photo credit: Linda Wolf

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“It was such a monumental 72 hours,” Derek Trucks says of three-day stretch at the 2015 LOCKN’ festival, in which he and his wife Susan rehearsed and performed with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, alongside Leon Russell and other alumni of the 1970 Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, paying tribute to the original celebrated run. “The whole thing feels like one piece to me. There are certain moments with Leon that come to mind—just the way he interacted with me and Sue. He was really incredible to the both of us and I think we were kindred spirits in the way we could tackle a big old project like that and have it not be overwhelming. You just kind of barrel through it and deal with all the personalities. I think he kind of got a kick out of the way the whole thing ran.”

At times over the course of that evening, upwards of 20 people took the stage. Beyond the 12-piece TTB and the Mad Dog alums (such as Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, Chris Stainton and Pamela Polland) other guests included Warren Haynes, Chris Robinson, John Bell, Doyle Bramhall II, Anders Osborne, and Dave Mason (who was not a member of the original tour, although his song “Feelin’ Alright” was part of the repertoire, sung to powerful effect by Mad Dogs frontman Joe Cocker).

The September 2015 performance has just been released by Fantasy Records as Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited (LIVE AT LOCKN’). Looking back, Trucks reflects, “The interactions with Leon were really incredible, and as for our band, I think it was a bit of a turning point for us. We had learned this whole catalog of another band’s music that we really admired. Then we went in there and it really felt like home. There was so much mutual respect bouncing around, so that when the band walked out of there, I think we had a different swagger.

“The torch is never passed. That’s not really how it works, but you do occasionally step into a situation where you go, ‘Oh, we’re on the right track and what we’re doing is resonating with people that we care about. We’re not just preaching to the choir, our heroes are on board.’ It doesn’t always work out that way but this was a special moment.”

Thinking back on the performances and the mix of personalities that night, the whole thing felt equally loose and tight at various moments, without tipping too far in either direction. What do you recall in that regard?

There were a lot of different backgrounds with that many people on stage, including all those people from the original band 40 years prior. It started really good, and I was a little nervous. I was like, “Oh shit, when is it going to go off the rails?” [Laughs.] But then at some point it just felt inevitable. It felt like, “Oh, this thing is going to go, this thing is going…”

When we went into it, we don’t know which original members were going to show up in what shape or when was the last time they even listened to that music. We didn’t quite know how they felt about it. So we went into it as a band going, “We’re going to learn this shit cold. So no matter what happens, at least it’s going to sound this good before whenever we add to it.”

But when we rolled into the rehearsal. I think everybody had that same feeling. Everyone rolled in ready to make it happen. That definitely doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you get people rolling in kind of to check the boxes and do their thing. But this really meant a lot to everybody involved—the original members, especially.

We’ve been a part of a lot of shows and this thing kind of stands on its own. The timing could only have happened when it happened and it could have only happened with our band and Leon and that group. It was really a unique thing and we feel very lucky that we were a part of it when we were.

The concept originated in late 2013 with the idea of Tedeschi Trucks Band backing Joe Cocker, before he took ill. How close did that come to fruition?

I feel like it was either booked or really close to finalized. We had a few discussions through email about what tunes we were going to do. So it was well on its way to happening and then he got sicker. Then all of a sudden that show was off and a few months later he passed [in December 2014].

That’s when the idea came up for us to do a tribute to Joe. But I remember thinking that although we were big fans, I never played with him, I never met him. Maybe we had a conversation on the phone, but it didn’t feel like that was our tribute to do. I feel like you need to be closer to the source.

When the idea came up for the Mad Dogs thing that felt different because we knew Leon and we had a real relationship with him at that point. So if it was Leon and the Mad Dogs, then that would be a proper tribute to Joe because that was his band and those people knew and loved him.

At the time I wasn’t aware that Alicia Chakour’s father had played with Joe and was even his band leader for a while. So there were more connections than I even realized.  

While you were rehearing at the Carriage House two days prior to your set, there was a weather event—a microburst—elsewhere on site. As a result, the first day of the festival was canceled. Although your set wasn’t scheduled until day two, do you recall any concerns about what might happen to your performance?

I just remember leaving that rehearsal and everyone was just buzzing because it was 10 times more incredible than many of us thought possible. The whole vibe was really celebratory—knowing we still had a lot of work to do to make the show happen, but it felt like, “Oh, this has unlimited potential.” Then getting in the bus to head back to the hotel and hearing that all hell had broken lose. Somebody showed us some footage of stuff flying around, and there was brief talk of moving the show, but then it was like, “No, the show’s going to be fine. They just have to shut down certain areas.” But yeah, there was definitely some panic in the air there for a minute, which was a huge contrast to the room we just walked out of, where it was like, “No, everything is great.”

photo credit: Dean Budnick

The microburst was so localized that the sun was shining outside the rehearsal space.  

Yeah, it felt totally fine. That might have been some of Leon’s magic. [Laughs.]

In watching Leon from afar that weekend, he sometimes seemed restrained and self-contained. However, I know that folks who’ve worked with him have a different perspective. Can you talk a bit about how he carried himself as a person?

Leon is one of those guys like Gregg Allman or Dickey Betts, who were actual dyed-in-the-wool rock stars. Leon’s presence was just different. Even if you didn’t know anything about music or rock-and-roll, you would look at that dude and be like, “What does he know?” [Laughs.] He just had that presence. It could be a bit intimidating and he wouldn’t let everyone in. But once you knew him and you were within two or three feet of him, he’d crack a smile and then he would feel like the most wide-open person. The wheels were always turning with that dude. He was sharp as a tack.

Chris Stainton, who played in the Clapton band when I was there, and on some of the original Joe stuff, when he first saw Leon, he called him maestro. Almost all the original members called him maestro. He was that guy, and everyone listened to him. He was the final word with all of that.

He was always deferring to me but I told him, “Leon, this was your baby. If something comes up, just say the word.” He was like, “Nope, I did it the first time. This is all you, Mr. Trucks. I’m here if you need me.” So he’d defer to me but we all know that if Leon wanted an arrangement a certain way, that’s how we were going to do it. [Laughs.] It was very sweet of him to say that but there was never going to be an argument from me if Leon felt strongly about something musically. I’d be like, “Yeah, let’s do that.”

There are a number of people I’ve spoken with over the years, particularly those who came of age in the late 60s and early 70s—musicians and music fans alike—who place him on an elevated pedestal. To them, Leon is THE guy.

My mom was kind of like that growing up. I remember she would talk about Leon and Dave Mason that way. Dave was a stud too. I mean, he wrote some of those incredible tunes. But yeah, for a lot of people, Leon was the guy from that era. I meet people all the time now, especially since we’ve done this, who are just Leon heads.

I get it. I mean, Leon was that scene. He could do anything. He could sing, he could play, he could arrange, he could organize people. He had all the vibe too. He had it all.

Based on what I’ve read, it seems like at some point it almost came too easy for him and he wanted to push himself in a way that ultimately distanced him from the mainstream music culture.

Leon and Kofi [Burbridge] remind me of each other in the way they heard music and how completely they heard it. Some people are good at their instruments and they can sometimes step out of that and hear the whole thing, but generally they’re thinking from their perspective and not the whole perspective. But Leon kind of heard it all at all times. Kofi was that way, too. They could play anything. They could hear any changes. They knew the songbook. It’s kind of unfair. [Laughs.]

I also think that the way the Mad Dogs tour ended kind of spun Joe [Cocker] out a little bit emotionally. He didn’t perform for a few years after that, and the press kind of turned against Leon for career profiteering or saying that he had stolen Joe’s thunder. Some of this is from the movie that Jesse Lauter did [Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen] and also from reading up on the history, as well as meeting people who were in that camp. I don’t even entirely know what all that means but it really hurt Leon. I think he was waiting for Joe or somebody to come and set the record straight, because that’s not how he felt it went.

It certainly was not a malicious thing on Leon’s part. He was on top of the world, and that’s when people started taking shots at him. He was at the peak of his power and people were looking for reasons to knock him off. I think that took a bit of a toll on him.

You mentioned that you weren’t entirely sure which of the Mad Dogs would show up. How far in advance did you confirm who was going to sing each tune?

There was some of it where we were like, “We’ve got to feel this out” but we had it pretty buttoned down. Before we showed up, we knew that we were going to ask Warren to sing “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” and obviously Dave was going to sing his song “Feelin’ Alright.” I had also reached out to Chris Robinson who seemed like a natural Joe Cocker and he had a few he wanted to do. Rita Coolidge had a couple tunes that she wanted to do coming into it. Then there were also some tunes we worked up that Sue immediately consumed alive, and we knew those would be great.

So the game plan was there, but there were a few mid-rehearsal moments that happened and we were like, “Oh, that’s too good to not do.” Claudia Lennear had said, “I’ve always wanted to sing a duet with Leon” and “Girl From the North Country” was one that she’d always wanted to do. So we worked it up as a band, then we took a little break and she started singing and Leon started playing. It was just the two of them, and immediately it felt important. I remember when they finished, being like, “If you guys are comfortable, that’s the way we need to do it. That’s the moment. We don’t need to distract with any of us knuckleheads up here. It’s just the two of you.” So that became a special moment.

Some of it was just following what needed to happen.

You started mixing this album in the early days of COVID. What was your initial reaction to what you were hearing?

That was the first thing me and Bobby [Tis] did back then because we needed a task. We got out to the studio, we had the multi-tracks for Mad Dogs and we started mixing it. We wanted to do something that was inspiring and fun and musical. There were no gigs, so we had time. We were like, “Let’s just see what we can do with these tapes.”

Part of me was thinking, “There’s no way it’s going to sound as good as it felt. We’re going to get out there and it’s going to be a lot messier than we thought it was, even though the spirit was incredible.” Then we got out there and we were like, “Wait, this is really good.” Then with the next tune we were like, “Oh shit, this is really good.” It just kind of kept surprising us as we went.

You never know. Sometimes it’s hard to capture the energy in the room live on the microphone. But with this one, I think we captured a lot of it, at least.

photo credit: John Patrick Gatta

Was there a particular tune that was maybe something of a sleeper until you rediscovered it?

I mean, it was special at the time, but when Leon did “The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen” at the end of the set before the encore, that was pretty amazing. It was also amazing to listen back to it because Leon was gone by this point. It was the same with hearing Chuck Blackwell play drums who had passed and also Kofi. There were some moments when Kofi and Leon were trading where we just soloed up the pianos and we were thinking, “How fucking cool is that? You’ve got Chris Stainton, Kofi Burbridge and Leon Russell all playing at the same time.” So some of that stuff was pretty emotional to dig into. But Leon doing “The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen” in that moment felt like a pretty badass victory lap all those years later.

There was something about that because we didn’t rehearse it. We didn’t even talk about it until we did the big circle. They did it in the movie and somebody in the original band, maybe Pamela Polland, said that we should get a big old circle together before the gig. Then after we did that, Chris Robinson came over to me and said, “Hey man, I saw Leon a year or two ago, and he did ‘The Ballad of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen.’ I bet he could do it tonight.” We were walking to the stage and I was like, “Well I’ll go ask him.”

So I went up to Leon and said, “Hey, I know it’s the last minute, but Chris mentioned he heard you perform this. Would you be into doing it? Maybe we could end the set with it and then come back?” He just looked up and was like, “Yeah, I could do that. That’s fine.” [Laughs.]

I remember running to the stage manager and whoever else I could find and being like, “All right, change of plans. When the time comes, let’s get a microphone and just put a spotlight on it for Joe. This will be one of the moments of the night.” When it happened, I don’t think half the band even knew it was going to happen. It was a great moment and I was also shocked by how many people in the crowd knew the lyrics.

photo credit: Dean Budnick

The music as a whole was joyous but there was also some gravitas there as well. A few moments felt a bit heavy, in a good way.

Leon and the original members were unpacking a lot. That was happening while the rehearsals were going on and while the show was going on—way more than I knew at the time. I knew some of the story, but after Jesse did the movie and really dug into the story, and getting to know everybody better, I think it was super cathartic for them. I mean, it was for us, and we didn’t even have all those knots to untie.

Rita and Leon had a thing, and then at some point it blew up. There’s a really powerful moment in the movie where she was singing a song in rehearsal. It wasn’t quite a duet, but it was pretty much just Leon playing and her singing. Then at the end she looks over at him and she’s like, “I loved you, Leon. I loved you.” You could tell it was real.

There were some real emotions being dealt with when that thing went down. A lot of that was lost on most of us. We didn’t know all of that history at the time. So there was a lot of energy in the room and on that stage, but the joy of being back together and playing music trumped any of the complicated stuff.

Knowing some of Leon’s camp after that, I just remember how happy they were. They felt like Leon he had a little more pep in his step after that. I forget how long it was until he passed, maybe a year later, but during that last bit, he was out there with kind of a renewed energy.

I think he needed that. I think sometimes we don’t realize how much we need to dive back into things that were a huge part of our lives. Sometimes you leave them in the rear-view and you think that’s it, but they’re still there. You’ve got to tackle ’em.

I’m pretty sure that the first song we played in the rehearsal was “With A Little Help.” We had done our homework because we did not want to disappoint these legends and heroes of ours and people that we hadn’t met yet. So we came in pretty solid, and I remember looking back and seeing this reaction from  Bobby Torres, the original percussionist. At first he looked upset and I was thinking, “Shit, did we miss the mark?” Then I was like, “Oh no, that’s a different emotion. That’s ‘Holy shit, I never thought I would feel this again.’” It was intense and sometimes you can misinterpret that. But it was joy and it was tears of experiencing a very powerful thing that was happening right then and now.

That tour was a peak moment for a lot of them. It was over the top. It was some of the best rock-and-roll ever played and recorded. They were a part of an incredible band. They were like the Allman Brothers at their best. These were bands that you did not want to go on after. I can’t imagine there were five bands who would want to go on after that group when they were locked and loaded.

I first saw the Mad Dogs & Englishmen film as a midnight movie at a little art house theater when I was growing up. You couldn’t otherwise find it in the world and they may have been screening it illegally at the time. I was a teenager and I can remember having this reaction that altered my perception of what live music could be. I’d attended a few shows by that point but nothing that really felt dynamic and in the moment. But with Mad Dogs, it was like, “Ohhh, now I get it. This is what live music is. This is what it offers.”

I have chills as you’re saying that because me and Sue had a similar feeling when we saw the film at home and we were putting our band together. It was part of the reason we decided to go with a big band. I felt that energy with the Allman Brothers when we had a horn section—”Fuck yeah, this is incredible!”

When you see that, it almost seems like it’s a bygone era and it can’t happen now. There’s this sense of, “Man, I wish I could have seen it when it was that good.” So being a part of that show, there were moments where I was like, “Oh, shit! This is it! This is the spirit!”

It was never going to be the same as it was but that was the juice. There were moments that night that could have held up with just about anything. There was a lot of power on that stage.

At some point after LOCKN’ Leon wrote some songs for Susan. Did any of those find their way out in the world in some form?

I think a lot of those songs ended up on the last record he did.

He had a beautiful connection with Sue. He loved Sue and where she came from musically. There was some gospel background stuff that they would naturally connect on and you could just see him light up. It was really amazing to watch.

About three or four months after LOCKN’ we did a show with him and we were hanging on the bus. He played some of the tunes for Sue, then he sent the disc to our house. He would call and ask what she thought about certain lyrics.

I also remember getting this package in the mail. When I opened it, there was this big metal art piece with all these different instruments. It had a note from Leon that said, “Feel free to throw this in your junk room if you don’t have a place for it. But I was walking by this shop in Memphis, saw it and thought of you guys.” I was like, “How fucking cool is that?” [Laughs.]

So I imagine you found a place for it?

It’s up at our farm in Georgia.

You mentioned that you came off that show in 2015 with the wind in your sails. Your lineup has shifted slightly since then but what would you say is the sweet spot—however you define it—for the current version of Tedeschi Trucks Band?

I think there’s a lot of joy in playing and being out on the road. We’ve all been at it so long and that really makes all the difference. You need to enjoy the process and you need to enjoy the grind because it’s what we do. I think we realize that there are some things that we can do really well if we just put in the time and energy.

One of those things is writing tunes together. So we do that whenever we get a chance. We try not to wear it out because you can visit the well too often, but when we get a chance to get together and do that, it’s been amazing. We have a record we just finished. We recorded maybe 17 new tunes and it’s the best group of songs we’ve ever had.

When we recorded I Am The Moon, this version of the band had just formed. So when we got back in the studio to do some writing, it was the first time we had done that since the band had been on the road, gotten to know each other and turned into an actual living breathing band. Before that we had a record and a concept but we hadn’t toured because of the pandemic. So yeah, it’s really fun.

In the early years, you write a good song or two and then it’s like, “Shit, I wonder if that’s all we got. I wonder if we’ll be able to get back to that.” [Laughs.] Now it feels like we’re in a really prolific time of songwriting and creativity with the band. That’s a good place to be. I think everyone trusts that we can kind of do anything we want if we put in a little time. That’s a rare thing. It takes a long time to get there and trust that.

I mean, there’s a core of the band that’s been together for a while. Me and Mike [Mattison] are going on 24 years, and Sue and Falcon [Tyler Greenwell] have been together for a similar length of time. Kebbi and Mark Rivers have been there since the drop.

So there’s a core of the band that knows how to move and operate. It’s also nice having a certain kind of energy—I don’t want to say new blood because we’re five, six years into it, but that’s new to us. We’re almost crossing generations at this point. It’s weird being the old guy in the band. [Laughs.]

Before we wrap it up, I know that plenty of folks would love to hear about your experience playing Jerry Garcia’s Travis Bean guitar for a couple songs each night at Red Rocks in early August.

That instrument had a real spirit to it, and it was really fun to play. Some instruments just have a sound. I’m not the most versed in Jerry world like a lot of people are, but I immediately heard it and it made me want to play like him. [Laughs.] I think about it a lot now since I’ve done it.

I guess the musician finds the instrument, the instrument finds the musician and there’s a thing that happens. Jerry imprinted something on that guitar. It had that sound, man.

I’ve only heard that a few times. I remember the first time playing one of Duane’s guitars. It wasn’t the Goldtop, it was one of Galadrielle’s Duane guitars, one of the Bursts where I threw it down on the bridge pickup and it just barked. I was like, “Holy shit, I know that sound!” [Laughs.] That was really fun and inspiring.

Finally, September 19 will be the fifth annual Kofi Burbridge Day of Service. Can you talk about how that’s evolved and what it represents to you?

It’s incredible what the Kofi Day of Service turned into. I’m always seeing the shirts that we give out when people volunteer. We’re up to over 20 cities at this point. It’s soup kitchens or it’s planting gardens in communities that need them. It’s an incredible thing and there have been a few times where we’ve done it as a band—we’ve been on the road and we’ve gone to the closest spot we can find. We’ve also done it at home and it’s awesome.

Every time we leave that day, wherever we are, there’s just a real feeling of, “Man, we should just do this more often.” It’s an awesome thing. I love that people have come out for it and that it’s grown. Every year it’s gotten bigger and people put a lot of time and energy into it. It’s a great way to remember somebody by doing something good in their honor. It’d be a better place if we did more of that.

I also love that it kind of started organically. We had had the idea and did it in a few cities, then through the fans it just started growing. Now we make sure that they’re all connected and every year it grows a little. I see one of those t-shirts or the hats at every show we play. They just say Kofi. It’s pretty rad.

The spots are limited and most of the locations have waiting lists long in advance.

Oh yeah, they’re always telling us, “Guys, you better sign up and get in. We’re filling it up.” I’m like, “Please, save us a spot.” [Laughs.]