Music and motherhood
Blues rocker brings her smoky gospel pipes to Paramount Theatre
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Susan Tedeschi Submitted photo |
Toolbox
By JENNIFER BILL Rutland Herald Staff - Published: June 26, 2009
It’s a wonder Susan Tedeschi still has time to ponder physics equations.
The blues-rock singer/guitarist, riding the wave of her 2008 album, “Back to the River,” on a tour that casts her as far as Europe and takes her to the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday, certainly has her hands full.
Through balancing her touring schedule with her husband’s — guitar prodigy Derek Trucks, who is on the road with his own namesake band as well as southern rock heavyweights The Allman Brothers Band — and juggling life with their two young children, Tedeschi basks in her busyness and still finds time to write music, play for the president of the United States, study snakes and spiders with her kids, and read one book a week.
“Things are excellent, a little busy, well I always seem to be busy,” Tedeschi, sounding surprisingly calm and collected, laughs, going on to chronicle a jammed month that spoke of very few days free.
“With my band we’ve been out mostly working weekends the last couple months. We started on tour June 17, playing the New England area.
“If anything I feel like I am 20 years old again.”
Tedeschi, on the line this week from Portland, Maine, where she was playing a show, was looking forward to her two kids, Charlie, 7, and Sophia, 4, flying in that day to spend the week. Trucks — who plays the Paramount Theatre with his band on Nov. 6 — was at home with the kids for Father’s Day, and is now out on tour.
“With two kids, keeping up with their schedule, and my husband’s and mine, is a little insane, but we seem to be pulling it off,” she said.
After hitting the Montreal and Toronto jazz festivals in July, she is home for a couple of days, leaving for Europe on July 8. Then her daughter starts kindergarten and her son starts second grade.
So how does she do it?
“The key is just trying to stay healthy, eat right, get enough sleep, and organize communication between Derek’s management and mine.”
She says the couple could never do it without the support of their families. Trucks’ family — her mother-in-law is their children’s nanny — lives nearby and is “much a part of their everyday lives.”
The Boston-born Tedeschi has become known for her commanding voice, with its smoky rasp, one that conjures up Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt.
“I’m very influenced by the blues and a lot of American roots music,” said Tedeschi, going on to list Bob Dylan, The Band, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin as early influences. “And gospel, soul, R&B. I am heavily rooted in blues guitar, with a gospel singing style, with a British rock influence, mixed with soul and R&B artists.
“I take a grassroots songwriting approach like the grassroots folk artists. I try to make a lot of my material more universal, environmentally and politically aware.”
One of the benefits of sharing a life with another successful musician is welcoming opportunities to play and establishing relationships with other musicians, blessedly, she says, some of her own influences, through both of their contacts.
Trucks, 30, who began touring with the Allman Brothers around age 12 and was the youngest player to be listed on Rolling Stone’s prestigious 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, on which he remains, is continually playing with many guitarists also on the list. He played guitar with No. 4, Eric Clapton, on his 2006-07 tour, and the list goes on and on.
The opportunities to open on tour for the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and The Allman Brothers Band, when she met Trucks, and play with the best of the best is one of life’s great thrills, she said.
“I’m thankful for a lot of the things I’ve seen and done,” Tedeschi said. “I’m living in a dream, with the best of both worlds, playing with so many of my idols, and I go on experiences that I never could dream up. To tour with B.B. King and Buddy Guy and the Rolling Stones, and to be with my husband when he’s out with Eric Clapton … you have to pinch yourself.
“And the Inaugural Ball for Barack Obama, what an incredible time. I’m so blessed.”
A highlight as of late was a gig singing with blues legend Buddy Guy at the White House for the senior advisory committee, the cabinet — unfortunately, she said, minus Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was tending to a broken elbow — and the man himself.
The three-time Grammy nominated songstress, who has played with a variety of musicians since her first album’s release a decade ago, is currently playing with a band of six.
“This band is on fire and they’ve been making me play better, challenging myself as a guitarist,” said Tedeschi, 38, adding with the amount they have been writing together, a new record is definitely on the horizon.
A singer since the age of 6, Tedeschi said she was playing clubs and festivals 25 years ago but she really only surfaced under the public eye a decade ago, with the birth of her debut album,“Just Won’t Burn” in 1998.
“That’s when things took off. (Suddenly) I had all these amazing opportunities.”
One such opportunity was being nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy alongside a motley crew: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Macy Gray and Kid Rock. But she wouldn’t trade the ability to remain somewhat under the wire for anything.
“It was a weird mix of people and all of them are super famous now,” she mused. “(But) some people think it’s fame that you want, but no, you don’t want people in your business, all up in your face. I feel blessed because I get to have a private family life, even with my husband in the spotlight.”
Tedeschi describes a modest home in Jacksonville, Fla. – where Trucks grew up — for the rock ’n’ roll couple, and a lifestyle she calls “normal.” Most significantly she paints a close and connected home life for her young kids, albeit with some pretty incredible rock ’n’ roll moments sprinkled in.
“We try to make it not-serious-time when we are home,” she said. “It’s more domestic — we’re usually cleaning, doing yard work, cooking dinner … watching football or baseball or we get out on our dock and fish — we try to be very family-oriented. It’s very normal.”
Their lakeside dock cuts through a swamp.
“You have to like wildlife,” she said, of where they live. “We have bugs and snakes and spiders that would scare the heck out of most people. But we look at them and respect them.”
She said they bought their house in 1999 when they were dating. In 2001 Tedeschi got pregnant, and they got married in December 2001. “We did everything out of order. Being musicians it’s just kind of how it happened.”
The couple built a two-story studio in their backyard out of Trucks’ 2006-07 Clapton tour salary. Although they are not there very much to use it, it does provide a home for Tedeschi’s 15 guitars and Trucks’ 35.
Tedeschi says she tries to not bring their kids everywhere with them, to keep from wearing them out with travel.
“We make a lot of decisions – ‘are they going to be with me, or with Derek.’ With both of us there’s a lot of juggling but there’s so much variety for them. I don’t think they feel neglected or that we are not around ... I think we are more together as a family than most families. And our kids are always around family. Us or aunts and uncles, (etc.)”
Tedeschi said musical talents have already surfaced in their children — Charles Khalil Trucks is named for saxophonist Charlie Parker, guitarist Charlie Christian, and author Khalil Gibran; Sophia Naima Trucks takes her middle name from the John Coltrane ballad, which is Coltrane’s first wife’s name.
“They both show signs of music, although Charlie wants to be a baseball or basketball player. Sophia plays guitar and gets blisters on her thumb and she’s 4. She even knows how to hold (a guitar) right. She makes up these (clever) lyrics when Derek plays … She has a creative mind — some of her songs are way better than mine and I get jealous,” Tedeschi laughs, adding she can see a future collaboration with her daughter. “She reminds me a lot of me when I was little.”
Tedeschi said having played their kids music from all walks of life, they marvel at what they like, so different from other 4 and 7 year olds, like Sophia’s hankering for ’60s artist Bobby Womack’s “Woman’s Gotta Have It.”
“I’ll hear my 7-year-old son talking to one of his friends, and he’ll say, ‘Do you listen to John Coltrane? No? You don’t know what you’re missing,’ and ‘Hannah Montana? It will rot your brain, what you need to listen is this …’
“It’s always hopeful when your kids seem to be smarter than you.”
Tedeschi said constantly educating one’s mind is the key to happiness, and she continually finds herself doing just that — writing, practicing guitar or reading. She calls her husband a great reader, three to four books a week, while she averages one book a week, since “as a mom you don’t even have two hands, or five minutes.” She is right now reading two: one centers on her lifelong passion of physics by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman. She computes a couple of math problems to demonstrate her physics fondness. The other book is a classic — “100 Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
“I always push myself and I always really enjoyed learning. Educate yourself a little each day, it makes the world a better place.”
She continually is learning more about the guitar, especially at the hands at her axe-whiz husband, with whom she adores playing. The band they share, the 11-piece, horn-hued Soul Stew Revival, which merges both of the couple’s bands together, will be going out on its annual Christmastime jaunt, with hopefully more to come, she says, including a record.
“We’re both very supportive of each other’s careers. We definitely have our own styles … There’s definitely butting of heads (when we play guitar). He’ll say when we’re playing, ‘No we don’t need it here, just sing,’ and a little of my ego gets hurt. I feel like I’m a girl and can’t play in the boys club.”
“To me he is one of the best guitarists in the world,” she said. “Every note is perfect. I’ve never heard him mess up. He almost missed two notes (since I’ve known him). He’s pretty magical, he’s tapped into a higher source. He knows somebody upstairs.”