By Scott McLennan

This is a very welcome document, full of compelling performances and layers of rock ’n’ soul history that will hopefully prove foundational for yet another generation of players interested in reaching for the good stuff.

Tedeschi Trucks Band and Leon Russell, Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited (Live at LOCKN’)

This teaming of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Leon Russell, and members of the group Leon Russell assembled in 1970 to back the great Joe Cocker for a tour that yielded the classic Mad Dogs & Englishmen live album is a riveting listen. The result is timeless material produced with fidelity and creativity, but the set also carries the time stamps of very specific events and eras.

The recording features 14 tracks culled from a 2015 performance the TTB orchestrated at the LOCKN’ music festival. The event wanted Cocker himself to sit in with the band Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi launched in 2010. The husband-and-wife guitar mavens had inspiration from Cocker’s rollicking Mad Dogs & Englishmen when the pair sunsetted their individual solo bands and created what has become a 12-piece juggernaut.

But, before that collaboration could take shape, Cocker died in late 2014. In response, Trucks spoke with Leon Russell, the original musical director for Cocker’s 1970 tour, about moving forward with a LOCKN’ performance as a tribute. Russell agreed and rounded up as many of the 1970 Mad Dogs as he could.

Thus on September 11, 2015, the TTB was joined by Russell and original Mad Dogs Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, Chris Stainton, Pamela Polland, Bobby Torres, Matthew Moore, Bobby Jones, and Daniel Moore. The concert also brought in a number of guests including Warren Haynes, Chris Robinson, John Bell, Dave Mason, Doyle Bramhall III, and Anders Osborne.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited will be released on September 12. The TTB is currently on a tour that brings the band to the Xfinity Center in Mansfield on September 6 in a co-headlining bill with Gov’t Mule, and to the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on September 12 and 13 with opener Steve Winwood.

The resurrected Mad Dogs and friends drew from the repertoire favored by Cocker himself on the 1970 tour: a mix of what were then contemporary rock and pop staples by The Beatles, The Band, Bob Dylan, The Box Tops, and other songs that Cocker placed his own unique stamp on, with help from Russell, an arch-arranger and commanding bandleader.

In some cases, tunes such as “Space Captain” and “Darling Be Home Soon,” TTB had already absorbed them into its playlist before the band performed them with the reassembled Cocker crew in LOCKN’. Post the 2015 LOCKN’ date, TTB kept “The Letter,” “Sticks and Stones,” and “With a Little Help from My Friends” in the lineup of its own shows. The Ashford, Simpson & Armstead hit for Ray Charles, “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” was a song TTB played once before revisiting it with the Mad Dogs. The band has used it to good effect routinely ever since.

My point is that Russell and Cocker were good at nabbing timeless material (even as some of it was timely in 1970). Add to that, Cocker and his Mad Dogs brought to the songs what they deserved: arrangements that drew on the craft that shaped the music and lyrics, and performances that did not mimic what had already been done by others. Instead, the performances strove to be distinctive. Joe Cocker wasn’t going to sound like The Beatles or Bob Dylan.

Fast forward to 2015, and Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, and Leon Russell took a similar approach, building on what Cocker had constructed while also paying homage to what he had done.

Few groups of musicians could have been better suited to the task.

Leon Russell, Derek Trucks, and Susan Tedeschi at the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tribute, the LOCKN’ Music Festival at Oak Ridge Farm in Arrington, VA, on September 10, 2015. Photo: Linda Wolf

In addition, what makes Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited such an involving listen is that it brings us back to a period when TTB was just starting to reach its full strength. The band had been together for five years at that point and had already made a few strategic personnel changes. At this point in time, the band included Kofi Burbridge on keys, Tim Lefebvre on bass, Ephraim Owens on trumpet, and J.J. Johnson on drums, together with still present TTB members drummer Tyler Greenwell, sax player Kebbi Williams, trombone player Elizabeth Lea, and singers Mike Mattison, Mark Rivers, and Alecia Chakour. These musicians were following the lead of Tedeschi and Trucks as the pair pursued  the big rock ’n’ soul sound TTB is now a standard bearer of.

The recording also returns to a period when TTB and the Black Crowes were birds of a feather, so to speak, and Haynes and Trucks were just a year removed from their joint tenure in the Allman Brothers Band.

Releasing this concert 10 years later invites us to appreciate its layers of history, which supplies one of the appealing textures in Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited.

The album begins on the high-energy zeal of “The Letter,” sung by Tedeschi in appropriately urgent tone and fueled with punched-up rhythms and the hot blast of a Trucks guitar solo, all fleshed out with the spectral tones of the so-called Space Choir, composed of Mad Dog alums and TTB singers.

John Sebastian’s “Darling Be Home Soon” allows Tedeschi to slow down and stretch out vocally, with ample guitar counterpoints provided by Trucks and Bramhall.

The inimitable Russell was enjoying a bit of a career renaissance around the time of Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited. He sounds full of spirit singing “Dixie Lullabye” and “The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” the kaleidoscopic tune he wrote about the 1970 tour that appropriated its title from a 1931 Noel Coward song. Russell and Lennear combine beautifully for a duet reading of Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country,” delivering it with an air of hard-earned wisdom.

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks performing “The Letter,” with Leon Russell on piano, September 2015, at LOCKN’. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Black Crowes’ Robinson, Gov’t Mules’ Haynes, and Widespread Panic’s Bell all took a little something from Cocker in their own respective approaches to blues-steeped soul singing, which makes them great choices for this project. Robinson gets the most action on this outing, singing “Sticks and Stones,” another Ray Charles hit, and he is given feature turns on “Space Captain” and “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

Bell sings with the gruffness Cocker brought to his music; the Widespread Panic frontman is comfortable applying plenty of swampy glee to the Russell-written “Delta Lady.”

Haynes moves outside his comfort zone to craft a memorably honky tonk version of The Beatles’ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.”

A highlight of the initial Mad Dogs & Englishmen album is Cocker’s sultry take on Dave Mason’s “Feelin’ Alright,” a song Cocker included on his debut album as well. Mason himself performed the song at LOCKN’ with additional guitar support from Anders Osborne plus a funky array of percussion, backup vocals, and keys.

Coolidge takes the lead on Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire,” one of those songs that hands singers sturdy bones upon which to build a full-bodied performance. Tedeschi started playing the song routinely following the LOCKN’ concert, but stopped singing it shortly after Kofi Burbridge died in 2019. A surprisingly compact version of The Band’s “The Weight” pushes Mad Dog singers Coolidge, Lennear, and Polland into respective turns in the spotlight. It is a celebration of how much they contributed to the power of the original Mad Dogs album.

On top of all this, the record is also notable for containing spoken introductions delivered by the typically taciturn Trucks.

A couple of the songs played at the LOCKN’ festival did not make it onto the album, but this is a welcome document, full of compelling performances and layers of rock ’n’ soul history that will hopefully prove foundational for yet another generation of players interested in reaching for the good stuff.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to The Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.