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Guitarist, singer, and songwriter
Susan Tedeschi is part of the new generation of blues musicians looking for ways to keep the form exciting, vital, and evolving.
Tedeschi's live shows are by no means straight-ahead urban blues. Instead, she freely mixes classic R&B, blues, and her own gospel and blues-flavored originals into her sets. She's a young, sassy blues belter with musical sensibilities that belie her years.
Tedeschi began singing when she was four and already active in local choir and theater in Norwell, a southern suburb of Boston. At 13, she began singing with local bands and continued her studies at the Berklee College of Music, honing her guitar skills and also joining the Reverence Gospel Ensemble. She started the first incarnation of her blues band upon graduating in 1991, with vocalist/guitarist
Adrienne Hayes, a fellow blues enthusiast whom she met at the House of Blues in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bonnie Raitt,
Janis Joplin, and Boston-area singer
Toni Lynn Washington were
Tedeschi's most important influences; in starting her band, in fact, she used
Washington's backing band and hustled up gigs on nights when
Washington and her band were not already booked. Since they began performing around Boston's fertile blues scene,
Tedeschi and her band developed into a tightly knit, road-ready group, and have played several major blues festivals. Guitarist
Sean Costello has since replaced original guitarist and co-vocalist
Hayes, who left the group to pursue her own musical interests.
The Susan Tedeschi Band's first album,
Just Won't Burn, was released on the Boston-based Tone-Cool Records in early 1998. The band for her debut on Tone-Cool includes guitarist
Costello, bassist
Jim Lamond, and drummer
Tom Hambridge; guitarist
Hayes also contributes.
Just Won't Burn is a powerful collection of originals, plus a sparkling cover of
John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery."
Tedeschi and band also do justice to a tune
Ruth Brown popularized, "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean," and
Junior Wells' "Little by Little." The appropriately titled
Wait for Me appeared in 2002 and was followed two years later by the CD and DVD Live from Austin TX. 2005's
Hope and Desire found
Tedeschi on the Verve Forecast label; it was followed up by the stellar
Back to the River. In a desire to spend more time with her husband
Derek Trucks (who led his own group and was a guitarist with the
Allman Brothers Band) and their children, the pair formed the soul-blues group the
Tedeschi-Trucks Band, an 11-piece ensemble that also included brothers
Oteil and
Kofi Burbridge on bass and keyboards, respectively, and drummers
Tyler Greenwell and J.J. Johnson. The unit signed to Sony's Masterworks imprint and released their debut album,
Revelator in June of of 2011. ~ Richard Skelly