Tedeschi Trucks Band Delivers Love and Hope in Trying Times

It seemed fitting that, at the 2015 LOCKN’ Festival, The Tedeschi Trucks Band performed a tribute to Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the film and double album that chronicled the legendary but hot mess of a tour fronted by Joe Cocker with a band assembled and led by Leon Russell.  (That they managed to recruit Russell himself to reprise his central role is telling as well.)  Fitting because the Tedeschi Trucks Band is the 21st -century equivalent of that large ensemble traveling the country while mixing blues, soul, funk, and gospel into a well-seasoned rock-and-roll stew.

The spirit of that experience informed the sessions for Signs, their fourth — and so far best — studio album. Recorded again at Swamp Raga, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi’s home studio, and produced and mixed by Trucks, Jim Scott, and Bobby Tis, Signs finds the 75 members of TTB (OK, there are “only” 12 of them) all pitching in on the songwriting and arranging, with contributions from Warren Haynes, Doyle Bramhall II, and Oliver Wood. That group effort is apparent on the ebullient yet cautionary opener, “Signs, High Times,” with Tedeschi trading lines with vocalists Mike Mattison, Alecia Chakour, and Mark Rivers, underscoring the sense of family and unity that remains present throughout the album.

Though it was recorded straight to two-inch analog tape on a ’70s-era Studer tape machine, the sound of Signs is not so much retro as it is timeless.  Where some groups wear their influences on their collective sleeve, TTB has them entrenched in their DNA and traveling through their bloodstream.  The music feels lived-in, sweated-over, and experienced, not written-by-committee and focus-group-tested and then heartlessly performed.  Every note here rings true with the pure love and joy of making music. Signs consistently sounds like a celebration of life by a group that never takes the gift of playing music for a living for granted.

Consider “I’m Gonna Be There,” where lyrics of devotion are set atop smooth funk-lite Stax-era Staple Singers R&B with strings that beautifully swell to introduce the reassurance of the chorus. Trucks’ masterful slide slinks its way around the song’s extended coda with building intensity, recalling his work with the Allman Brothers Band. Similar ground is covered in the storm-weathering, against-all-odds Allen Toussaint-style soul of “Walk Through This Life,” punctuated by the horns of Kebbi Williams, Eprhraim Owens, and Elizabeth Lea.

The Allmans are conjured once again with the “Whipping Post”-like   groove that drives the powerful “Shame,” a song that touches on the current state of division in America, and how the allowance of such toxicity is affecting our relationships with family, friends, and co-workers. A plea for unity and healing underscores “All the World,” where in a darkest-hour-before-dawn reminder Tedeschi warns, “everything must burn before hope can live again.”

Though there are these moments of concern and worry over the state of our union on Signs, there are still many reasons to rejoice. “Hard Case” recalls the vibrant sun-soaked communal country-rock halcyon days of Delany & Bonnie Bramlett, while “They Don’t Shine” is another anthem of love — holding on to those that mean the most while the world may crash and burn around you.

While Trucks’ command of his trusty Gibson SG is undeniable and deservedly praised, not enough is written or said about Susan Tedeschi’s blues-drenched vocals. Throughout Signs, the arrangements emphasize the groove, allowing Tedeschi’s naturally impeccable phrasing to slide and dance around the meter, bending it to her every whim, able to make any song sound like church.

Signs closes with “The Ending.” Written specifically for TTB mentor Col. Bruce Hampton (Ret.), who died on stage during a celebration of his 70th birthday surrounded by Derek and Susan, members of his Aquarium Rescue Unit, and many other friends and fellow musicians, the song can’t help but be haunted by the presence of all those in the Tedeschi Trucks Band orbit no longer with us: Gregg Allman and (Derek’s uncle) Butch Trucks from the ABB camp, as well as Leon Russell and longtime Trucks champion B.B. King. Their presence is felt not only on “The Ending,” but throughout Signs, passing the torch to a band that will keep it burning bright.