved to a point of fearless agility; the addition of jazz bassist Tim Lefebvre (making his TTB studio debut on Let Me Get By) turned the heat up and opened up the possibilities another notch.
The spirit of independence and autonomy was made manifest in Swamp Raga, the recording studio Susan and Derek built behind their home in Jacksonville so they could create music at will. They favored analog technology from the start, finding a vintage Neve console and adding to their arsenal year by year: classic microphones, tube amplifiers, other gear. As the band and studio have progressed, so has the team; Bobby Tis, who has been on TTB’s road crew from the start of the group and whose father helped design Swamp Raga, is the band’s primary studio engineer, while Derek serves as a producer on all TTB recordings.
In 2014, TTB spent more than 200 days on the road—winning fans one at a time, gig by gig, as they always have. In the midst of that busy schedule was a weeklong run in New York City at the Beacon Theatre marking the final shows for the Allman Brothers Band and ending a 15-year chapter for Derek as a member of the band. That last show on October 29 with the ABB represented a major turn for Derek; for the first time in decades and since establishing his joint venture with Susan, he was looking at a duty roster that left him time to focus on TTB and nothing else.
As 2015 began, they began rehearsing the group for another tour—rehearsals that were open and jam-like and started generating the seeds for a new batch of songs. Riffs, lyrics and rhythmic ideas were developed. Some tunes were brought in by singer Mike Mattison, the band’s resident wordsmith and poet; some came from other band members. All became fully realized as part of TTB’s collaborative recording process. Derek produced the entire album, his first time taking the captain’s chair with TTB; on three songs he shared production and co-writing credit with guitarist and longtime collaborator Doyle Bramhall II. During the long months of recording and mixing, Derek and Bobby Tis devoted more studio time to Let Me Get By than any recording project before—another way that the home studio idea has paid off.
As 2015 progressed, TTB would record, write some more, hit the road, keep writing, return home and then record some more. Final mixing and sequencing was done by the end of summer; Let Me Get By was ready, with much to delight in.
There are TTB trademarks: easy-flowing song structures that, with unforced precision, build in energy, climax, and dissipate into improvisational sections—then build again. There’s Tedeschi’s soaring, spiritually charged vocals, and Trucks’s generous range of guitar tones, slide and picked, from back-alley, distorted rawness to sitar-like sinuousness. There’s a spotlight on Susan’s powerful guitar playing (check out her solo on “Don’t Know What It Means”) and on Mattison’s singing, marking his first lead vocals on a TTB album (“Crying Over You” and “Right On Time”). Another point of distinction are the songs themselves which achieve a comfortable balance of structure and pliant groove, helping to add more definition than ever to the musical identity of the TTB.
It’s been said that to truly know a group’s musical character, check out what they listen to. I’d like to know what music TTB plays on that bus of theirs. It’s not that hard to guess: Lots of R&B, classic blues and soul tracks: Bill Withers and B.B. King, maybe some Magic Sam and definitely Sly and the Family Stone. They’re still listening to Delaney and Bonnie and Derek & The Dominos, while checking out the more contemporary and the more exotic: Indian ragas, modal jazz, ‘60s garage rock.
It’s easy to list influences, drop names, and leave it at that, but consider this: while there are other bands whose collective playlists might match the depth and diversity of TTB’s, there’s only one group that synthesized all those sounds and came up with the music you are now hearing. Simply put, the music on Let Me Get By is as guilelessly transparent in its sources as it is fresh and original.
To ask Derek or Susan to explain how they’ve arrived at this point is to first hear how fortunate they are to lead a group filled with the talent and collective spirit of TTB. Susan relates that recently, backstage after concerts, she will turn to the rest of the band and say with faux innocence, “hey, thanks for letting me be in your band”—and how everyone would laugh. Derek says that the sincerity behind the humor has taken over. Now all band members greet each other with that same line.
-- Ashley Kahn
Ashley Kahn writes, teaches and speaks about roots and popular music. Most of all, he prefers to just listen.