BIO

SUSAN TEDESCHI – JUST WON’T BURN (25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

BIO

Susan Tedeschi is one of the most celebrated blues and American roots musicians of her generation, and her unyielding commitment to her craft – both as a solo artist and in Tedeschi Trucks Band – has earned her multiple Grammy nominations and the adoration of audiences around the world.

But for Boston native Tedeschi, who began performing in plays and musicals at the age of five and in real bands by 13, such success was all the more surprising given how comparatively late in life she’d discovered blues as an art form while singing with friends at early ‘90s Boston-area jam sessions. Before that, there were a succession of formative experiences: a teenage group in Scituate with Terry Stebbins, which played yacht clubs and private parties; a high-school era combo with the Thompson Brothers, which played the prom; Ted Larkin’s The Smoking Section, which had a weekly gig at the Francis Cafe on Route 109; and a job as a singing waitress on the Spirit of Boston tourist cruise.

Buoyed by this supportive community of fellow musicians, Tedeschi eventually quit her high-paying but soul-draining gig in a top 40 wedding band, traded her trusty acoustic guitar for an electric, wood-shedded the work of Big Mama Thornton, Koko Taylor, Freddie King, and T-Bone Walker, and began garnering significant regional acclaim while playing live with an ever-changing cast of friends.

“If you’ve never seen one of Tedeschi’s concerts, you won’t appreciate the depth of one of the best new artists of the ‘90s,” raved Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White at the time. “When her band erupts and she starts to sing, her vocals seethe, swoop, and roar with enough sensual bluster to break the seals on whiskey bottles and tear the leaves from trees.”

It all coalesced with the 1998 release of her solo debut, Just Won’t Burn, on which Tedeschi put the wider music world on notice that she was a true force to be reckoned with. In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the album will be reissued in expanded form on Sept. 22 via Fantasy Records, complete with several previously unreleased studio and live tracks.

“Making Just Won’t Burn was a pivot,” Tedeschi says of the album, which features musicians such as guitarists Adrienne Hayes and Sean Costello, harmonica player Annie Raines, percussionist/songwriter Tom Hambridge, and keyboardist Tom West tackling her original songs in tandem with material popularized by Ruth Brown (“Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”), Junior Wells (“Little by Little”), and John Prine (“Angel From Montgomery”).

“All of a sudden, I was working with different groups of people, new musicians, new songwriting collaborators,” she adds. “We had no idea how it was going to turn out. I think the thing that held it all together was the blues. Blues is a language that I love. You can take it anywhere in the world and communicate with people, which isn’t necessarily true about other forms of music. And being a white artist in a black milieu, you just have to let the music speak.”

Speak it did, as Just Won’t Burn went platinum (a rare achievement for a blues-based album at that time) and earned Tedeschi a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 2000 (alongside the of-the-moment cast of Britney Spears, Macy Gray, Kid Rock, and Christina Aguilera). It would be the first of five Grammy nominations for Tedeschi as a solo artist, with each of her next three solo releases earning nods for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

“The way people react to Just Won’t Burn has always been heartwarming and surprising,” Tedeschi enthuses. “I used to get letters from a prisoner who identified with the songs and found hope in them, and then I started getting letters from the rest of the prisoners on the cell block because it was the only cassette they had.”

With the accolades came invitations to tour with the Rolling Stones, B.B. King, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan. Tedeschi performed at Lilith Fair with Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks, at VH-1’s “Concert for the Century,” where she met Bill & Hillary Clinton, and Farm Aid with Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews, Neil Young, and Steve Earle, which made a profound impact on her musically.

Even after 25 years, the past-decade plus of which have seen Tedeschi rise to even greater heights with her husband Derek Trucks in Tedeschi Trucks Band, Just Won’t Burn remains a touchstone of blues-based rock’n’roll. For the anniversary edition, Tedeschi unearthed a series of outtakes and unreleased cuts that widen the album’s scope, including two never-before-heard recordings (a cover of Koko Taylor’s “Voodoo Woman” and the Tedeschi original “Waste of Time”) and an alternate version of “Looking for Answers” tracked with Costello and a different rhythm section of drummer Mike Levesque and bassist Norm DeMora.

“I liked recording with those guys because we’d try different things,” she says. “Sean thought about his solo as if it was going to be played backwards, so he played it backwards in his mind and then we flipped the tape. It sounded weirdly amazing and cool. That was my first taste of experimenting like that in the studio. Back then, I didn’t know what was really going to fly. ‘Waste of My Time’ and ‘Looking for Answers’ let me try different approaches. It’s not all exactly what you think it might be.”

Also included are contemporary live renditions of “Looking for Answers” and the album’s title track performed by Tedeschi Trucks Band, demonstrating how Tedeschi’s music continues to grow and change. “It’s a classic blues tune, and it fits with all the blues-y rock stuff we play live,” Tedeschi says of “Looking for Answers.” “When Derek and I started dating, he was like, hey, you wrote a song in open tuning for slide? He plays in open tuning and is, as you know, the world’s best slide player, so he was like, we should do that song. It’s really fun to play and also timeless.”

“Sometimes when I look back on the 25 years since the release, I think about the places I’ve been and the adventures I’ve had, and I feel like Forrest Gump,” she continues. “I say, ‘No! You’re a baseball mom. You didn’t do all that!’ But I must have. The blues has its demands. You have to be honest — musically, emotionally, and personally — above everything else, and that can lead to some uncomfortable truths. But the blues hasn’t burned me. It hasn’t hurt me. It’s my main resource. I can express myself and get stuff out about my life – or, like B.B. always said, ‘whatever ails you.’ The blues got me here.”

Credits

ARTIST: Susan Tedeschi

TITLE: Just Won’t Burn (25th Anniversary)

LABEL: Fantasy Records

STREET DATE: September 22, 2023

Produced by Tom Hambridge

Co-Producer: Susan Tedeschi

Executive Producer: Richard Rosenblatt

Recorded by Sean Carberry at Rear Window Studio, Brookline, MA (1997)

Additional Recording and Mixing by Brian Capouch at Soundworks Studios, Watertown, MA (1997)

Mastered by Dr Toby Mountain at Northeastern Digital Recording, Southborough, MA (1997) and Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Sound, Nashville, TN (2023)

Assistant to Mr. Hambridge: Ducky Carlisle

“Rock Me Right” Recorded and mixed by Ducky Carlisle at Room 9 from Outer Space, Boston, MA

“It Hurt So Bad” Recorded and mixed by Ducky Carlisle at Room 9 from Outer Space, Boston, MA; Additional recording by Chris Rival at My Generation Studios, Somerville, MA

“Found Someone New” Produced by “Screaming Bird,” Susan Tedeschi and Tom Hambridge; Recorded and Mixed by Sean Carberry at Rear Window Studio, Brookline, MA

Tedeschi Trucks Band live tracks Produced by TBD (2023)

Tedeschi Trucks Band live tracks Recorded by Brian Speiser and Bobby Tis at The Beacon Theater, New York, NY (2023)

Tedeschi Trucks Band live tracks Mixed by Bobby Tis (2023)

CD Supervision: Bobby Tis (2023)

Photography: Ron Pownall and Jeff Bender

Package Design: Diane Menyuk (1998), Tommy Steele (2023)

(Possibly more credits – leave room)

Words by Ashley Kahn (2023)

Words by Susan Tedeschi, edited by Mike Mattison (2023)

Gordon Beadle appears courtesy of Bullseye Blues

Tom Hambridge plays D.W. Drums, Sabian Cymbals, and Vater Sticks

Annie Raines appears courtesy of Paul Rishell & Annie Raines

The Beacon Theater +xx UNION + Madison Square Garden Company

Special Thank You To

Mom, Dad, Jamie and Tammy, Rich, April and Autumn, all Tedeschi and Doherty relatives, Sean, T.H., Jim, Adrienne, Mike Levesque, Screaming Bird, Ian K., Tim Gearan, Gordon Beadle, Dave Bartlett, Rosy, Ducky (Room 9 from Outer Space), Brian and Rose at Soundworks, Chris Rival, Dr. Toby, Paul Rishell and Annie Raines, Monster Mike and Warren Grant, Lorne Entress and Milt Reder, Sean Carberry, Buck & Bird Taylor, Sam Veal and Springing the Blues, Buddy Fox, Mike and Brad and Manny’s Car Wash, Johnny D’s, Harper’s Ferry, Isaac Tigrett and Teo, Hot Tin Roof and Bucko, Miki Mulvehill, Ron Pownall, Kate Taylor and Charlie, Buck Shank, Nicole Page, Johnny and Barbara Hoy, Chantale Légaré and Jeremy Berlin, Deininger’s, Scammells, Taylors, Lally’s, Bob Vorel, the Hungry Tiger, Steve Walbridge, the Colonel, the Jivebombers.

For Your Personal Inspiration And Support

Irma Thomas, Etta James, Bob Marley, Toots Hibbert, Aretha Franklin, Freddie King, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Otis Rush, Ronnie Earl, Otis Clay, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Dennis Montgomery III, Orville Wright, Walter Beasley, Kenya Hathaway, Mahalia Jackson.

Dedicated to the memory of:

My Grandma Doherty, Cousin Kenny Ransom.

Artist Management: Andy Mendelsohn at Full Stop Management

Agent: Brian Greenbaum at CAA

susantedeschi.com

fantasyrecordings.com

℗ & © 2023 Susan Tedeschi. Under exclusive license to Fantasy Records. Manufactured for and Distributed by Concord, 10 Lea Avenue, Suite 300, Nashville, TN 37210. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. FAN02095

Rock Me Right (4:27)

(Tom Hambridge)

T.H. Tunes (ASCAP)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, colorforms guitar, outro solo

Sean Costello – rhythm guitar, solo

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

You Need to Be With Me (3:04)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, magnatone and rhythm guitar

Sean Costello – guitar solo

Adrienne Hayes – rhythm guitar

Tom West – B3 organ

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums, timbales, percussion

Little by Little (3:49)

(Junior Wells)

Bluesharp Music Co. (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, lead guitar

Annie Raines – harmonica

Adrienne Hayes – guitar

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

Buck and Bird Taylor – background vocals

It Hurt So Bad (4:49)

(Tom Hambridge)

T.H. Tunes (ASCAP)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals

Sean Costello – guitar

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

Gordon Beadle – tenor sax

Tino Barker – baritone sax

Tom West – piano

Found Someone New (2:20)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, piano

Mike Levesque – drums

Sean Costello – ratiug guitar

Norm “The Screaming Bird of Truth” DeMoura – bass

Looking For Answers (5:13)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, slide guitar

Adrienne Hayes – electric guitar

Ian Kennedy – fiddle

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

Can’t Leave You Alone (3:02)

(Adrienne Hayes)

Pink Lotus Music (ASCAP)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Adrienne Hayes – lead guitar

Tom West – B3 organ

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

Just Won’t Burn (4:46)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

Tom West – B3 organ

Mama, He Treats Your daughter Mean (4:43)

(Herbert Lance-Johnny Wallace-Charles Singleton)

Warsing Music (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Sean Costello – lead guitar

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

Angel From Montgomery (5:23)

(John Prine)

Sour Grapes Music, Walden Music (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Ian Kennedy – fiddle

Tim Gearan – slide guitar

Tom West – piano

Jim Lamond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums, tambourine, backup vocals

Friar’s Point (4:21)

(Susan Tedeschi-Tom Hambridge)

Purple Peace Wagon (BMI) / T. H. Tunes (ASCAP)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Sean Costello – guitar

Annie Raines – harmonica

Adrienne Hayes – guitar

Jim Laymond – bass

Tom Hambridge – drums

BONUS TRACKS

Looking For Answers (Alternate Take) (xx:xx)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon Publishing (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar, slide

Mike Levesque – drums

Norm “The Screaming Bird of Truth” DeMora – bass

Sean Costello – guitar

Voodoo Woman (Album Outtake) (xx:xx)

(Koko Taylor)

Eyeball Music (NS)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Jim Laymond – bass

Tom Hambride – drums

Adrienne Haynes – guitar

Annie Raines – harmonica

Waste Of Time (Album Outtake) (xx:xx)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon Publishing (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar, slide

Mike Levesque – drums

Norm “The Screaming Bird of Truth” DeMora – bass

Sean Costello – guitar

Looking For Answers (Live) – Tedeschi Trucks Band (xx:xx)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon Publishing (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Derek Trucks – guitar

Gabe Dixon – keys

Brandon Boone – bass

Tyler “Falcon” Greenwell – drums

Isaac Eady – drums

Recorded and Performed by Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Beacon Theatre in New York City on 10/6/22

Just Won’t Burn (Live) – Tedeschi Trucks Band (xx:xx)

(Susan Tedeschi)

Purple Peace Wagon Publishing (BMI)

Susan Tedeschi – vocals, guitar

Derek Trucks – guitar

Gabe Dixon – keys

Brandon Boone – bass

Tyler “Falcon” Greenwell – drums

Isaac Eady – drums

Kebbi Williams – saxophone

Ephraim Owens – trumpet

Elizabeth Lee – trombone

Recorded and Performed by Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Beacon Theatre in New

York City on 10/7/22

TRACK LIST:

Rock Me Right (4:27)

You Need to Be With Me (3:04)

Little By Little (3:49)

It Hurt So Bad (4:49)

Found Someone New (2:20)

Looking For Answers (5:13)

Can’t Leave You Alone (3:02)

Just Won’t Burn (4:46)

Mama, He Treats Your daughter Mean (4:43)

Angel From Montgomery (5:23)

Friar’s Point (4:21)

BONUS TRACKS

Looking For Answers (Alternate Take) (xx:xx)

Voodoo Woman (Album Outtake) (xx:xx)

Waste Of Time (Album Outtake) (xx:xx)

Looking For Answers (Live at the Beacon Theater, 10/06/2022) – Tedeschi Trucks Band (xx:xx)

Just Won’t Burn (Live at the Beacon Theater, 10/07/2022) – Tedeschi Trucks Band

LINER NOTES

It was early in April of 1995 that I first heard and witnessed the enormous talent of a young lady named Susan Tedeschi. So impressed was I by the emotional intensity and depth of her performance that Blues Revue ran an article on Susan the following July… a particularly noteworthy occurrence given the fact that she had no release on a label, no management, no booking agency and for that matter no clear career plan for the near or distant future.

What Susan Tedeschi did have was heart and a stage presence that was in direct contrast to her obvious youth. Here was one very pretty young lady who could metamorphose before your eyes into a helluva soulful blues singer. She had the uncommon ability to reach deep into her own and the audience’s soul, something I hadn’t experienced in a performer for a long time.

Those of us who have seen Susan’s live performances have waited nearly two and a half years for this special day, the day that you would hold in your hand a CD that accurately reflects Susan’s immense talents. Play this disc loud and often. Tell your friends about this young lady who is about to take the blues and pop world by storm. Tell ‘em that you heard her first and that you were there when she came out with her first hit record. After hearing Susan, you might also want to tell ‘em that she’s gonna be the biggest thing since Bonnie and Janis. And you wouldn’t be wrong!

–Bob Vorel, Publisher of Blues Revue Magazine

********

If you’ve never seen one of Tedeschi’s concerts, you won’t appreciate the depth of one of the best new artists of the ‘90s…when her band erupts and she starts to sing, her vocals seethe, swoop, and roar with enough sensual bluster to break the seals on whiskey bottles and tear the leaves from trees.

—Timothy White, Billboard Magazine

In January of 1999, Billboard editor Timothy White knew the music business and he knew what Susan Tedeschi was up against: boy bands, bad boys and girl singers, all offering polished versions of R&B styles. The world was swooning over newcomers like Britney Spears, Kid Rock, Christina Aguilera, and Macy Gray. Before the year was out, all four, plus Tedeschi, were nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy; Christina would take home the award. It should be noted that each of Tedeschi’s subsequent solo records were also Grammy nominated; in 2011 she achieved that distinction with the Tedeschi Trucks Band album Revelator.)

As White saw it, “in the uncertain, retrenching music-business climate of the late ‘90s, you’re bound to get the blues.” Tedeschi was a breath of fresh air and a rare thing: a blues devotee breaking into the mainstream. “If there’s any professional or personal justice in the world for a lonely pilgrim like Susan Tedeschi,” White added, “she won’t stay that way for long.”

White needn’t have worried—Just Won’t Burn proved to be Tedeschi’s ticket to the world. It established her nationwide: a strong, fully developed introduction with a bold sense of identity.

How strong? Strong enough to blast Tedeschi out of the blues scene up to the pop firmament, clinching her that Grammy nomination and by 2000, earning platinum certification for Just Won’t Burn—1 million units sold. Strong enough to launch a career trajectory that, as the new millennium arrived, landed Tedeschi on stadium stages, opening for the biggest of the big, from John Mellencamp and the Rolling Stones to Willie Nelson and the Allman Brothers. While opening a show for Bob Dylan in 1999 he invited her up to play guitar with him on several songs.

How strong? Strong enough to last. Twenty-five years after its release, Just Won’t Burn still sounds as explosive and ear-grabbing as it did when it first reached a national audience. It still merits celebration, with a story that deserves retelling.

Susan Tedeschi’s Just Won’t Burn was no rookie effort. It arrived in 1998 with a fully developed sound and bold sense of identity. (It was in fact her second studio recording but it served as her debut, the first to put her into people’s ears on a national level.) It was a strong, self-assured introduction, all things in proper balance, starting with Tedeschi’s voice: instantly recognizable in its clear-toned passion, combining grit and grace, while never overplaying its strengths.

While in sound and song choices, the album is clearly grounded in the electric blues tradition, it avoided the jukebox curse of being too devotional, or limited by old formulas. Junior Wells’ “Little by Little,” Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” and even John Prine’s back porch ballad “Angel from Montgomery” are recast by Tedeschi with a maturity that doesn’t lose the feel or the bite of the original tunes.

Tedeschi’s own compositions reveal the extent of her research into a wide swath of roots Americana. She echoes New Orleans R&B on what proved to be the album’s runaway radio hit, “It Hurt So Bad,” pushing her pleas to the extreme, and refusing to end quietly. She pulls from Memphis soul on the title track, adding her tasteful, trebly guitar lines, and weaves in a reggae feel on “You Need to Be with Me.” There’s the four-on-the-floor energy “Rock Me Right,” the album’s kick-off single, and on the more modern rocker “Can’t Leave You Alone” (written by guitarist Adrienne Hayes.) “Looking for Answers,” with its dreamy, floating effect and distorted slide guitar (check the precision in the doubling of voice and guitar!) offers an accurate glimpse of a stylistic feel she’d later explore with the Tedeschi-Trucks Band. Even the album’s closing number, “Friar’s Point”—name-checking many of Tedeschi’s heroes and favorite haunts—rises above the 12-bar, heavy-backbeat trope and makes sense in the mix.

Any anniversary calls for gifts, and this edition of Just Won’t Burn doesn’t disappoint. Included are three alternate takes from the original sessions, as well as two unreleased tracks: “Voodoo Woman” and “Waste of My Time.” Proof of the music’s staying power can be found in two other lagniappes: live performances of “Just Won’t Burn” and “Looking for Answers” from 2022 by Tedeschi-Trucks Band, the 12-piece group (“family” is a more accurate term) she now co-leads with husband Derek Trucks.

It’s said that great music lasts. Of course, it does, but it should do more than that. It should grow and deepen over time and reveal more of its essence as time passes (insert wine metaphor here.) Then again, maybe it’s us doing the growing. As the years recede and life teaches us to listen, we learn and return to music we’ve enjoyed with an ability to appreciate all that it may have wanted us to hear the first time around. Many albums don’t live up to that test, but some do. We call them classics. We recognize them as we do old friends. Just Won’t Burn is one of those friends.

—Ashley Kahn, February 2023

********

The way people react to “Just Won’t Burn” has always been heartwarming and surprising. I used to get letters from a prisoner who identified with the songs and found hope in them; and then I started getting letters from the rest of the prisoners on the cell block because it was the only cassette they had. Radio executives who assured me “they’d heard it all”, told me they had to pull over to the side of the road when the song “Rock Me Right” came on the radio. One time the Hell’s Angels called up to let me know, “Hey, we’ve got your back.” Some poor woman’s car caught on fire and the only thing that didn’t burn, strangely, was her “Just Won’t Burn” cd…

“Just Won’t Burn” might seem like the album that started it all for me, but really it was a record in transition. I’d already put out a record with my band, “Better Days” and we paid our dues on the resurgent Boston blues scene. I’d grown up listening to local folk and blues artists, but I really learned my craft playing with female PLAYERS like Adrienne Hayes (guitar) and Annie Raines (harmonica)at Johnny D’s in Somerville. We learned the ups and downs of the business and life together. Women musicians helped make me who I am and gave me the confidence to continue when they moved on. They helped me build a foundation that kept me going.

Making “Just Won’t Burn” was a pivot. All of a sudden I was working with different groups of people, new musicians, new songwriting collaborators. We had no idea how it was going to turn out. I think the thing that held it all together was the blues. Blues is a language that I love. You can take it anywhere in the world and communicate with people, which isn’t necessarily true about other forms of music. And being a white artist in a black milieu, you just have to let the music speak.

The success of “Just Won’t Burn” was a beautiful surprise. But the hype around the record confused things. Almost overnight I was competing for the Best New Artist Grammy with huge pop stars. Now, the blues has universal appeal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean mass appeal. Taking that ride, I realized it’s important to stick to what you love and that there really are no rules.

Sometimes when I look back on the 25 years since the release of “Just Won’t Burn,” I think about the places I’ve been and the adventures I’ve had, and I feel like Forrest Gump. I say, “No! You’re a baseball Mom. You didn’t do all that!” But I must have. The blues has its demands. You have to be honest  — musically, emotionally, and personally — above everything else, and that can lead to some uncomfortable truths. But the blues hasn’t burned me, it hasn’t hurt me. It’s my main resource. I can express myself and get stuff out about my life. Or like BB always said, “Whatever ails you.” The blues got me here.

–Susan Tedeschi Trucks, 2023