Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks: Individually and together, their musical pedigrees and prowess are untouchable. But it’s the heart, honesty and full-band collaboration that makes Future Soul the most powerful album to date by the revered 12-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band.

The 11 songs comprising TTB’s sixth studio LP include the standout singles “I Got You,” “Who Am I” and “Future Soul.” The LP drops March 20, 2026 in the midst of Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 10-show headlining run at NYC’s Beacon Theatre, which kicks off March 10.

“I feel like this is the most unique record we’ve done, says Trucks. “It’s my favorite collection of songs that we’ve ever put on a record. From song to song, there’s just not a weak spot.”

“I love Future Soul because it’s a little bit more punk,” Tedeschi adds.

Kicking off Future Soul is the laid-back funky soul of ‘Crazy Cryin’,” into the infectious, driving mid-tempo classic “I Got You.” Third up, the timeless “Who Am I” has a J.J. Cale feel and harkens back slightly to “Midnight in Harlem” while also being its own beast. “Future Soul” kicks the door down sonically, highlighting a collection whose depth is matched by its buoyant spirit. On “Future Soul,” Trucks, who has notched two appearances on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list, had fun with his 1958 “crazy Space Age Flying V.” His goal for the sonics? “I just want it to sound like the building’s going to blow apart.”

“It sounds like an airplane when he comes in on the solo,” Tedeschi adds. “I like it because Derek is not known for using pedals, so having a record where he gets to play around and get new sounds was exciting and fun.”

“I Got You,” written by the band’s guitarist/vocalist Mike Mattison, takes cues from the spirit of Derek and the Dominos and Delaney and Bonnie. “He had dual guitar lines in his head. But when he did the demo, he was singing them or humming them,” Trucks says. “I remember thinking, ‘I really like that. I like a guitar-voice instead of guitar and guitar.’ Trucks and Tedeschi feel “I Got You” is a “breath of fresh air, and pretty different for us. It feels like the band, but it doesn’t feel like anything we’ve done before. That’s what you try for every time, but it doesn’t often happen.”

“One thing that’s kind of funny about this record–a lot of people know us as blues musicians,” Tedeschi says. “I’ve been a blues artist for a long time, and strangely, we never recorded an original song that was a shuffle. Gabe Dixon’s ’Devil Be Gone’ is a great blues shuffle. As well as ‘Be Kind,’ also penned by Gabe, which reminds me of Paul McCartney meets Chuck Berry in a timeless rock n roll classic.”

Future Soul follows the 2022 release of the conceptual quadruple album I Am The Moon. Then, post-pandemic, “we hit the road for two years, as hard as we’ve ever hit it, trying to make up for lost time,” Trucks says. In early summer 2024, the core of the band—with newest members keyboardist Gabe Dixon and drummer Isaac Eady–adjourned to the Tedeschi Trucks family farm in Georgia. Thanks to road work, “we knew how to interact musically in a different way. We were a well-oiled machine. There were a lot of ideas flowing around,” says Trucks. “Two or three songs immediately came out of that first session and we knew it was the start of a record. We were contemplating, ‘do we go in and just record a million songs, or do we try to focus this one a little differently?’”

The decision was to forge a new path that included a producer for an outside perspective. Mike Elizondo–who Trucks first met in 2006 around the time Trucks was in the studio with J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton–came to a recent TTB show in Nashville and met with the lineup. The connection was immediate. “This is a band of a high-level musicianship. People really know their instruments and have done a lot of things,” says Trucks. “And Mike Elizondo is as good or better than everyone in the room. So it was a good marriage. He could speak everyone’s language and then some.”

TTB recorded all the basic tracks and most vocals and guitar overdubs at their own Swamp Raga studio in Florida before going to Elizondo’s studio outside Nashville for background vocals and horns, along with some acoustic guitars, keyboard overdubs, and extra flourishes.

“It’s nice to get the whole band in there and kind of put them under the gun: it was, ‘we’re going to take one or two or three cracks at this song, let’s get it!’ There’s a real energy that comes with that because everybody is locked and loaded, and you capture that live energy,” Trucks says. Having Elizondo in their corner was a boon: “it was really fun working with somebody who could take your kind of esoteric ideas and bring them to life in 30 seconds.”

“There are lots of writers in this band but because there are 12 of us, we have to choose a core group to bring songs to the table, so we focus on Derek, Mike, Gabe, Tyler and myself to write the songs,” says Tedeschi. “Some will bring fully formed songs, however, others may bring a lyric or a groove and then we will go from there. Everybody’s amazing, and really, really talented, so that takes a lot of pressure off of us.”

Trucks concurs, “There’s no jockeying for position. Everyone is gung-ho at all times, and just wants to get the thing across the finish line and make it as good as it possibly can be. It’s a unique band that way, it really is.”

Tedeschi Trucks Band, who formed in 2010, is proud of their early work: “If we look back musically, we had great songs out of the gate, but now I feel the band is a stronger unit. The way we operate, communicate, and coalesce together allows the music to be more free. It keeps growing,” Trucks says. “It’s a rare thing. There are six or seven people in this band who are band leaders on their own in their free time. It’s a pretty wild group, like a bunch of X Men and Women, a Marvel Universe kind of thing.”

Future Soul has a lot to live up to…. and it does. Tedeschi Trucks Band’s debut album, Revelator, won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Blues Album, while 2018’s Live From the Fox Oakland was nominated for a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy. TTB was nominated for numerous Americana Music Honors & Awards and won Band of the Year in 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2023 at the Blues Music Awards. They’ve sold out Madison Square Garden and over 20 nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. In 2024, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi performed at the Kennedy Center Honors, honoring Bonnie Raitt, Grateful Dead, and more. The full band played the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony honoring one of their biggest influences, Joe Cocker, with an all-star set featuring special guests Nathaniel Rateliff, Teddy Swims, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, Chris Robinson, and more. Coming up in 2026, TTB will bring their electrifying live show across the U.S. on their annual headlining tour as well as performances at Bonnaroo and New Orleans Jazz Fest, among other festivals.

Whatever the band does, together or separately, is a wholly organic process. In TTB, “We are 12 people who have sure footing,” Trucks says. “A machine or some other person is never going to be able to do what we do. What Susan does, or what Mike does, or what I do, or what this band does collectively, because everyone’s backgrounds are so unique and diverse,” he adds. “It’s just a special skill set. When you get out and play live music to give to people, they believe you, because it’s true and it’s honest.”

That honesty, he believes, “is the heart of the matter with this whole record and the whole thing that we do as a band. That’s why we tour as much as we do, and it’s why we keep a 30-piece band and crew together when it’s a hell of a lot easier to do it other ways. It means something to people. When you see a small army roll on stage, you know it didn’t get there with lack of effort or by accident.”

“We’ve done some pretty incredible things that I don’t think in the beginning we would have even imagined. I feel like it’s still on that trajectory. It’s been a little bit better every year, slow and steady,” says Trucks. “We just keep doing the best we can do it, you’re never jaded by it, you just keep putting in the work.”

BAND: Susan Tedeschi (Guitar & Vocals), Derek Trucks (Guitar), Mike Mattison (Guitar & Vocals), Gabe Dixon (Keys & Vocals), Brandon Boone (Bass), Tyler Greenwell (Drums & Percussion), Isaac Eady (Drums & Percussion), Mark Rivers (Vocals), Alecia Chakour (Vocals), Kebbi Williams (Saxophone), Emmanuel Echem (Trumpet), Elizabeth Lea (Trombone)