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Made Up Mind, the forthcoming studio album by Tedeschi Trucks Band, isn't slated for release until August 20, but its lead single, “Part of Me,” is available now to stream or as a free download.
The follow-up to the group’s 2011 GRAMMY©-winning debut, Revelator—a live album, Everybody’s Talkin’, was released last year—Made Up Mind was produced by Jim Scott (Wilco, Chuck Prophet) and Derek Trucks, and features contributions from such guest artists as Sonya Kitchell and Doyle Bramhall II, among others.
Michael Franti, the veteran reggae/roots rocker who with his stalwart group Spearhead has achieved both critical and popular praise for such anthemic hits as “A Little Bit of Riddim” and “Say Hey (I Love You),” is gearing up for the release of his eighth studio LP, All People, with the video premiere of its ebullient lead single, “I'm Alive (Life Sounds Like).”
There's no denying her kinship with country music, but considering Caitlin Rose solely as a country singer neglects the breadth of her resourcefulness. On both her 2010 debut EP, Dead Flowers (which in the title track saw her covering the Rolling Stones) and her 2011 LP, Own Side Now, she's demonstrated remarkable versatility, exploring variations of pop and folk and alt.country with equal conviction. Along the way, whether encouraged by her own musical tastes and curiosity or by the environment in which she was raised—the daughter of two industry vets, she’s lived in Nashville since she was a young child—Rose has developed a rich and varied appreciation for the craft of songwriting. In concert, in fact, she's been known to cover such venerable songsmiths as Jerry Jeff Walker, Randy Newman, and Nick Lowe—her version of “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide” was a highlight of last year’s tribute album, Lowe Country—and that appreciation has no doubt informed her own artistry.
Neal Preston was in enough garage bands as a teenager to know he was never going to make it in rock 'n' roll as a musician, but as a photographer he recognized his ability to capture its magic without ever having to play a note.
Barely in his twenties, yet with a half-decade of experience already under his belt, Preston was working at Atlantic Record's west coast publicity department in Los Angeles, tasked with photographing assorted gold-record presentations, press junkets, and parties whenever one of the label’s roster of artists rolled into town. It was at one such function that he met Led Zeppelin's imperious manager, Peter Grant, who in 1975 hired him as the band's official tour photographer, affording him exclusive and unfettered access to the band—Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham—and its coveted inner circle.
Onstage, backstage, aboard the band’s private jet—wherever Led Zeppelin rocked and roamed—Preston was there, observing his subjects with almost surreptitious intent, but picking his shots with discretion. He was on the payroll, after all. And so while he was essentially welcomed as one of their own, Preston heeded an unspoken pact not to photograph anything potentially incriminating or salacious.
When he wasn’t on the road with the band, Preston sought out new opportunities. He took portraits of the Jackson 5 and Iggy Pop, among others, and landed high-profile magazine covers like Rolling Stone and People—assignments which, particularly in the years after the band's demise (upon Bonham’s tragic death in 1980), have earned him near peerless distinction. An official photographer at Live Aid and six Olympic Games, he’s also immortalized moments on the concert stages of popular music's most influential and celebrated artists. Preston's live images of Bruce Springsteen in ‘85, Queen in ‘86, and Michael Jackson in ‘87, in particular, are definitive.
His experience with Led Zeppelin was seminal, though, and his images of the band continue to resonate with visceral, timeless intensity.
Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury, a mammoth multimedia collection boasting over 250 photographs—including a hundred previously unpublished images—brings it all back in a vivid 300-page digital book, available exclusively on Apple's iTunes Bookstore. Along with select friends and insiders from that time, Preston offers insightful context throughout, whether in written narrative or in select audio and video commentary of what was, admittedly, the experience of a lifetime.
“You get a call to work for Led Zeppelin, yeah, it's a big deal,” Preston tells Write on Music. “This is the biggest band in the world. Sorry, Mick Jagger, but let's be honest here.”
John Fogerty is one of those indispensable figures in rock 'n' roll, having penned some of the most enduring and relevant songs in its history. The music he made with Creedence Clearwater Revival, particularly, struck such a crucial nerve in the era of Vietnam and Kent State and Watergate that's it's of little wonder why those songs have continued to matter to people in more recent years of rampant war and social and political unease. It's also among the most distinctive music ever made, from John Fogerty's countrified drawl to the thick-and-sturdy rhythm section of bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford to guitarist Tom Fogerty's crunchy riffs. Covering such classics would be a tall order for anyone, but for the guy who wrote them to revisit them invites an altogether different kind of scrutiny.
