Susan Tedeschi Brings the Tedeschi Trucks Band (and Her Signature Telecaster) to Boston

Photo by David McClister

In 1993, Susan Tedeschi spotted her dream guitar on the racks at Cambridge Music Center: a teal Fender American Standard Telecaster. She went ahead and bought it, becoming the first electric that she’d ever bought herself. A true Boston local, she had spent her teenage years in the Norwell High School jazz band and her college years at Berklee, and now she was sitting in at the weekly blues jams at Johnny D’s in Somerville. To get up to speed, she spent her days buying blues records at Stereo Jack’s (T-Bone Walker and Big Mama Thornton were formative purchases) and learning how to sing and perform as many songs as she could, setting in motion a chain of events the singer and guitarist never could have imagined at the time.

Blues “was this beautiful music that was a mix of folk music and gospel music,” Tedeschi says now. “And so I fell in love with it. That’s also when I started playing electric guitar.”

With her powerfully soulful voice, Tedeschi took second place at the International Blues Challenge the following year. Her 1998 debut album, Just Won’t Burn, eventually went platinum, earning her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and in 1999, she was the opening act for the Allman Brothers Band, which featured an astonishingly versatile and lyrical guitarist named Derek Trucks. They fell in love, got married, had two kids, and after a decade of leading their separate bands, joined forces in 2010 as the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band has since become a musical juggernaut, a Grammy-winning 12-person group that sells out venues nationwide, drawing in audiences hungry for their rich, nourishing stew of southern rock, blues, funk, and New Orleans jazz. They have recorded five acclaimed studio albums—including the 2022 four-LP masterpiece I Am The Moon—and their reputation for uplifting revival-style concerts has resulted in sold-out arenas and theaters nationwide. This fall, they’re coming to MGM Music Hall at Fenway on October 1, followed by the Wang Theatre on October 4 and 5. Tedeschi will be there with her trusty guitar, which has now been autographed by such legends as B.B. King, Willie Nelson, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. It’s become such an iconic totem, in fact, that just this June, Fender released an updated model in its trademark “Caribbean Mist” hue called the Susan Tedeschi Telecaster.

“It’s pretty surreal,” Tedeschi says. “I didn’t really have aspirations to be some huge rock star or anything. I just wanted to make people happy through music and someday be a mom, and I lucked out. I have beautiful kids, and my husband and I have been together for 25 years now. We’ve had an incredible life.”

First published in the print edition of the September 2024 issue as part of Fall Preview with the headline, “Keep on Truckin’.”