Review | Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Slide & Soul Area 

We can count the ways that make the Tedeschi Trucks Band one of America’s finest groups in any scene, but there are two primary reasons: This is the band blessed with two great “singers,” whose names are on the marquee. Of course, Susan Tedeschi retains status as a premier blues rock chanteuse, while her husband and partner in music Derek Trucks is a genuine slide guitar virtuoso whose playing always rises to the level of a sublime singing quality.

Theirs is a renewable musical pleasure, as heard on the new and sixth album, Future Soul — yet another feather in their discographic cap — and as heard pumping out the live goods at the Santa Barbara Bowl last Thursday night.

One of the interesting and unintended aspects of Thursday’s show was its status as a progress report on two strong American musicians — Trucks and opener Lukas Nelson. Santa Barbara audiences have had the privilege of essentially watching them grow up in public, from precocious beginnings. Trucks started his ascent playing with the Allman Brothers as a young teenager, including stops at the Bowl. Nelson’s long list of local shows began just a few years out of his adolescence, when the now 37-year-old performed with his legendary father Willie Nelson at the Chumash Casino in 2011, and has since played here with his pa, with Neil Young, with his own band Promise of the Real, and in his impressive current incarnation. Nelson’s Bowl set was anything but just a casual warm up for the main attraction, just as the opening act of Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 2024 Bowl show, Little Feat, nearly rose to double bill status. 

Here was stirring proof that this guy just keeps getting better and better, as guitarist and singer. Among the highlights of his set was a ravishing solo take on his father’s classic “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” a sweet country spin on “Just Outside of Austin,” and an extra soulful finale of “Find Yourself,” surprising many with his lung-powered soul chops as a singer.

With a tight, yet also organically loose and interactive, 12-piece band, fortified with horns, double drummers (as in the Allman Brothers), and a harmony singing chorus with singers suitable for solo spotlight, Tedeschi Trucks Band dished out more of what we’ve come to expect and appreciate about their live shows. Individual high points came through in solos (especially Trucks’s), but the magic happened in the ensemble mesh of the team, as well.

Tedeschi has a distinctive and winsome vocal presence, lightly raspy-whisky tone and with the right balance of soulful bluesy abandon and pop-ready melodic focus, as demonstrated on tunes such as “Just as Strange.” She’s a strong guitarist to boot, even if inevitably pale in comparison with her partner. Trucks remains a musical wonder, whose slide style owes a debt to Duane Allman but also such worldly sources as Hindustani music, always detectable in the subtle nuances and ornamentation. Even when playing in standard finger-style, his slipping and sliding bends and feints have that fluid grace.

As if in a winking gesture, the band — a gift to the slide guitar universe — kicked off with “Don’t Let Me Slide,” and fell into the fetching opening track from Future Soul, “Crazy Cryin.’” From other corners of the new album, the title track “Future Soul” is a hard-driving blues-rock-funk raver with an old school voltage, and “I Got You” is an infectious Allmans-y ode to love also beholden to retro rather than future models. 

An epic version of the Allman Brothers tune “Dream,” with keyboardist Gabe Dixon doing a fine job as surrogate Gregg Allman vocalist and Trucks serving up one of his extended solo adventures — with and without slide — led into the chugging energy and hooky embrace of “Made-Up Mind” (not to be confused with the song of the same name by the Bros. Landreth and Bonnie Raitt). That fed into an in-house take on the Blind Faith tune “Presence of the Lord,” part of a covers list also featuring Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” and the Rolling Stones’ “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreakers),” with Mike Mattison handling the lead vocal role.

To close out the set, Tedeschi Trucks Band dug into their archives for the tighten-up R&B spank of “I Want More,” from 2016’s album Let Me Go By, into Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” as a chaser. Then it was time to tip a hat to the opener, inviting Nelson and members of his band onstage for finale time. On the menu were Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Helpless” and a riff-swapping rendition of the Joe Cocker vehicle “Space Captain,” whose refrain “learning to live together” proved a strong message to close out on.

Tedeschi Trucks Band continues to be an inspiring model of successful living together, musically. Long may they do their stuff at the Bowl, where we can continue watching the growing up process.