It's only April, but Signs, the new album by Tedeschi Trucks Band, is already shaping up to be one of the year's best releases. After last night's concert at the Olympia, their accompanying tour has set a similarly intimidating standard. There will be plenty more great shows in Paris before the year is over, but it's difficult to imagine many bands matching this combination of soul, Southern rock, blues and jazz, played at this level.
Tedeschi Trucks Band is an extraordinary collection of musicians, but two voices inevitably define its sound. Susan Tedeschi can summon the grit and emotional force of the great R&B singers of the sixties, then pick up a guitar and hold her own in a band containing Derek Trucks. Trucks, meanwhile, remains quite simply the finest guitarist of the past quarter century. His technique is formidable, but the real thrill comes from his phrasing, his control of dynamics and that immediately identifiable slide tone. He can make the guitar soar without turning a song into a demonstration of his abilities.
That philosophy extends to the entire twelve-piece ensemble. With two drummers, horns, keyboards and four singers, there is enough musical firepower onstage to flatten the Olympia, yet the band understands space. Instruments enter and withdraw, voices trade places and grooves are allowed to develop naturally. Even at full force, everybody appears to be listening.
The obvious historical reference is Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen. Tedeschi Trucks Band has that same sense of a large musical family traveling together, pulling soul, gospel, blues, country and rock into a sprawling American revue. There are also traces of the Allman Brothers Band and Delaney & Bonnie, but the comparisons only take you so far. TTB has developed its own language from those ingredients.
The repertoire reflects that breadth. New material from Signs sits comfortably beside established originals such as "Midnight in Harlem" and "Bound for Glory", while songs associated with Willie Nelson, B.B. King and the Box Tops, by way of Joe Cocker and Leon Russell, become part of the same conversation. Originals and covers coexist so naturally that authorship becomes almost irrelevant once the band gets hold of a song.
"Signs, High Times" already sounds made for this setting. On record, the horns, organ, voices and rhythm section steadily build the tension before Trucks provides the release. At the Olympia, a song like this has considerably more room to breathe. That's where Tedeschi Trucks Band's approach makes the most sense. The recordings provide beautifully constructed songs, but the stage allows twelve musicians to find out how far those songs can travel.
And for all the formidable playing involved, emotion remains the point. Gospel is woven deeply into the band's music, even when the subject matter is entirely secular. Voices rise together, the organ swells underneath them and the rhythm section turns songs into something communal. At certain moments, the Olympia feels less like a rock venue than a church where nobody is particularly concerned about religion.
That feeling is increasingly rare. In a digital age, Tedeschi Trucks Band's organic approach to writing, recording and performing feels almost anomalous. There is nothing sterile about this music, and nothing appears designed to meet whatever production convention happens to be current. It sounds like wood and tube amps. It sounds like friends. It sounds like family.
