Tedeschi Trucks Band have today announced their fifth and most ambitious recording project to date, with the upcoming release of the expansive I Am The Moon.
The Grammy-winning 12-piece founded and fronted by the husband and wife team of guitarist Derek Trucks and singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi will present I Am The Moon across four albums comprising 24 original songs, each album with a companion film.
The titles are I. Crescent, II. Ascension, III. The Fall, and IV. Farewell, to be released in successive months beginning with I. Crescent on June 3, when it will be available digitally and on CD. All vinyl configurations, including individual LPs and the 4-LP I Am The Moon Deluxe Box will be available on September 9.
I Am The Moon is inspired by a mythic Persian tale of star-crossed lovers, and emotionally driven by the isolation and disconnection of the pandemic era.Its two hours-plus of new music unfolds as a genre-defying tapestry that takes the band boldly into new creative territory. Watch a trailer here:
Trucks says that the decision to sequence and release I Am The Moon in four distinct episodes arrived “when we started thinking of records we love.” In particular, he cites the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967 LP Axis: Bold as Love. “It’s 36 minutes long. That’s the way to digest a record,” he reflects. I Am The Moon: The Film will therefore stand as immersive visual companions to each album, each one debuting three days before each audio release to give fans an early chance to digest each album in full, as a communal listening and viewing experience, via the TTB’s YouTube channel.
The films are directed by Alix Lambert and combine studio and performance footage with atmospheric photography and imagery to reflect the kaleidoscopic textures of the albums. The launch of the full project comes with the appearance of I Am The Moon: The Film – I. Crescent on Tuesday, May 31 at 6pm PST/9pm ET.
The ‘I Am The Moon’ schedule
After the first film and album, the release schedule features the film premiere of I Am The Moon: II. Ascension on June 28, with the album on July 1; I Am The Moon: III. The Fall (film premiere July 26, album release July 29; and I Am The Moon: IV. Farewell (film premiere August 23, album release August 26.
The concept behind the new project was suggested by band vocalist Mike Mattison in May 2020, two months after they were forced off the road by the pandemic. The 12th century poem Layla & Majnun by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi inspired the title of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Eric Clapton’s 1970 double LP with Derek and the Dominos that has been a major influence for TTB.
Ganjavi’s source material resonated very differently with Mattison and the rest of the band, as they found complex themes and storylines to inspire their creative process. The result was a new, modern interpretation of the 100-page poem, and a set of songs written collectively and collaboratively. By January 2021, they were recording at Tedeschi and Trucks’ home studio, Swamp Raga, in Jacksonville, FL. Derek produced the sessions and longtime studio engineer Bobby Tis oversaw recording and mixing.
‘Something bigger and thematic’
“It’s amazing,” says Trucks, “because we wrote most of this music in a pretty short time span. There are even chord changes that mirror other tunes on the albums – themes and variations, lyrical allusions, that pop back up. You always want to do something bigger and thematic. This is the first time it happened naturally.”
The limited-edition, I Am The Moon Deluxe Box Set, each individually-numbered, includes all four albums in the I Am The Moon series on 180 gram black vinyl, plus additional special items will be available on September 9, only via the TTB store and the Fantasy Records store.
Tedeschi Trucks Band begin a major North American tour on June 24, extending until September 3. Their month-long European itinerary starts on October 17 and includes three nights at the London Palladium, ending with three nights in Paris.
Pre-order I Am The Moon.
