Some of them, maybe Mike wrote the song and had everything there, and then recorded it. How much of these songs are written and composed in advanced of you being together? It sounds like it is all in the room but that can be an illusion.

Also, you can be the songwriter, and tell the story, then expand it out. We have that confidence in each other to do that, which a lot of bands, I don’t think they have that improv level that we do. “They are going to take you to a higher place, and we all lift each other musically. With 12 people onstage, you would think that it would be all noise and loud all the time, and actually it is an incredibly dynamic band. But, musically, we have a lot of different influences and a lot of sensibilities that we have in common. One of those is the daringness to go out, to be improvisational, but also to have the confidence that these people are so musical they are not going to embarrass you. A lot of bands, I don’t think they realise how important it is to have the right chemistry in the band, not just onstage but offstage. There is a tremendous amount of chemistry in this band. “Totally! Well, the personalities have a lot to do with it. Like on Pasaquan, it switches on a dime and you end up deep with a sort of ‘70s Harlem vibe. There is a geographical phenomenon with your sound – it’s like you play on both sides of the Mason/Dixon Line. It’s cool that you said it was like total ‘70s pop-style to do this! I think we are all very influenced by ‘70s music for sure.” It ended up being really fun, and a really cool concept record. Even though we weren’t together we were together, like you and I right now, at least we can see each other and communicate, and that is just so important. We weren’t touring this is a very busy touring band because that is just usually the way we can afford to keep a 12-piece touring band together, to work.

It just worked out where we had enough time to do it. “It was cool because all these different ideas happened and it all just came together, and everyone did a great job writing and recording. Then we realised, ‘Oh, wow! We could make episodes, like The Mandalorian We really didn’t want to cut anything because there were so many great songs. And so much diversity because there are so many songwriters in the band. Then we realised, ‘Oh, wow! We could make episodes, like The Mandalorian or something! “We really didn’t want to cut anything because there were so many great songs. The great thing about some of your favourite records – like Axis: Bold As Love – is a lot of great records are like 34 minutes, so that ended up being part of the conversation after we had made all of this music. “People don’t have huge attention spans anymore. How did you decide to release this as four chapters? It’s something that seems like it could only have been made in the ‘70s. And then the mental health deteriorates because people need each other.” “Here is Layla, locked away in a tower, isolated, from her family and her lover, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh! Everybody is locked in their own little towers.

“Absolutely, we could look at that poem and see a lot of parallels,” says Susan Tedeschi, joining us over Zoom. As it turned out, in 2020, everyone could relate to Layla – everyone was locked down. When we spoke to Derek Trucks about the LOCKN’ show and Layla Revisited, we talked about blues standards and how they were eternal, waiting to be discovered anew, the same could be said of Layla And Majnun. Here is Layla, locked away in a tower, isolated, from her family and her lover, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh! Everybody is locked in their own little towers We could look at that poem and see a lot of parallels. Tedeschi says Mattison set them some homework: revisit the poem, see what comes up. It was vocalist Mike Mattison who asked the question: what if they approached Layla And Majnun from Layla’s point of view? That got everyone started. But a good few months had gone by before anyone in the Tedeschi Trucks Band thought of returning to the material that had similarly inspired Clapton and Jim Gordon when they wrote Layla back in 1970. Layla, the object of desire, the name behind Eric Clapton’s riff, was the Layla immortalised in the Nizami’s Layla And Majnun.

Susan tedeschi