Tedeschi Trucks Band releasing 4 new albums this summer. Their inspiration? The same poem behind a Clapton classic

Jacksonville's Tedeschi Trucks Band found inspiration in a centuries-old Persian love story for its new album.

And the album after that. The next one, too. Oh, and a fourth one as well.

The band, led by the husband-and-wife team of slide guitarist Derek Trucks and guitarist/singer Susan Tedeschi, is releasing four albums this summer, one a month. "I Am the Moon: Episode I. Crescent" was released on June 3. "I Am The Moon: Episode II. Ascension" is scheduled to come out on July 1, followed by "I Am The Moon: Episode III. The Fall" on July 29 and "I Am The Moon: Episode IV. Farewell" on Aug. 26.

They're all based on "Layla and Majnun," an ancient tale first recorded by 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi. It's the story of a man who becomes so obsessed with the local beauty Layla that friends label him a madman. Layla's father refuses to let his daughter marry a lunatic, so they live their lives apart. The story has been the inspiration for dozens of films and plays and at least one opera.

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It was also the inspiration for "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs," the 1971 album by Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominoes. That album has special meaning to the Tedeschi Trucks Band — Trucks was named for the band, and Tedeschi was born on the day the album came out. The band was joined by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio at a 2019 festival in Virginia, where they played the "Layla" album start to finish. A live recording, "Layla Revisited: Live at Lock'n," was released in 2021.

That was certainly on the minds of the band's songwriters when the pandemic shut down the music business for more than a year. They kept busy, working on the "Layla" recordings and playing a series of streaming "Fireside Sessions" concerts that fans could watch online. Singer Mike Mattison had read "Layla and Majnun" and suggested that everyone else give it a try.

"We were all just kind of, early in the pandemic, stuck at home and trying to figure out ways to be productive," Trucks said. "Mike had idea of everyone digging into the same source material, as a thought exercise."

For the "I Am the Moon" project, Tedeschi Trucks flipped the perspective on the legend, telling it from Layla's point of view, rather than the madman's.

"We had just finished rehearsing and performing 'Layla' at the Lock’n Festival," Mattison said via email from Europe. "I knew the record, but had never really dug in to the lyrics. It was great to have an excuse to really digest the whole thing. There’s a lot of yearning and heartache from the dude’s perspective on that album, but it seemed a little 'one note,' if you will. I thought: I wonder what’s really going on in the actual poem?"

Once that decision was made, band members started gathering at Swamp Raga Studio, behind Trucks' and Tedeschi's house in Jacksonville.

"That was kind of the lightbulb moment," Trucks said. "That just turned into a whole thing. Once we were were able to get people (Covid) tested and down here, we created a safe space in the studio and had everyone living in the house. This thing started feeding itself, had its own little gravity."

They weren't necessarily making a record, Trucks said. More like working on songs and keeping busy until they could return to the road. But then the songs really started to pile up.

"When we start recording, we often go back into the listening room and listen back at what we have," Trucks said. "When we started getting to 20, 22, 24 songs, we thought this was too much for a record but we kept going."

In the end, they had 24 new songs connected in a story arc that broke easily into four parts, each between 30 and 40 minutes — the perfect length for a two-sided vinyl album. That's no coincidence for the old-school band, which recorded the albums on an old analog mixing board that once belonged to British rockers the Kinks.

"I really love listening to vinyl for that reason, because of the length of each side," Trucks said. "You can only cram about 16 or 18 minutes on a side."

The albums also serve as an introduction of keyboardist/singer Gabe Dixon to the band's fans. Dixon joined the band in 2019, but hadn't appeared on any studio recordings prior to the release of the first "I Am the Moon" album. He wrote and shares vocals with Tedeschi on "I Am the Moon," a standout track from the first record.

"When he came up with the tune 'I Am the Moon,' that’s when things really started to take shape in my head," Trucks said. "Susan fell in love with the tune. She’d walk around the house with a guitar for months, singing that song."

The song has the potential to be a hit single, something Trucks said he's not sure the music industry is ready for. "I feel like if 'Midnight in Harlem' (from the band's 2011 debut) wasn’t a hit, I don’t know what should be. But that never changes the way we make our music."

Dixon, who doubles as one of the opening acts on the band's upcoming Wheels of Soul summer tour, also proves to be a good singer, giving the 12-piece band five strong voices. .

"Gabe’s a tremendous singer blessed with the twin powers of versatility and a distinctive style," Mattison said. "His range happens to be one we’re missing, so it works out perfectly. He’s actually singing a lot of back up vocals on this as well."

The real tests for the songs will come when the band hits the road for its summer tour, which opens June 24 at Daily's Place in Jacksonville. The band has never played any of the new songs for a live audience, and Trucks said it will be interesting to see how they are received. "We haven’t played any of this stuff live because we've been saving it for the records," he said. "You never really know if a song is going to work live until you try it."

The band's songwriters brought more songs to the table than the band could use, but Trucks and Mattison both said that was not a problem. Everyone in the Tedeschi Trucks Band also has a solo career or is in another band, so the band was able to pick the songs that best fit this project and leave the rest for solo albums. Mattison said that's the way it's always worked with this band.

"I just write for myself," he said. "I’m lucky because I have my own band, Scrapomatic, and I also do my own solo Mike Mattison records, so if material doesn’t seem to be a fit for the TTB, I always have other venues."

The records will come out during the tour. Trucks said fans attending Wheels of Soul shows this summer will only hear songs that have already been released — fans at the tour-opening Jacksonville show, for instance, will only hear songs from the first "I Am the Moon" record. The setlist will change as the tour goes along and new tunes are introduced. Mattison said there are songs on the later records he's looking forward to performing.

"It would be almost impossible to get 24 or so songs up to performance level at the same time," Mattison said. "I’m looking forward to playing some of the bluesier stuff that Susan wrote and some of the more orchestral-sounding numbers."

The band never plays the same set of songs two nights in a row anyway, Trucks said, so it's not that big of a change. What might change is the band's longstanding practice of including a handful of "cover" songs from other artists in its setlist.

"We’ve always enjoyed throwing tunes in just to keep us interested," Trucks said. "But we've never dropped 24 new tunes into the well. The more tunes you write, the more you want to play them. We might get to a spot where we don’t do covers as often."

Short films for each album — for each song, actually — are being released to the band's Youtube channel a few days before the album release. Trucks said the idea is to create a communal experience, where fans can all listen to the music at the same time, similar to the Fireside Sessions live shows the band streamed during the pandemic.

Tedeschi Trucks Band

With Los Lobos and the Gabe Dixon Band

7 p.m. Friday at Daily's Place

$45.75-$85.75

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville's Tedeschi Trucks Band releasing 4 new albums