Beyond contact band how to#
Beyond contact band series#

“I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” Tedeschi said, “but that’s kind of the fun of it. “There’s not many corners I can turn in the Beacon where some image doesn’t come to mind of important moments in my life - and lately, a lot of times that’s with people that aren’t here anymore, so you feel those ghosts.”Įxtended stays in one city (the band also does annual shows at the Chicago Theater) often lead to surprise guests or unexpected song choices. “Every one of those dressing rooms I have memories in, whether it’s our son, Charlie, being there when he was 10 or 12 days old or introducing Gregg and Butch to our kids,” he added, referring to Allman and his uncle. “The Beacon is home turf in a lot of ways, but it’s always a little bit intimidating because there’s so much history there,” Trucks said. I think it was a healing thing for all of us.”īringing the “I Am the Moon” material and this re-energized attitude to the Beacon residency comes with both excitement and a certain degree of pressure. “It made us incredibly thankful for our band, and for each other and our kids, but at the same time, it made you see the weaknesses and the strengths, and start working on the things that you have to work on. “It actually made us stronger, and made us better listeners to each other,” Tedeschi said.

Tesechi and Trucks agreed that diving into the themes of “Layla and Majnun” had an impact beyond the music, forcing them to think harder about their own marriage and relationships.

Beyond contact band how to#

At first, we didn’t quite know how to do it, but it took it on its own logic and started fueling itself.” “That’s kind of been the rap on our group,” Mattison said, “that we’re a great touring band and a great live band and when it comes time to do an album, we kind of go, ‘Oh, what are we going to do?’ The creative part, generating songs and things, has always kind of been an afterthought, but this time it was really intentional. There’s often been a sense, though, that the band’s recordings haven’t matched what they’re capable of onstage. And the way Susan’s voice slices through the huge sound of the band and just soars is unreal.” Everyone appreciates what everyone else is doing and it’s obvious. “It’s that magical space above the norm that only can exist when one is open to a true musical exchange onstage. “Susan and Derek both always seem to go to the place you want to go when playing music, and the whole band is with them at every step,” Norah Jones wrote in an email. The couple were married in 2001 and, after touring together as the Soul Stew Revival, they merged their groups into Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2010. She has six Grammy nominations of her own, and as a solo act, opened for the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Tedeschi, 51, came up in Boston as more of a straight-ahead blues player. The final installment, subtitled “Farewell,” came out earlier this month, along with a boxed set that encompasses the entire project.

Beyond contact band series#

But as the lockdown dragged on, the exercise unleashed a wild creative outburst, eventually leading to 24 new songs, which were released over the summer as a series of four albums titled “I Am the Moon,” each with its own companion film. The group, which blends Americana, roots- and blues-rock, had never used this kind of writing prompt, never tried to write in such a directed fashion.

Clapton likened the epic narrative to his own infatuation with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison. The text he proposed was the 12th century Persian poem “Layla and Majnun,” which gave the beloved album its title and central theme of unrequited love. When the pandemic struck seven months later, the 12 members of the hard-touring Tedeschi Trucks Band were scattered and stuck at home for an indefinite future, so the guitarist and vocalist Mike Mattison suggested they all read something together and see what ideas or inspiration it might spark.

Susan Tedeschi, meanwhile, was born on the very day the album was released. The record is particularly meaningful to the married couple at the heart of Tedeschi Trucks: Derek Trucks (whose name was inspired by the Dominos) had played much of the material as a member of Clapton’s touring band the second lead guitarist on the recordings was Duane Allman, founder of the Allman Brothers Band, in which Trucks played for 15 years with his uncle, Butch, on drums. In August 2019, Tedeschi Trucks Band performed “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” - the 1970 double album by Eric Clapton’s group Derek and the Dominos - in its entirety at the Lockn’ Festival in Virginia.