Susan Tedeschi is coming home. Weeks removed from emergency appendix surgery that forced her to cancel high-profile festival dates in July, the 55-year-old blues guitarist and Norwell native is bringing Tedeschi Trucks Band back to Massachusetts for a September 2 show at Tanglewood, followed by a headlining slot at Berklee College of Music's very first homecoming block party later this month.
Tedeschi missed the Newport Folk Festival because of the appendix surgery, according to Boston.com, which reported that she said missing two festivals was preferable to missing two weeks of headline touring. The cancellations, announced July 20, also pulled the band from FloydFest in Virginia, and organizers scrambled to fill the Newport slot with Father John Misty for the Sunday mainstage performance, according to Relix. FloydFest separately let single-day ticket holders roll their passes over to 2027.
Recovery moved fast. Just eleven days after the surgery announcement, Tedeschi was back onstage July 31 leading a sold-out two-night run at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, marking the band's 22nd and 23rd career shows at the venue, per Grateful Web. It was the ninth consecutive year the band has held a late-July residency there. Boston.com reports Tedeschi said she was in her fifth week of recovery and doing well.
A Tanglewood Reunion With Lukas Nelson
Tedeschi Trucks Band takes the Koussevitzky Music Shed stage at Tanglewood on September 2, with Lukas Nelson joining as a special guest, tickets for which run $78.75 all-in for general admission lawn seats, according to NIGHTOUT listings. Tedeschi has said she has known Nelson since he was 10, after first meeting him at Farm Aid, and she has called him talented and easy to play with, per Boston.com's report. The Tanglewood date is one stop in a run that continues to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Gilford, New Hampshire, from September 4 through 6, as the band tours behind its sixth studio album, Future Soul.
The 12-member group formed in 2010 when Tedeschi merged her solo career with that of her husband, guitarist Derek Trucks, whom she met while touring with the Allman Brothers Band. The pair married in 2001 and have two children; Boston.com notes that Tedeschi had her newborn son, Charlie, on tour with the Other Ones, the Grateful Dead offshoot she joined in 2002. Rolling Stone ranked Trucks No. 80 and Tedeschi No. 139 on its 2023 list of the 250 best guitarists of all time, according to Boston.com's account.
Berklee's First-Ever Homecoming Block Party
On September 19, Tedeschi headlines Berklee College of Music's inaugural Homecoming Block Party, running from 1 to 6 p.m. at 73 Brookline Avenue in the school's home neighborhood next to Fenway Park. The lineup also includes alumni Tiwa Savage, Fabiola Méndez, Dogs in a Pile and Dreion, according to Berklee College of Music. Adult general admission runs $139 with fees, per Boston.com, and organizers describe the event as the start of a new tradition bringing together powerhouse alumni for a daylong celebration. Tedeschi is set to perform 45 minutes to an hour and will also take part in a question-and-answer session with a Berklee class.
Berklee alumni have combined for more than 300 Grammy Awards and 120 Latin Grammy Awards, the highest total of any music school in the world, according to the college. Tedeschi contributed to that count with a 2012 Best Blues Album Grammy for Tedeschi Trucks Band's Revelator. She graduated from Berklee in 1991 at age 20 with a degree in musical composition and performance, and she has credited her time in the school's Reverence Gospel Ensemble with pushing her vocal delivery toward the blues. She received Berklee's Alumni Achievement Award in 2018 and, per Boston.com, once played on the school's intramural basketball team.
From Singing Waitress to National Stages
Tedeschi's musical roots run deep in the region. She formed her first original band at 18 in Scituate with Adrienne Hayes and Annie Raines, and the group won a Battle of the Bands in Boston before placing second in the International Blues Competition in Memphis, according to Boston.com's account. Before that breakthrough, she worked as a singing waitress on the Spirit of Boston cruise ship while frequenting local blues jams around Greater Boston.
Her debut solo album, Just Won't Burn, led to a record deal with Tone-Cool Records and earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist; Boston.com reports she borrowed about $10,000 to make the record. Tedeschi has since toured alongside blues and rock royalty including Buddy Guy, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, John Mellencamp and Jimmie Vaughan. She also performed with members of the Grateful Dead — Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Jeff Chimenti, Rob Barraco and Jimmy Herring — and later joined Weir and the Wolf Brothers at LOCKN'. She has described Weir as lovely, positive, fun and daring, and recalled that he once offered her mushrooms while she was nursing, which she declined, according to Boston.com.
Tedeschi's family history in Massachusetts extends beyond music: Tedeschi Food Shops, founded by her great-grandfather, was sold to 7-Eleven in 2015. She and Trucks built their own recording studio after his stint touring with Eric Clapton, with the couple beginning to experiment together as a duo in 2008 and 2009 before formally launching Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2010. The band's Massachusetts homecoming arrives amid a busy fall stretch that will later take the group to Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in Austin, a lineup Hoodline previously reported also includes Buddy Guy, Gary Clark Jr. and John Mayer.
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