For more than a decade, Susan Tedeschi has been turning heads with her blues-soaked rock, fiery guitar playing and commanding vocal prowess … since her beginnings in a suburb of Boston (Norwell, Mass., to be exact) where she began singing with local bands at 13. She then went to Berklee College of Music to pursue her passion for music and established herself to be one of New England’s top-drawing live acts with her first record in 1995. 
She lived in Texas for a while, then met and married Derek Trucks (who plays guitar in the Allman Bros. Band as well as fronting his own Derek Trucks Band.) They now have two young children: a boy and a girl.
Her fifth album, “Back to the River” (Verve Forecast), is garnering critical as well as fan praise and she’ll be coming back to Maine to support the CD with a show at the Skowhegan Opera House on Thursday. For more information, visit www.sweetpeopleproductions.com or call 474-6907. To that end, a phone interview was arranged on Sept. 23 that found her at home in Jacksonville, Fla. So, she’s coming back to Maine.
“Yes, I’m coming back on Oct. 8 which is coming up pretty soon,” Tedeschi said. “It’s part of a small, little tour which we’re actually starting in Skowhegan — just a four-show, weekend run — Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut.”
Does she prefer the shorter runs over the long, weeks-on-end tours that take her all over the country?
“No, I like the regular, weeks-at-a-time ones because then you can really focus on what you play; but, I do like the weekenders, too,’cause then I can be home with the kids.”
Talk then turned to her latest CD — a last-quarter of 2008 release — and I was curious to know if it’s representational of what she’s like live?
“It is,” Tedeschi said, “and, actually, I think we’re even better live than the record … I mean, I was listening to the record the other day — I hadn’t really heard it since we did it — and I was like: ‘Oh my God, we’ve come so far.’  I mean, just from performing so much, working on the dynamics of each song, and we’ve really crafted the songs even more.”
“The songs have not changed drastically, it’s more just little, subtle things. Maybe the tempos have changed a little, or the dynamics, too, have become more dramatic.”
One of the reasons for the continued development of her music is attributable to the musicians who make up Tedeschi’s backing band. She took a few minutes to run through the members of that group she’ll be bringing to the opera house.
“On piano, organ and clarinet is Matt Slocum; on tenor saxophone — people might know Ron Hollaway ’cause he’s played with the Allman Brothers, Dizzie Gillespie, Root Boy Slim, Gov’t Mule … a lot of different people. On bass is Ted Pecchio — him and the drummer, Tyler Greenwell, who we call the ‘Falcon,’ used to be the rhythm section for Col. Bruce Hampton; and then I have a guitar player from Alabama — he lives in Atlanta now,” she chuckled lightly, “and his name is Dave Yoke and he actually plays an ST like my husband — he’s a really pretty player, melodic player, like Derek is.”
The chat turned back to the recording aspect of her career … seeing “Back to the River” isn’t that old, it probably doesn’t make any sense asking about a follow-up project, right?
“Well, actually, I was about to do a record in March, but it looks like Derek and I are gonna try to work together on something, so we’re gonna both put our solo projects on hold for a little bit and try to do something together: like songwriting, putting a band together and touring.”
I asked if they have ever done much touring together, seeing she brought the topic up?
“We’ve toured together,” Tedeschi said, “but not really with our own projects too much; I mean, we did ‘Soul Stew’ a coupla times but it was really a total — over two years — of probably 50 dates, I mean, not a huge amount.  So, we’ve never really dove in 100 percent because he’s always had Allman Bros. and Eric Clapton and his band, and then we’ve had Soul Stew Revival together. I mean, there’s been a lotta different projects and our energy getting focused in a lotta different places but never together, so it’ll be a big step for us.”
Is she looking forward to it?
“Yeah, we both are, we’re both really excited ‘cause it’s something we’ve both always wanted to do since we’ve known each other — for 10 years — but we’ve never been able to do it.”
As the 20-minute interview wound down, I asked if Tedeschi had anything she wanted to have passed on to the readers of this “What’s Happening” article.
“Well, if they wanted to see me with my band, they should come out ‘’cause we probably won’t be touring together until next year because of the project with Derek. We’ll be playing a lot of stuff from the new record and we’ve been having a ball. This band is great,” she said, “I love this band and it really is fun playing with them … we all have a really good time — and if people want to come out, we’ll make it worthwhile for ‘em!”

Lucky Clark is a music journalist celebrating his 40th year of writing this year. He can be reached at lucky@megalink.net for questions or comments.