In March of 1999, young slide-guitar ace Derek Trucks hit the road with the Allman Brothers Band for the first time. On July 21 of that year, the legendary outfit rolled into New Orleans. There, it picked up supporting act, burgeoning blueswoman Susan Tedeschi for the first night of a two-week jaunt through the Midwest and up the West Coast. Before the curtains closed on the ten-show swing, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi were a couple. Two years later, they married.

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks with the Soul Stew Revival at Jazz Fest 2010 (Photo: Aaron Lafont)

“We met at the Saenger Theatre the first time I went out with the Allman Brothers. I had just turned 20,” Trucks recalls three nights before he and Tedeschi share the same bill in the Crescent City once again, this time at the Joy Theater as co-leaders of the Grammy-winning, 11-member Tedeschi Trucks Band. “One thing led to another that led to a marriage and two kids and a band with three records,” says the humble guitarist, who clocks in at number 16 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Prior to the genesis of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, both Trucks and Tedeschi’s solo careers were on a roll, creatively speaking. In 2009, the Derek Trucks Band’s Already Free took home a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album while Tedeschi’s superb Back to the River netted a nomination in the same category. Likewise, the decision to part ways with his and her respective bands in order to come together to form a new one wasn’t exactly easy for either, particularly Trucks. “Anytime you do something like that for that long and that in depth, it’s hard to step away,” he says. “I started the Derek Trucks Band when I was fourteen years old. I had never started a band as an adult.”

The seeds for the eventual formation of the Tedeschi Trucks Band were sewn in the Soul Stew Revival, a side-project that brought together friends and members of Derek and Susan’s solo projects and toured occasionally. Following a highly successful 2010 summer tour, which included an outstanding, multi-encore set at Jazz Fest, the decision to make a go of it, musically speaking, crystallized in Trucks’ mind:

My personal feeling at the time was that you gotta [sic] be willing to shed your skin, try something new. You can’t expect to play a weekend here or there and have it grow into anything. You lose the magic. With my solo band, I thought that we were able to leave it at a great point, a high point.

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi first met at the Saenger Theatre on the night of this 1999 concert.

Building on the momentum, the couple retreated to its Jacksonville home, called up a handful of its friends and began cutting an album in its home studio. The result, 2011’s Revelator, would go on to wow critics and fans alike, racking up awards, topping Billboard’s blues chart, hitting number four on its rock chart and nearly cracking the top 10 of its top 200. After a decade of non-stop touring with the Derek Trucks and Allman Brothers bands, for Trucks, envisioning the Tedeschi Trucks Band as an extension of his home paved the way for its success. “When the whole band’s down here, it’s a working, living, breathing place,” he says. “The kids are going to school; you’ve got things going on; the studio’s buzzing; there are people all around. It feels like real life, not some sterile place that you’re clocking in and out of.” Still, however, he believes that the band’s spirit is an extension of the road. “That’s how the music gets better,” Trucks is quick to note. “That’s how you spread the word. It’s who you are and what you do.”

With Revelator, the Tedeschi Trucks Band found a home, success and its rhythm. But it wasn’t until the group began working on its second studio album, Made Up Mind, that Trucks feels it found its identity. “On this one, we went in with a totally different mindset, more confident, knowing what the band was and what it could be,” he says. “Everybody grew, and we grew as a band. If people didn’t hear a part they could add to a song to make it better, then space was what was needed there. It felt like everyone understood the sound of the band.”

Derek Trucks at the House of Blues New Orleans in 2009 (Photo: Aaron Lafont)

In an age where album sales are at an all-time low, the sound of the Tedeschi Trucks Band is something that a growing number of fans understand. Following its August 2013 release, Made Up Mind returned the group to the top of Billboard’s blues chart, and it surpassed its predecessor on the rock and top 200 charts, reaching number 2 and 11 on each, respectively. Yet, by and large, Trucks sees the group’s good fortune as a balancing act, one he relishes. “It’s something we’re very conscious of at all times,” he says. “The hardest part of the whole thing is raising a family, doing it all right and still doing what you have to do.”

These sentiments resonate across Made Up Mind’s 11 songs, from the title track’s gospel blues to “Calling Out to You’s” acoustic crackle. It’s just as strong in “Idle Wind’s” tempered breeze as it is in “The Storm’s” fearsome grind. On a bigger level, at a time when roots rock rests comfortably as a catch-all used to describe music that blends elements of blues, rock, country, and soul without leaning too heavily on either, the Tedeschi Trucks band sets itself apart by rocking on each, mightily. To Trucks, his music isn’t about the prowess with which he yields his axe, it’s about a time and a place, the rhythm of a movement and the passion of a moment. It’s something that he tapped into as a kid and a brother and has drawn from as a leader and a family man. But it wasn’t until he set foot in New Orleans, that he met it face-to-face:

Any roots musician or improvisational musician that’s playing American music is influenced by New Orleans music, whether you know it or not. It’s in that energy, just that style of putting it out there. Anytime you’re on stage, there are things that come out that feel like that place. You can hear it at all times.