Susan Tedeschi, Looking for answers in the Bay Area
By W. Marc Ricketts
Although it’s unlikely that 20 years from now you’ll remember where you were the first time that you heard Susan Tedeschi’s voice, unless you were overwhelmingly preoccupied, you most certainly noticed it. Her CD <I>Just won’t burn<P> (Tone-Cool) has been burning up sales propelled by "It hurt so bad," a song that’s led to a fistful of awards for the young blues singer, TV appearances, and heavy radio play from San Francisco, to Austin, to her hometown of Boston.
After her 1998 San Francisco gig at John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room attracted more than three times the capacity of the club, she returned in February for a sold out concert at the Fillmore. On June 22, a week after her debut performance on <I>The Late Show with David Letterman<P>, she returned to the Bay Area. This time a capacity crowd filled the pastoral estate at Villa Montalvo, secluded in the South Bay foothills of upscale Saratoga.
"I do like playing venues like tonight, outdoor concerts," she would later say, "if they would let us turn it (volume) up a little bit more that would be good." Early summer audiences would agree with that sentiment, because they got the double treat of seeing Tedeschi with Double Trouble, the rhythm section known for playing with the late Stevie Ray Vaughn. The rolling tones of Tom West’s Hammond B3 completed the temporary ensemble.
"I stole Chris (Layton) and Tommy (Shannon); I kidnapped them from their wives," she remarked with a laugh. "Actually, they came out to see me in Austin; they’re being managed by the same management company as me now. They mentioned that they were interested in maybe working together, and I was really excited. Somehow we hooked it up so we’re going to be together for about a month."
Tedeschi typically kicks things off in concert with the opening cut from <I>Just won’t burn<P>, the driving, primal "Rock me right". And while her voice is the prime attraction, she’s developing a distinctive style on the guitar as well. "I’ve played the guitar for about six years now. About a year or two into that I started playing lead. I (had) always liked not having to worry about not holding that fort down, and being able to concentrate on singing. It wasn’t until August of last year that I started playing on my own."
She deftly manages to avoid some of the more cliched blues licks. Just as something starts to sound a little too familiar, she inevitably throws in a curve that leads to new territory. The band was functioning as a single entity behind her as her voice rose into the evening air.
<I>How many times must I learn to live?<P>
<I>How many times must I learn to love, to give?<P>
<I>How many times must I get down on my knees and pray?<P>
<I>How many times must I pray you did the same?<P>
In these times when machines play music announced by computer disc jockeys, it’s amazing that anyone pursues music as real and honest as the blues. With Susan Tedeschi, a musical family laid the foundation. "My mom and dad would both play records all the time," she recounted, as she often does these days. "My dad played guitar and harmonica; he sounds just like Dylan. There were a lot of different styles going on all the time, from Motown to country to rock to blues to gospel."
With the song "Friar’s Point," Tedeschi pays homage to the people and places of the blues, from Beale Street to Muddy Waters in Chicago. But while honoring those that preceded her is only appropriate, wallowing in the past will quickly lead to a creative dead end. "I think my family had a lot to do with it, but ultimately what I do now has been shaped since 92-93 more so than all those years."
In a country known as a melting pot of people, the best music has often resulted from a convergence of different styles. An example is "You need to be with me", where a couple of spoonfuls of raggae are stirred into the recipe. No room for coy games in the blues, at the core there is always a longing, a longing shrared this night with those that felt the emotions driving her voice wash over them.
The heartache and heartbreaks encountered in the name of desire are common to us all. The pursuit has led Tedeschi far and wide; "It’s always because of men that I move. Old boyfriend in Atlanta….you know, boyfriend in Dallas." Many mistakenly see the blues as merely stagnating in the depths of self-pity, when, in reality, the blues player uses music to tap into feelings that are universal for purposes of healing.
<I>How many times must I sit here and tell you goodbye?<P>
<I>How many times must I sit all alone and cry?<P>
<I>How many times must I ask mercy on me?<P>
<I>How many times must I beg to be free?<P>
Music seemed to be a part of Susan Tedeschi’s destiny from an early age. Teenagers everywhere know the promise of seeing all the doors they can pass through, along with the torment of choosing which ones to open. Musicians are not immune to these conflicts. And so at 17 she found herself in Boston’s prestigious Berklee School of Music, a school more noted for traditional jazz players than women singing gutbucket blues.
"I was a horn arranger; I used to write for big bands. You pick two majors, and mine were performing and arranging. I always liked arranging for a regular rhythm section behind a singer." Horns on the road are not in the picture at this time, though. "It costs too much money; it’s way too expensive. When I go back to Boston I use two guys that used to be in the Heavy Metal Horns."
The skills honed at Berklee have come into play since then, like when she arranges some of the classic songs that are in her repertoire. In a speaking voice more reminiscent of the Deep South than New England, ("It’s because I hang out with all these Texas boys all the time."), she introduced her "evil" version of "Mama, he treats your daughter so mean." Perhaps best known as a tune by Ruth Brown, Tedeschi brings a sense of urgency not heard in Brown’s recording. "Mine’s a little more Texas, hers is a little more swing."
The woman in the song Brown sings seems resigned to her fate; in that time she was pretty much stuck with the hand she’d drawn. But it’s not like that in the nineties. An air of defiance runs through the same words when sung by Tedeschi, as well as no small amount of danger.
At last the civilized grip of the surroundings was loosened, and as the song roared to its climax, the passion of the moment could not be denied, and the masses responded in kind, rising in unison, moved by the spirit.
By now the proceedings had blasted past emotional and straight into hormonal! There is a powerful sexual tension at the core of Tedeschi’s performance, but it’s sexuality rooted in strength, not clad in a bunny suit.
She slowed things down with "Wait for me," an unreleased ballad that brings expected agreement from some of the more vocal males that are on hand. She shrugs off those hound dogs, and launches a positively wicked reading of Lieber and Stoller’s "Hound Dog" in response. Owing much more to Big Mama Thornton than Elvis, by the time her barks are echoing into the heavy night air, she’s like a tigress on the hunt; all that remains is to choose her prey.
<I>Lord, I love you in so many ways.<P>
<I>Lord, I love you each and every day<P>
<I>Now is the time I must ask you why<P>
<I>Why must we live, and why must we die?<P>
Performing at Berklee manifested itself in a variety of ways. "The biggest thing that I got out of it was the experience of playing with people and doing recording sessions. I did a lot of recording classes when I was there, too, that was part of my performance thing. Did a lot of classes on the performing side, everything from live studio stuff to working with engineering."
The blues, that music of the devil, has always been intertwined with gospel. The balance is as necessary as good and evil. The passion cursing through both is the same; it’s just the motivation that differs. Susan Tedeschi has experience with both.
"I was in a gospel choir (at Berklee) and we would go around to different churches, and I was one of about four white people in the choir. It was cool, we would go into inner city Boston and New York, churches and schools and sing. It was serious choir. It was only about three years that I did it. That was a huge experience for me, because it was a whole culture accepting me, not for the color of my skin, but because of how I sang. That really made me much more aware about culture and respect for people. It made me respect those people so much more for taking me in because I was different."
These days, she views those years with ambivalence. "I was just trying to find myself, and then when I got out of school, I got to the point that I wanted to forget everything I learned. I wanted to restart and remember what it was that made me love music to begin with. I think it actually kind of destroyed me for a while. It was a lot of pressure, doing a lot of work. I was doing a lot of writing. I was staying up a lot of nights without sleep, getting that Einstein look with my hair."
People begin love affairs with music for reasons that can seem elusive and intangible. The spark ignites when the heart is touched, not the head. When the response is pure and unfiltered, the soul is moved in ways that cut straight to the core of the listener’s very being.
Someone suggested that it was time for "It hurt so bad," and there was concurrence from the stage. While it is possible that some in the audience would have been unable to quote any single line from the song, all certainly understood every word she sang.
On the written page, the lyrics are simple, even deceptively simplistic. At its essence, the song is the anguish of a love not merely lost, but cast aside, and the words are almost irrelevant. It is the type of piece that is not easily realized in a studio, and while it grabs your attention on the radio, studios are usually too sterile for the raw exposure vital for an exercise such as this.
Any doubts vanish when the song is presented live. It is sung directly from an emptiness we have all felt, to do any less would be nothing short of fraud. One thing is certain. Every man that hears that song will be reminded of someone in his past, someone he lost involuntarily, and he will hope against hope that for at least one moment, this was how that someone felt.
<I>Well, I’m looking for answers, looking for answers that nobody knows.<P>
<I>Well, I’m looking for answers from above, not from below.<P>
The night ends with a peacefulness in direct contrast to the rowdiness that kicked things off. The gentle strains of John Prine’s "Angel from Montgomery" are unavoidably pressed up against an early curfew, and the house lights illuminated the exit.
Long after most have filed out to the waiting shuttles that will return them to their cars, Tedeschi is signing autographs on the other side of the stage. Life on the road is not a constant party interrupted occasionally by a couple of hours of public adoration. More likely the days are filled with phone interviews, 12 hour rehearsals, and an endless view of the white lines in front of the bus.
Throughout it all, Tedeschi is as gracious as a party host personally tutored by Miss Manners. Everyone that hands her an item to be signed receives her full attention; there are no surreptitious glances towards her watch. Compliments are accepted with an unassuming smile and tilt of her head that would allow any child to trust her while simultaneously filling men with lust.
Susan Tedeschi will probably find a few answers, as do we all. But often the search itself is crucial on its own, since answers all too frequently do little more than expose new questions. The answer to the question of what you should be doing on a day that she plays in your town, though, is clear.
The Susan Tedeschi web site is at:
Tone-Cool Records is at:
"Looking for answers" written by Susan Tedeschi
Lyrics reprinted with permission