First Installment of Ambitious Four Album Project Inspired by a Mythic Persian Tale of Star-Crossed Lovers, and Emotionally Driven by the Isolation and Disconnection of the Pandemic Era

Inspired by an epic tale of star-crossed lovers, and emotionally driven by the isolation of the pandemic era, the four album collection I Am The Moon is Tedeschi Trucks Band's most ambitious, and at the same time, intimate recording. Their fifth studio release, I Am The Moon captures the band at its creative best - with 24 original songs that explore the universal experience of love's trial and urgency across a robust tapestry of blues, funk, country, jazz and gospel - all with luminous singing and the instant fire of improvisation. The four titles in the I Am The Moon collection are I. Crescent, II. Ascension, III. The Fall, and IV. Farewell.

Derek 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.

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.

"It's amazing," adds 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."