'Musical bliss': Norwell's Susan Tedeschi performs for soldout hometown crowd in Boston

• Tedeschi Trucks Band Dec. 4 at The Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Place, Boston

It is always a festive atmosphere at the annual Boston holiday-season shows by the Tedeschi Trucks Band, but this year’s edition seemed especially celebratory. Like all of us music fans, the TTB has been recovering from the 18-month musical lockdown and are ecstatic to get back onstage.

Safe to say, most of the sold out crowd of 2,800 at the Orpheum for the Saturday night finale of this year’s run were thrilled to be able to partake of live music again, and the TTB is a sure ticket to finding your musical bliss. This past Saturday capped off a four-night stand on a fall tour of about a dozen other dates, as well as a triumphant seven-night (soldout) stint at New York City’s Beacon Theatre.

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Norwell’s blues rocker Susan Tedeschi and husband Derek Trucks kept busy during the pandemic, guesting on several other artists’ records and writing new material. They and their band were also involved in two successful releases this year. Back in July, the band released “Layla Revisited: Live at LOCKN,” a set where they re-create the legendary album from Derek and the Dominoes, featuring Eric Clapton and the late Duane Allman. Just to have the TTB cover that iconic rock double-album would be enough, but they had also enlisted Phish frontman Trey Anastasio to add vocals and guitar. The “Layla Revisted” set shot to the top of the national blues charts and had a major impact in a lot of other charts as well, hitting No. 4 on the rock charts.

The TTB were also focal points of a documentary released late last summer, “Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” recorded at the 2015 LOCKN Festival, when the TTB had engineered a reunion of the band and others from Joe Cocker’s legendary 1970 tour. Longtime fans will recall that we had suggested that all-star contingent that backed Cocker on his first American tour was the nearest thing we could think of to describe TTB, and Tedeschi has confirmed that Mad Dogs was one of the templates she and Trucks had in mind when they set out to forge the kind of ultra-talented, absurdly versatile outfit they now front.

The TTB setlists on the Boston run were packed with covers, which opens an almost endless range of possibilities for this band. For instance, Tuesday’s show featured 11 covers, Wednesday’s had eight, and Friday checked in with 15 covers. The cover choices have run the gamut from Allman Brothers Band or the old Derek Trucks Band to jazz percussionist Mongo Santamaria, The Four Tops, jazz iconoclast Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Dr. John.

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Saturday’s wild party featured 14 covers, two each from the Allmans, the Trucks Band, and Derek and the Dominoes. And some of the others were really galvanizing, such as a Tedeschi treatment of Willie Nelson’s ballad “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces,” backup vocalist Mike Mattison (an unsung hero of this group) doing a swinging soul take on “Gotta Move” from the late Hyannis songsmith Paul Pena, or the first encore, which found the big band staying in the wings, as Tedeschi sang a beautifully jazzy-folk rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “River” with just Gabe Dixon on electric piano. After a night when the dozen musicians frequently had the old building literally shaking with rock ‘n’ soul, it was pretty stunning to see the Orpheum turned into a quiet jazz club, where you could hear the proverbial pin drop, as Tedeschi delivered her tribute to Joni.

Saturday’s show included 25 songs split into two sets, totaling about three hours of music. The first set lasted 75 minutes and ranged from a gritty drive through Junior Wells’ “Little By Little” to that Nelson ballad turned into smooth soul. Both Trucks and Tedeschi played delectably slide guitar on the midtempo “Just As Strong.” The band stripped down to a core sextet for a jazz-inflected “Still Your Mind,” which began as quiet piano and burst into a fiery Trucks guitar vehicle. The full band was back for the affirming anthem “I’m Going to Be There,” which set Tedeschi’s evocative vocal against a kind of creeper r&b backing.

You had to wonder if they were launching into a Rahsaan Roland Kirk cover when Trucks and tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williams began a surreal duet, but it was just an intro for a superbly arranged “Midnight in Harlem,” which was a first-set highlight. Keyboardist Dixon sang the lead on Blind Faith’s “Had to Cry Today,” with Tedeschi taking over the second verse, and the contrast between those two voices helped make it a soaring climax that ended the first set.

You have to admire professionalism. The between-sets break extended 12 minutes longer than scheduled, and the second set then extended precisely 12 minutes beyond the planned 11 p.m. finish.

The second set began with a big band funk romp, which seemed like a neat reworking of “Joyful Noise” from the Derek Trucks Band songbook. Mattison’s take on that old Paul Pena chestnut featured him trading verses with Tedeschi, as it retained all the funk of the original. The next number was a microcosm of the strengths of the TTB, as “Learn How To Love” was soul-funk, but with a hardened rock edge, delivered with panache by that 12-piece band with Tedeschi singing it with passion.

Two of the numbers from Derek and the Dominos were packed together, to good effect. “Bell Bottom Blues” was done reverently, and if the sizzling leads from Trucks were not quite the desperate howls of the original, a bit of context is needed. When Clapton did that song, his complicated personal life — yearning for George Harrison’s wife — made it a tale of unrequited love and potentially a doomed love. Yet when it was done Saturday, it was being performed by a couple whose romance and musical partnership is strong and enduring, so the tone was a more refined, mature perspective. But Trucks certainly got on his horse for the torrid charge through “Why Does Love Got To be So Sad?” Yielding his slide like a saber, Trucks pushed the tempo to unimaginable speed, all the while playing melodic and perfectly articulated notes that were threatening to launch the tune into hyper space. It was that moment in every TTB show when Trucks does something that leaves fans in open-mouthed awe.

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Tedeschi’s signature “Angel from Montgomery” always gives that John Prine classic a sweet r&b flavor and her interplay with the three backup vocalists during Crosby, Still, Nash and Young’s “Helpless” was sublime. But it was on Bobby “Blue” Bland’s classic “I Pity the Fool,” that Tedeschi had her own moment to really take off. She’s has the pipes to handle that gritty blues but she also took the main guitar lead, effortlessly mixing gutbucket chords with the kind of stinging single note lines that might raise Albert King from the dead. The crowd was roaring by the time her solo ended but she kept ramping up the power of her vocal and included a talking segment where she inveighed against “fools who don’t love anyone, fools who keep kids in cages, fools who tear us apart..” and then adding “we’ve got to do better …” as the audience erupted in cheers. If the music wasn't powerful enough, the five-minute roaring standing ovation she got at its close nearly toppled the old building. With a shy grin, Trucks offered her a towel to cool down with as the crowd roared.

The TTB’s own “Made Up Mind” was the kind of tune that demonstrates just how much they can remind fans of that Mad Dogs and Englishmen troupe. Trucks’ slide work was pensive and otherworldly on the Allman Brothers’ “Dreams” and the horn section added a new element. The TTB’s “The Storm” used the core sextet plus tenor sax to craft ominous heavy r&b. Trucks performed a wonderfully textured instrumental rendition of the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post” that was virtually a primer on guitar dynamics, with his wife only coming in to vocalize a couple verses late in the song. After that dazzling encore version of the Joni Mitchell song, the night ended in the joyful “Bound For Glory” with the whole 12-piece band knocking it out of the park.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Susan Tedeschi brings tedeschi trucks band home for holidays in Boston