Tedeschi Trucks Band’s versatile performance takes crowd on wild ride

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This article was published 25/06/2016 (3688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band might be the most democratic of today’s rock groups.

The Florida-based group jams 12 players and singers on the stage and they all get their turn to step up to the plate during a wild ride of a two-hour concert. One minute there’s an hard bop-style sax solo, the next there’s a flute solo, then their double-barrelled drum attack are duelling it out while the rest of the band watches in admiration.

But it’s the king and queen of this musical chess board — singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi and her husband, guitarist extraordinaire Derek Trucks — whose names are on the marquee and they’re the ones who knocked it out of the park Saturday night at the Burton Cummings Theatre.

Trucks is well known for his superb slide guitar, which blends the down-and-dirty grinding of slide on strings with a hypnotic snake-charmer sound. He left the packed house at the Burt shaking their heads at his creativity on the evening’s opener, 2016’s Laugh About It, and especially with his lengthy six-string acid trip during Idle Wind, from the group’s 2013 record, Made Up Mind.

Tedeschi was his equal, thanks to her sometimes shocking versatility. She’s made a solo career by belting out blues numbers like Bobby Bland’s I Pity the Fool, which she sang midway through Saturday’s set, but she also charged up the crowd with an emotional version of Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire, part of an early two-song nod to Joe Cocker’s 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour that also included an energetic The Letter.

Later on, she even delved into old-fashioned country and western, enlisting backup singers Mike Mattison and Alecia Chakour to join her on the George Jones classic Color of the Blues. She was definitely colouring outside the lines on Saturday night.

This versatility opens up many onstage possibilities for the the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Musicians come and go from the TTB bandstand during the show, giving the band three or four different possible configurations on the same night, whether they want to try jazz fusion, blues or southern rock.

Their rendition of Idle Wind will be the song most at the concert will remember, though. It’s a seemingly sweet tune, imagining time on a sailboat relaxing while those idle winds decide where and how fast the boat goes. But when a soloist like Trucks is at the helm, you better have a lifejacket on because the Idle Wind switches direction and speed at a moment’s notice.

The group finished their main set with the title track from the 2016 album Let Me Get By, but added one more Mad Dogs and Englishmen tune, Let’s Go Get Stoned, for the encore. That one included another tour around the stage, as Trucks and Tedeschi pointed to various musicians to show their stuff like duelling maestros of an orchestra. They all had plenty to offer.

The opener brought Winnipeg’s Joey Landreth back to a local stage, and the Bros. Landreth frontman, armed only with his guitar, vocals and his imaginary band, entertained with rootsy vocals and a deft slide guitar of his own. The Bros. have received a lot of praise with their non-stop touring the past couple of years, but it was interesting to see Joey on his own on Saturday night.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @AlanDSmall