Jamie MacDonald Virginia Beach Concert reviews
Tedeschi Trucks Band
The performance was excellent for the most part. Susan could sing out of a phone book and it would sound just great, clearly, and the band was fairly tight. I also had a few gripes while all the musicianship was excellent. Their jazz vamps weren't musically interesting in their attempts to be eclectic, and a lot of it came out sounding just disorganized. Fairly, I do like avant-garde stuff and I also like eclecticism in music, but it really didn't seem to fit in any particular way. It seemed like an attempt to just throw in something 'different' by which to showcase the individual players' chops. Well, sorry, but if the songs themselves are boring, no amount of horn blowing or bass popping is going to make them musically interesting. They simply remain boring. Also, at this point in their careers, it would be nice to think that they can do without trotting out hugely overplayed songs like The Sky Is Crying. If I never hear that song again, honestly, it will be all too soon. The last item didn't have to do with the group per se but rather the sound mix. Snares and toms are undermixed like a lot of concerts I've attended, and then bass drums are turned up entirely too loud. The bassist's mix was reduced to mud for the most part as well. Derek's lower register strings were muddied occasionally as hell. This is all called bad mixing. Geez, can't groups and sound engineers seem to get this stuff right by this stage in the game? It shouldn't really be that hard, you'd think. It really detracts from the music otherwise, and that's just a shame.