Tedeschi Trucks Band - I Am The Moon: II. Ascension

180-gram vinyl

The most ambitious project of their storied career!

Four albums, 24 original songs!

I. Crescent  II. Ascension III. The Fall  IV. Farewell

Full album essay by David Fricke

Tedeschi Trucks Band announces the most ambitious studio project of their storied career: I Am The Moon, an epic undertaking in four albums with four corresponding films and 24 original songs. Inspired by a mythic Persian tale of star-crossed lovers, and emotionally driven by the isolation and disconnection of the pandemic era, the thematic I Am The Moon totals more than two hours of music, unfolding a robust tapestry of genre-defying explorations that propel the treasured American ensemble into new and thrilling creative territory.

This epic four album, four film series continues with I Am The Moon: II. Ascension.

The Story Behind I Am The Moon

The project I Am The Moon, started taking shape in May, 2020, two months after the band was forced off the road by lockdown. Mike Mattison sent an email to Derek, Susan, Gabe and Tyler with a suggestion for the group: read Layla and Majnun. Written by the 12th Century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, the poem is an enduring tale of star-crossed devotion and was the title inspiration for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. — an influential album for TTB. But Ganjavi's vast 100-page poem resonated with Mike in an altogether different way. Mike explains that, the Clapton album is one point of view, Layla as this love object: 'I want you, I can't have you.'" But after Mattison read the original work, "I realized there are many things going on from different perspectives" and proposed, in his email, "revisiting this material as a band, as writers."

"When Mike said, 'Well, what does Layla think about all this?', I thought that was an amazing way to look at the story," Trucks says. I Am The Moon was written collectively and collaboratively, with band members contributing different perspectives on the poem. By January 2021 the band was recording at Tedeschi and Trucks' home studio, Swamp Raga, in Jacksonville, FL, with Derek behind the board as producer.

"It's amazing," Trucks says, "because we wrote most of this music in a pretty short time span. There are even chord changes that mirror other tunes — themes and variations, lyrical allusions, that pop back up." He continues: "You always want to do something bigger and thematic. This is the first time it happened naturally." The decision to sequence and release I Am The Moon in four distinct episodes came "when we started thinking of records we love," Trucks says, citing Axis: Bold as Love, the 1967 LP by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. "It's 36 minutes long. That's the way to digest a record."

 

 

Side A

1. Playing With My Emotions

2. Ain't That Something

3. All The Love

Side B

1. So Long Savior

2. Rainy Day

3. La Di Da

4. Hold That Line

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