Published on Feb 3, 2003
When I’ve had a bad day (or week) nothing helps more on the long
ride home than popping a blues disc in the old CD player. It’s
instant empathy, not to mention a good example – someone taking
difficult emotions and making something beautiful out of them.
First, though, it must be said: Susan Tedeschi doesn’t look like
a great blues singer/guitarist. Even without the shot in the
booklet of her holding her baby son, she looks more like the
green-eyed soccer mom from down the street in Suburbia, USA. If,
that is, said green-eyed soccer mom could sing like Bonnie Raitt
and play guitar like Duane Allman… Yeah, this mom ROCKS.
Wait For Me is Tedeschi’s follow-up to her much-heralded
1998 debut
Just Won’t Burn. Given that interval between albums, the
title has something of a double meaning. But the wait has been
worth it; this album has the kind of range, class and musical
integrity most modern artists only dream about. She does
hoot-and-holler blues-rock (“The Feeling Music Brings”). She does a
wistful piano blues (“Wrapped in the Arms of Another”). On the
title track, she does an alternately soaring and steamy lounge
blues complete with a terrific horn chart and a solo that sounds
like she’s been possessed by the spirit of B.B. King.
“The Feeling Music Brings” also features Derek Trucks
(Tedeschi’s husband and sometime guitarist) playing some fabulous
licks, moving in his long closing solo from hard, raunchy chords to
jittery, intricate little patterns where he’s almost massaging the
strings (think Stevie Ray Vaughan). Trucks shines once again on
“Gonna Move,” a track that matches an introspective folk-rock lyric
up with a heavy boogie beat and makes it sound like the most
natural thing in the world (love that undulating bass line,
too).
Tedeschi’s range is amazing. One minute she’s throwing down the
deep funk with guest (and jam-band hero) Col. Bruce Hampton
(“Hampmotized”). The next she’s remaking Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think
Twice, It’s All Right” as a lilting, acoustic country-blues with a
gorgeous organ solo. Sweet stuff, I tell you. For the rock and roll
traditionalists in the room, there’s also a guest shot from
legendary piano man Johnnie Johnson, who reminds you how he and
Chuck Berry give birth to a new musical genre on the rollicking
roadhouse stomper “I Fell in Love.”
Roughly half of these songs are Tedeschi’s own compositions,
including the shimmering, meditative “In the Garden,” co-written
with Tommy Shannon of Double Trouble. It’s a natural musical match,
a fact which is amplified a hundred-fold on this album’s bonus
track. I’m not a big fan of such add-ons normally; usually a song
given such treatment doesn’t really belong on the album at all. And
you could make that argument here as well, but incongruity aside,
when the last notes of the gentle closer “Blues on Holiday” faded
out and I heard Double Trouble and Kenny Wayne Shepherd rip into
the opening chords of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll,” I knew I was
in for a treat. Tedeschi is even miked like Robert Plant, with that
echo-ey tone that lets her really cut loose and wail. It’s a
rousing encore to an excellent album.
Whether you’ve got the blues yourself, or just want to dose
yourself with a little pre-emptive cure-all, I highly recommend
both Susan Tedeschi and
Wait For Me.