Blue Notes: The Tedeschi Trucks Band

It hadn't occurred to me until after my telephone interview with Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, but the obvious antecedent to the Tedeschi Trucks Band, which will play Singapore as part of the Timbre Rock & Roots Festival on March 21, is Delaney and Bonnie and Friends.

That earlier husband-and-wife team fronted a band playing a potent mixture of blues, rock, gospel and soul which, for a while, seduced four of the highest-profile guitarists of the late 1960s - Duane Allman, Dave Mason, George Harrison and Eric Clapton - into touring with them as sidemen. Throw in slide guitar virtuoso Trucks' penchant for jazz and Indian ragas, and that's pretty much the musical territory that the 11-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band cover.

Trucks himself is in many ways Allman's musical heir. His actual family connection to the original line-up of the Allman Brothers Band, of which he is now a member, is through his uncle, drummer Butch Trucks, but in his own highly individual style Trucks now plays many of the parts Allman created more than 40 years ago.

He also stepped into Allman's shoes in a recent incarnation of the Eric Clapton band which took the 1970 Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album, on which Allman and Clapton had sparred, as its core repertoire. He was with that line-up when it played Hong Kong in 2007.

Trucks' slide guitar playing owes as much to John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar as to Allman and Elmore James, and also to the soul and gospel influences which have shaped his wife's emotionally charged vocals. "Derek playing the slide emulates the human voice a lot. When people ask me why my husband doesn't sing, I say 'listen again'. He sings every day on slide," says Tedeschi.

Tedeschi and Trucks until 2010 fronted their own bands, but while both continue to guest on other people's projects and Trucks retains his Allman Brothers Band membership, both say this joint venture is now the major focus of their creative energies.