When the blues-rock singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi considers her itinerary for a coming tour, she worries about more than venue size, motel rooms and the other things that might concern the average musician on the road. She also reads up on museums, zoos, aquariums and anything else that might appeal to the most important members of her entourage: her son, Charlie, who is almost four, and daughter, Sophia, one.
And if the vagaries of scheduling and travel permit, somewhere along the way she might even work in a few days with the fourth member of the household: her husband, the guitarist Derek Trucks.
Such is the life of the two-career family, roots-rock style. Altogether, Tedeschi, 35, and Trucks, 26, have three bands, 11 albums, two children and a house in Jacksonville, Florida, that is rarely
occupied by all of them at once.
"The schedules are pretty chaotic," Trucks said, sitting with Tedeschi in a New York jazz club during a recent mini-vacation away from the children. "We'll both be on the road. My mom goes on the road with Susan and the kids, usually. If there's a day off, instead of resting up, you hop on a plane and meet the rest of the crew."
Trucks, who first attracted attention a decade ago as a teenage guitar prodigy, leads the groove-heavy Derek Trucks Band and is also a member of the current lineup of the Allman Brothers Band. (His uncle, Butch Trucks, is one of the Allman Brothers' drummers.) Tedeschi's 1998 debut, Just Won't Burn, earned her comparisons to Bonnie Raitt and a Grammy nomination for best new artist.
There have been musical couples before them, of course, from George Jones and Tammy Wynette to Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. But the most long-lived have tended to be professional partners, and often unequal ones. After marrying Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash once told an interviewer: "I worked with John, but I had enough sense to walk just a little ways behind him. I could have made more records, but I wanted to have a marriage."
Trucks and Tedeschi are striving for a different model, maintaining separate careers with occasional intersections.
"In some ways I feel like you're kind of finding your own path," Trucks said, "because there's not a lot of other people that do it and make it work. You hear a lot of stories, broken stories, I've seen plenty of those."
Sitting together for their first joint interview -- the first one they've had time for, they say -- the two display a bantering affection. They also sound a little dazed at the events of the past five years, which have left them little time to get their bearings as a couple or a family.
"I'm an emotional person," Tedeschi said. "Being a woman, you feel like, `Oh my gosh, everything has to be just right, your kids and this and that.' But there's no way you can control everything. I'm used to being a control freak and I've had to learn to just cut that out. Derek is such a pro at just dealing with all types of situations, so I actually really look to him as sort of guidance in a lot of ways -- how to get through situations and how to plan and not stress."
Those differences come through in their music. Trucks, whose long blond hair and wide, easy smile give him an air of overgrown boyishness, favors flowing, jazz-tinged improvisations. Tedeschi, petite and poised, has a big, warm voice that she holds back just enough to keep from swamping her
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