At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, Derek Trucks may be the greatest rock guitarist of the past twenty years. He has the technique to play practically anything, yet what makes him extraordinary is his refusal to turn that technique into a circus act. Every slide, bend and run seems to have an emotional purpose. Even when he takes off, the song remains more important than the solo.
Tedeschi Trucks Band operates according to much the same principle. Formed when Trucks and his wife Susan Tedeschi brought their respective bands together, the twelve-piece ensemble has enough firepower to overwhelm almost any room. Instead, everything is used in service of the music. Two drummers, horns, keyboards, backing singers and guitars combine into something huge but remarkably fluid, moving freely between rock, soul, blues, gospel and jazz.
At the Olympia, that combination is glorious. There are echoes of the Allman Brothers Band, Santana, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Derek & the Dominos and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen, the sort of bands that treated the boundaries between rock, soul, blues and jazz as largely irrelevant. Tedeschi Trucks Band clearly belongs to that lineage, but there is nothing nostalgic about what happens onstage. This is vintage music played in the present tense.
And then there is Susan Tedeschi. Her voice brings grit and soul to music that could easily become an exhibition of instrumental prowess, and her own guitar playing gives the band another formidable lead voice. The partnership at the center of the group sets the tone for everything around it. Nobody seems interested in winning. They listen, respond and leave space, even with twelve people onstage.
The songs are poignant, the singing superb and the sound at the Olympia pristine enough to hear the detail inside such a large ensemble. Yet perfection isn't really what makes the band exciting. It's the ease with which all that technique disappears into the music.
Virtuosity without acrobatics. Vintage without nostalgia.
Essential.
