Susan Tedeschi

“I really focused on rhythm guitar playing at first because it was important to know the song and chords first before taking a solo. A lot of people get up and jam, but they don't know the song. It's hard to say anything, emote anything, with that approach.”

“I'm like a full domestic mom. I like cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids.”

“Almost all my training was from opera singers.”

“I don't want to be known as Janis Joplin the rest of my life.”

“I try and not be the controlling woman I can probably be.”

“It's so different playing with a band as opposed to singing an anthem.”

“I'm used to being a control freak, and I've had to learn to just cut that out.”

“I've been writing songs on my own since I was 13, and the same is true of Derek.”

“The two things I wanted to do when I grew up were to have kids and play music. I get to do both, so I feel incredibly grateful.”

“Being in a band with 11 people has made us learn everyone needs to compromise.”

“If you want to learn how to do something, you just go on YouTube, and kids get the confidence to tape themselves and put it out there.”

“When I play live, I use a Fender Super Reverb and I have Derek's old, well, actually it's Eric Clapton's old Beano Les Paul copy that he gave to Derek that I play a lot. And then I have a '90s Tele.”

“We just play for the best show that we can put on.”

“Music is a very spiritual and emotional force.”

“When you're in the Allman Brothers, you would think you'd be able to play freely on guitar.”

“Sometimes the people around you really affect what you write.”

“Different guitar players really inspired me to want to learn how to sing on the guitar.”

“If you're lucky enough to have a guitar player like Derek in your band, you have to give him time to shine, and I love to watch him play as much as anyone in the audience. But I do still get to play solos, and we often do a call-and-response sort of thing where we get to take solos together, and we'll just build it up from there.”

“I do like being my own boss, but if I'm gonna have somebody tell me what to do, Derek is the one.”

“My first solo band, the foundation was myself, Adrienne Hayes, who was my guitarist, and Little Annie Raines, who was my harmonica player. The three of us fronted that band. We started in '93.”