“Do I Look Worried” near the top of the Tedeschi Trucks Band opening night of the 30th season of City Park’s Foundation Summerstage yesterday in Central Park was a showstopper. Watching Derek up close, his fingers are like metal pliers yet supple, he is like a steel butterfly. You always think of guitarist having very long fingers, like Jimi, and it is like being a basketball player, if you can wrap your fingers round the body with room to spare then you are well ahead, you can reach every string you need, the way if you are seven foot three you can just tip the ball in the basket. But what Derek has is great aim, through strength. Everything you think of as a great guitarist plus a pressure which is strong so he doesn’t really have to press down hard and therefore he can move around the guitar with speed and ease. He presses and releases and makes the strings bend and zing. Late in the show, Derek and the brass section let loose on a Taj Mahal-y blast and the band lost its soul vibe, and became a jazz jam band. It all sounded as one but also free form, improvised but tightly wound.
The last time we saw Trucks he was playing with Clapton at Clapton’s 70th birthday, Trucks, exactly half that age, held his own. Before that, last year, was the Allman Brother’s final series of concerts, which means for Derek, the chance to interlock with Warren Haynes. But that’s Derek, rock and blues, southern boogie, jazz, country, he can play all these forms at will, Trucks just keeps on firing; and at Summerstage, in what amounts to mostly a business as usual gig, his explosive playing whether quiet vibey or loud guns afire, was what we were there for. Trucks, with his long goatee and skinny studied intensity is more like one of the more minor Old Testament Prophets then a rock star, looked to have just joined the big leagues of guitar heroes last night.
Earlier Monday evening, I got a text from my buddy Mark Reichenbach already in Central Park, eyeballing a line that went on and on and on to get into Summerstage, attendance was claimed at 5,000 souls but there were more than that trying to get in, a lot more. “The press line itself has something like 75 people already” he warned. I have never seen Summerstage so busy, not even when Avventura alumni played there. Mayor di Blasio proclaimed it City Parks Foundation Day and man was that hard to deny and the lines and the Proclamations were just the start of the proceedings. A fine young folk band , Spirit Family Reunion, performed a strong 30 minute set, personal best a real good “It Does Not Bother Me” off their new album Hands Together. Then a brief 15 minute wait. Too brief to do much with, the lines, for everything, unlike anything I’ve seen at Rumsey Playfield.
Performing with about as full a band as imaginable, a three piece brass section, two drummers, stand up bass, keyboards and Susan Tedeschi on lead and vocals, the Tedeschi Trucks Band hit it and hard. Mark told me of seeing Susan at a small club in front of 75 people years and years ago, and how she has improved as a singer. One thing is sure, right now she is a great singer, everything Susan sings is soul and when she decides to take the limelight, it is absolutely taken. With a husband who is one of the great electric guitar players around, a master of many trades, and featured performer Doyle Bramhall II on a Beatles cover no less, she held her own, power singing whenever necessary. And the evening’s best moments belonged to her. Meeting Sharon Jones (of Sharon Jones And The Dapkings of course) for the first time at rehearsal, the two were as great as you might imagine performing in front of an audience on “Bringing It On Home To Me” and better than you can think of on the evening’s greatest moment, “Tell Mama”. “Tell Mama” was the soul moment of the year so far, the two women in glorious unison, crating over the guitars, silenced for the solo, and then going right over the top. I couldn’t believe my ears but I do know this, over and above the Dap Kings and Tedeschi Trucks touring together this summer, there is some day and some way, they should make an album. Sharon is a great old time soul woman who has been known to leave me cold, but any problems I’ve had in the past were put to sleep on this soulful Etta James cover, it was where the band paid off their protean qualities by transferring from rock to soul. They did em both at the same time.
If the rest of the evening had nowhere to go but down, it certainly didn’t go down that far… honestly. The news that Tedeschi Trucks would be playing four nights at the Beacon in late September spoke to their popularity and also their ambition. It isn’t the Allman Brothers March madness, but it is Warren Haynes Govt Mule and then some.
Tedeschi Truck Band doesn’t remind of the Allman Brothers as such but what they have in common is a similar sense of attitude, of jamming on a sound which echoes backwards towards Duane in some mystic way but goes its own way. On October 3, the last night of their beacon residency, the band is playing two sets as opposed to having an opening act, just like the Allman Brothers. For sure, if this was just what the band does: soulful jam with jazz and boogie and folk and country salted to taste, it should do them well for a long many many more stops at the Beacon.
Grade: B+
