Music
Susan Tedeschi
Hope and Desire (Verve)Playing Jan. 29 at Exit/In
Susan Tedeschi’s conversational voice is nothing like the mature, full-throated delivery she brings to her covers of R&B, rock and blues gems on her current album, Hope and Desire. A modest, even girlish voice comes over the line as she speaks to me from her home in Jacksonville. While her in-laws watch her two infant children, the singer talks about how she’s taken her record out on tour and keeps finding new ground to cover.
Now in the midst of playing several dates in the Southeast, Tedeschi is presented in an entirely untried context on the immensely successful Hope and Desire. With Doyle Bramhall II and, occasionally, her husband Derek Trucks taking over the guitar parts, Tedeschi—a strong blues guitarist herself—was free to concentrate on her vocal interpretations. The artists originally associated with the songs on the album are household names—Aretha Franklin, The Band, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Etta James and Curtis Mayfield, among others. Yet Tedeschi’s selections steer away from the overfamiliar, and her driving voice is matched by the record’s imaginative, deeply felt arrangements.
In tune with the well-placed Hammond B-3 riffs that pipe up all but four of the record’s 12 tracks, Tedeschi’s gospel-inflected overtones and affinity with the blues give the album its loose-knit coherence and subtle variety. Though her singing has been compared to that of Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin, her attentive phrasing and feel for the pulse of each song are uniquely hers. The familiar blues accusations of infidelity in “Evidence,” for example, are tempered by the humility of songs like Iris DeMent’s “Sweet Forgiveness” and Bob Dylan’s “Lord Protect My Child.” Elsewhere, the languid confessions of recurrent passion in the Stones’ “You Got the Silver” are counterbalanced by Tedeschi’s insistent entreaties on Otis Redding’s “Security,” another song that mixes up the urges for love and money.
It’s a credit to producer Joe Henry’s style that Tedeschi can so readily adapt these songs to her tour. Though she was surrounded by sympathetic session players on Hope and Desire, her working band has been the force behind her continual “learning experience” while on the road. While the studio recording evokes R&B, blues and folk-rock sounds of the ’60s and ’70s, the basic arrangements enable Tedeschi’s band to stretch out onstage, especially with their leader picking up her guitar again.
Though her album has been No. 1 on the blues charts since last fall, Tedeschi still speaks with a fan’s awe about the supporting vocals of the Blind Boys of Alabama on “Magnificent Sanctuary Band,” or about opening for Etta James on some of her major-city dates. Tedeschi has shown a knack for assimilating beloved traditions even as she remains open to new possibilities. In fact, the three- and four-year gaps between some of her albums of new material can be explained by the work ethic and open-minded stance she takes toward her touring. Unlike artists who tour only to support an album, Tedeschi loves the process of working up different versions of her material in front of audiences. Some of this goes back to her days as a student at Berklee College of Music, when she studied arranging for larger ensembles and production techniques.
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Remarkably, Tedeschi—who sang with rock bands in the Boston area since she was 13 and entered Berklee at 17—didn’t take up blues guitar until she graduated. Having joined a gospel chorus during her college days, she approaches her material with a spirited—and at points, comfortably spiritual—mode of singing that testifies to the power of her conversion experience. It’s almost as if, after hearing those road-tested blues voices, she had to put her formal training on hold to pursue her calling.