Tedeschi Trucks Band Details 4-Part New Album ‘I Am The Moon’

Tedeschi Trucks Band confirmed the release of a four-part new studio album, I Am The Moon. Each release will come with an accompanying film, with the first installment, I Am The Moon: I. Crescent, set to premiere on May 31.

The first of the four albums is also titled, I Am The Moon: I. Crescent, and will be released on June 3. Subsequent films and albums will follow with the I Am The Moon: II. Ascension film premiering June 28 and album coming July 1, the I Am The Moon: III. The Fall film premiering July 26 and album releasing July 29 and the I Am The Moon: IV. Farewell film premiering on August 23 and the final album arriving on August 26. Vinyl editions – both individual albums and the 4LP set – will be issued on September 9.

TTB guitarist Derek Trucks produced I Am The Moon, which was recorded last year at Trucks and Tedeschi’s home studio, Swamp Raga located in Jacksonville, Florida. The inspiration behind the album originated in May 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the band off the road. Vocalist Mike Mattison reached out to his bandmates and encouraged them to examine the 12th-century epic poem “Layla And Majnun” that was written by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi and partly inspired Derek & The Dominoes landmark album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Mattison asked his bandmates to view the story from a different perspective than the one taken by Eric Clapton for the Layla album, which TTB covered in its entirety with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio at the 2019 LOCKN’ festival. The band members then wrote songs inspired by Mattison’s suggestion and collectively collaborated on the songs that became I Am The Moon.

“When Mike said, ‘Well, what does Layla think about all this?’, I thought that was an amazing way to look at the story,” Trucks stated. “It’s amazing 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. You always want to do something bigger and thematic. This is the first time it happened naturally.”

“It took a while to wrap our heads around all of the music we were making,” Tedeschi added. “It’s hard to write exactly from somebody else’s perspective. At the same time, you want to write about human emotions. A lot of the things we were going through are things they would have gone through too.”

Issuing I Am The Moon in four parts was inspired by the length of some of the band’s favorite albums. Trucks specifically cited the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967 album, Axis: Bold as Love.

“It’s 36 minutes long,” said Trucks. “That’s the way to digest a record.”

I Am The Moon: The Film was heavily influenced by Pasaquan, an artistic project founded in Buena Vista, Georgia by folk artist Eddie Owens Martin (now known as St. EOM). Over three decades of work, Pasaquan features “six major structures, mandala murals and more than 900 feet of elaborately painted masonry walls.” Trucks was introduced to Pasaquan by his late mentor, Col. Bruce Hampton.

Tedeschi Trucks Band’s last studio album was 2019’s Signs. Watch a trailer for I Am The Moon: The Film below:

I Am The Moon Tracklist