Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Tempdrom, Berlin – seven things we learned.

Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Tempdrom, Berlin

Photo generously provided by Holger Ott

1. A big band of 12 world class musicians is a truly wonderful thing.

2. The E Street Band isn’t the only one with a cool, long curly haired saxophonist. Kebbi Williams sprang into action straightaway on the first song, Don’t Know What it Means and just got better as the evening went on.

3. The drum solo is not a thing of the past. Particularly when you’ve got TWO top notch drummers. Tyler Greenwell and J. J. Johnson drove the music forward, with an uncanny, in-sync timing.

4. The 8-12 minute song in a live setting is what concerts are made for. Seriously – so good were the song arrangements and so outstanding the musicianship, you were disappointed when each song came to a conclusion.

5. Derek Trucks is a peerless electric slide guitarist. Make that guitarist, full stop. Playing in open E tuning mostly, he makes that Gibson SG sing. And he doesn’t use a pick. And, given half a chance, he’ll throw in a few Indian-sounding licks.

6. Susan Tedeschi is an excellent guitarist but an INCREDIBLE singer. Blues, soul, Gospel, Americana – doesn’t matter, she’ll nail it. Make no mistake, this band is awesome – but Susan Tedeschi is the glue that holds it together, the voice that makes it all work.

7. If you have vocalists in the band like Mike Mattison, Mark Rivers and Alecia Chakour, you can afford to do a spiritual (Anyhow My Lord) right bang in the middle of the concert.

One final thing – from what I can gather, it’s a rather German thing to do – my camera was taken from me as I entered the Tempdrom. This I consider mean and just pointless. Never happened to me before in the UK, Ireland or US, for big name or less well known artists. Grrrr.

Here’s the setlist if you’re interested:

Set 1 (70 min)

1. Don’t Know What It Means
2. Keep On Growing (Derek and the Dominos cover)
3. Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen cover)
4. Laugh About It
5. Right on Time
6. Leaving Trunk (Sleepy John Estes cover)
7. Volunteered Slavery (Rahsaan Roland Kirk cover)
8. Ali (Miles Davis cover) (with Jeff Taylor)
9. Let Me Get By

Set 2 (85 min)

1. Anyhow My Lord (Spiritual) / Anyhow
2. Comin’ Home (Delaney & Bonnie cover)
3. Midnight in Harlem
4. Bound for Glory
5. Angel From Montgomery (John Prine cover)
6. Sugaree (Jerry Garcia cover)
7. How Blue Can You Get (B.B. King cover)
8. I Want More
9. Soul Sacrifice (Santana cover)

Encore:

1. Let’s Go Get Stoned (The Coasters cover)

 

Starvation Blues – Nobody’s Fault But Mine?

I had a conversation with some friends recently about the idea of personal responsibility and how that might apply depending on your circumstances, particularly if you happen to be poor. There’s no doubt that poverty limits your choices in life – most of us can’t imagine what it would be like to live, as so many do, on less than $2.50 a day. There are many things that can be said to be getting better in the world, but still – over three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. And at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

Hard to imagine getting by on that, isn’t it? Your options for food, shelter, clothing, healthcare – the basics – never mind things most of us take for granted, like leisure, career, travel, entertainment – become pretty limited. Not only that but the lives of the poor become very precarious, because of the environment in which they live (subject to problems associated with climate change or subject to violence, for example) and the ruthlessness at times of those who are more powerful and wealthy.

 

 

I reflected on the issue of personal responsibility a while ago in a post about Blind Willie Johnson’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine. What I didn’t consider in that post was a very important point made by Rishawn Biddle in an article provocatively entitled Beyond the Personal Responsibility Myth. Knowledge, he says, is power, but also “the most-crucial tool for acquiring the financial and social resources needed to emerge and stay out of poverty.” Unfortunately, says Biddle, many people in poverty do not have the education and hence knowledge required to make good decisions or to make the best of good decisions made, and become trapped by their own situation and bad decisions. He concludes, “ thinking that bad choices alone explain poverty is as wrongly simpleminded as believing that impoverished people are too tied down by structural inequities to emerge from their conditions.” It’s not a straightforward issue.

 

However we think personal responsibility fits into the picture, those of us who are better off can’t let ourselves off the hook. More than ever before, our lives are interconnected, the world is getting smaller, we have responsibility one for the other, and each of us can make a difference. I was reminded in thinking about all this of Eric Bibb’s song Connected. The song isn’t about rich and poor, but it’s a powerful reminder that we are all part of each other, we are all connected. Someone famously asked a long time ago, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” A while later, but still a couple of thousand years ago, the answer came: “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion – how can God’s love be in that person?”