Revelator by Tedeschi Trucks Band

Susan Tedeschi, one of the most soulful and talented blues vocalists around, has teamed up with her husband Derek Trucks, one of the best guitarists in the world, (both of them Grammy nomineees in 2010) to produce an exciting collaborative album,Revelator, that features a simmering and scorching 11-piece band. This is bound to be one of the Must Have albums of 2011. Delta blues and Memphis soul, Sixties rock and Seventies funk; you’ll hear all of this and more in their music. And as for their backup musicians, they have assembled an impressive collection of talent: Brothers Oteil Burbridge (noted for his years as bassist with the Allman Brothers Band) and Kofi Burbridge (longtime keyboardist/flutist with The Derek Trucks Band) have joined forces with a pair of drummers J. J. Johnson and Tyler Greenwell, trumpeter Maurice Brown, tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williams, trombonist Saunders Sermons, and harmony singers Mark Rivers and Mike Mattison. (Additionally, Ryan Shaw and David Ryan Harris supplied harmony vocals to various tracks on the album, and Alam Khan adds his masterful sarod playing to “These Walls”.) Susan has been on the music scene for fifteen years and more and has opened for such acts as The Rolling Stones. Her voice is a gospel-trained miracle and her guitar playing is highly competent, but the addition of Derek Trucks and a large ensemble behind her has brought out the best in her. It’s also done wonders for Derek Trucks in that his former extended solos have been reimagined into both more compact and more expressive playing. It’s obvious that this husband-and-wife team brings something special to the stage and to the recording studio. Trucks co-produced the album with multi-Grammy-winning engineer Jim Scott, whose genre-bending credits include popular albums by the Dixie Chicks, Johnny Cash, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Both Tedeschi and Trucks co-wrote the album’s twelve new songs with an impressive list of experienced songwriters, including Jeff Trott, John Leventhal, David Ryan Harris and Sonya Kitchell; Gary Louris and Oliver Wood—of the Jayhawks and the Wood Brothers, respectively; and old friends like guitarists Doyle Bramhall II and Eric Krasno (of Soulive), and band members Mike Mattison, Kofi Burbridge and Oteil Burbridge. www.tedeschitrucksband.com/ ℗ 2011 Sony Music Entertainment