At what point did you feel comfortable incorporating songs from your solo catalogs and the Allman Brothers in your TTB setlists?

It was really just stumbling across a song that you haven’t heard in a while, and it dawns on you like, “Hey, that was fun to play.” [Laughter.] We will say, “Let’s get that back out.” Sometimes it is just us trying to incorporate Mike more and get him singing more. It is usually as simple as, “Hey Mike, what do you want to sing? What tunes from would you want to step out front and sing?” Sometimes it’s songs you miss playing, you know—we don’t often judge things on whether it was a crowd favorite, or if it was viewed as a showstopper. It’s really more of what can you bring to a piece. There’s times with a band like this, with two drummers and a horn section, and backup singers, that you played wishing you had that arsenal, now you break things down and you can give them a life that you wish you could have when you first conceived it. Sometimes you don’t realize that a tune was tailor made for a group until the group is there, so that’s what we’re doing when we kind of relive some of these tunes, and fully realize them currently.

You mentioned before that Tim is fully acclimated into the band, and that your new album is going to have the feel of a band record. Have you felt a new chemistry or dynamic onstage now that he has gone through the full creative process in the studio with the group?

Absolutely. And I feel like that this record is just very much just the band doing its thing. I feel like it makes everything a little bit tighter. And not tighter in a sense that you’re over thinking it, but everyone’s just a little closer, and maybe feels just a little more connected to the whole thing. When you make a record, you’re really digging in, and you’re pulling stuff out of each other. When Tim came along we just finished making Made Up Mind with a different bass player, but there’s something nice about writing and recording songs with the band. It just makes everyone feel more a part of it. And I feel like when everyone’s more comfortable on that level, it’s easier to dig deep, and to get to work—whether it’s improvising or whatever is going on. It feels like everybody is on the same page, on a different level, so that’s been really nice.

Looking ahead, Tedeschi Trucks Band will celebrate Joe Cocker’s landmark Mad Dogs & Englishmen project at Lockn’ with an all-star cast, including Chris Robinson, Dave Mason and Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge from the original tour. I know Mad Dogs & Englishmen was an early touchtone for Tedeschi Tricks Band. How specifically did that project shape TTB?

I really don’t remember how I stumbled across it—I think I just saw the movie flipping through the channels when we were on a tour bus—but Susan and I watched the Mad Dogs & Englishmen movie when we were thinking about putting a band together. It hit us how many musicians from that band we knew from other projects and how it related to Derek and the Dominos and Delaney and Bonnie, and, in turn, Capricorn Records and Allman Brothers thing. It was this whole incestuous thing going on, and all these musical connections you’re making. Then it hit us: that’s kind of the project we had been kicking around—this traveling circus. Just watching them do it that way, there was just something beautifully rowdy about it. It seemed like it was just mildly controlled chaos.

When we began to thing about putting a group together, that was very much on our minds. I thought was, “It would be great to do that, but maybe build it where it could last a little bit longer than a year and a half or however long that was together for.”

It was that and the Sly Stone concept, as well as the Dominos and even the Allman Brothers in some ways. Those bands were very much inspirations when we were thinking about putting a group together.

We had been talking with Dave Frey over at Lockn’ about different collaborations, and Joe Cocker was on the list. We had been talking to him about playing with us at Lockn’, and then all of a sudden you could tell that something was up. It wasn’t really coming together, and that’s when he was sick, and that’s when he passed away. We thought that instead of trying to find another guest, maybe we should have a tribute to him with the Mad Dogs & Englishmen thing was the best way to do it. So we started reaching out to original members and everybody seemed pretty excited to do it. And as soon as we announced it, even other members have reached out about showing up: other singers, percussionists and people who played with him. It’s been pretty great: people are coming out and just gravitating toward it. It’s gonna be a party [Laughter.] It’s still coming together, it’s just that there’s so many names popping up and so many ideas popping up, but I think it’s gonna be rowdy in that spirit.

Did you ever get to meet Joe Cocker in person?

No I didn’t. It’s funny. My dad had a club in Jacksonville when he was young, in his twenties, and I think Joe Cocker played there. He stumbled in a few times, so my dad had some connection with him. But I never saw him or met him.

Tedeschi Trucks Band will also play a series of shows at New York’s Beacon Theatre this September. Obviously you have a long history with the Beacon dating back 15 years when you joined the Allman Brothers Band. Did you always have your eye on starting your own tradition there?

There’s something about that room, and obviously New York. You play differently when you’re there. There’s an appreciation of music and the history of it, and people have watched you grow and do your thing. So it really does make you dig deeper, and it makes you change—you don’t want to show up and repeat the same things, so I feel like every year it’s a great learning curve for us. You show up and you really have to put a lot of time and energy into making the show different and great. In a lot of ways it helps the band to do shows like—four or five nights in the same place. Obviously the history with the Allman Bros there is a huge part of that. And when we were putting together our September shows, there was talk of moving our run to March to kind of fill that void a little bit, but it felt like it was just better to keep it separate and let it be its own thing, and not try to run for that. So we, from the beginning, always had in our mind that we would try it naturally and so if it takes. If not, you try something else, but it’s been pretty amazing so far.

Everybody in the group really looks forward to it in a different way than you look forward to other shows. It’s a daunting task, but it’s something that you look forward to doing.

Looking back on the Allman Brothers Band’s final shows at the Beacon Theatre this past October, what was your musical or personal highlight?

I think that sneaking in “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” in a different way every night. I think there was something great about that—it was the song that they played at Duane’s funeral, but really that whole last show was special. It really is weird because I’m the young guy, but I was proud of the way everybody handled it, and everybody gave what they had to give musically. I thought the spirit was right; those last shows just had a feel to them. I had been on stage a lot of times with a lot of different situations, but I thought that was unique, and it felt definitely… I thought with the spirit that that’s the way it should have been.

It was a long show, and everybody just constantly stayed in it. I felt like it stayed locked, and it never mentally got away from anybody. Everyone stayed in it—the weight of it was very much on everybody’s mind, and the audience that night was… you could feel it. The crowd and the band, everybody was in the same place, which is not always the case.

I felt that “Circle” almost turned into a theme song for the run—nobody knew when you were going to bust into it but they knew it was going to happen.

And that’s something that the Allmans really haven’t done all that much over the years. It was nice in that it happened kind of spontaneously the first few times, and then it became a challenge to find different ways to approach it. The greatest part was when Gregg jumped in the last night and sang, and we all just kinda felt it one night. It felt good to me. [Laughter.]

Speaking of musical legends, given the Dead’s 50th anniversary shows, can you look back on some of the lessons you have learned from Phil Lesh, who brought you into his band when you were still a teenager?

Playing with Phil over the years, I definitely learned a whole new level of respect for not only the Dead’s level of musicianship but really the catalog of songs and the approach. There’s not many bands or artists that have kept going and stacked it up the way they did. It won’t go away, people will be listening to that and playing those tunes, it’s very much going to be living and breathing long after the band hangs it up.

Pages:« Previous Page