Susan Tedeschi was born in Boston in November 1970 and raised in Norwell, Massachusetts, the great-granddaughter of the founder of the Tedeschi Food Shops chain. Instead of a retail career, she made her public debut at five as an understudy in a Broadway musical, found her Catholic family’s church choirs stifling and sought out African American Baptist churches for a more alive gospel sound, and absorbed her father’s vinyl collection of acoustic blues legends like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt. She was in bands by 13, formed The Smokin’ Section at 18, and earned a bachelor of music in composition and performance from Berklee College of Music by age 20 while singing in a campus gospel choir and performing show tunes on the Spirit of Boston cruise ship.

This episode follows the Susan Tedeschi Band from its 1993 formation to the gold-certified 1998 independent album Just Won’t Burn, a voice compared to Janis Joplin’s abandon and Bonnie Raitt’s control, and tours with Lilith Fair, B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and the Rolling Stones, where she barely broke even because she insisted on carrying a full band. It covers meeting Allman Brothers slide guitarist Derek Trucks in New Orleans in 1999, their 2001 marriage, the Soul Stew Revival, her 2002 tour with The Other Ones, and the 2010 decision to shelve both solo bands and form the 12-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band, whose debut Revelator won the 2012 Grammy for Best Blues Album. It closes with Layla Revisited with Trey Anastasio, the Berklee scholarship she helped arrange for Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, and her 2022 James Smithson Bicentennial Medal.

• How Broadway discipline and gospel improvisation combined into the structural framework of her voice
• Why she used Berklee for its mechanics of harmony and arrangement rather than its polish
• What opening for the Rolling Stones really cost her, and why she paid for a full band anyway
• How her vocals act as the gravitational center that anchors Derek Trucks’ sprawling slide guitar in a 12-piece band
• Why the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s collective touring model may be a blueprint for musicians in the streaming era