Before Just Won’t Burn made Susan Tedeschi a blues-rock mainstay—and landed her in the same Grammy category as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Kid Rock—she was a Boston kid with a gospel fixation, a guitar, and a lot of curiosity. “I’d been onstage since I was five,” she says, “but when it came to being in a band and making my own records, Just Won’t Burn was the turning point. It got me my first Grammy nomination, it’s how I met Derek, and it changed my whole world.”
Released in 1998, Just Won’t Burn still sounds like a barroom being set on fire—equal parts Sunday morning redemption and Saturday night chaos. Tedeschi laughs remembering how she stumbled into the blues. “I was singing other styles, but some friends were running a blues jam at Johnny D’s in Somerville and said, ‘We need singers.’ I went, learned some tunes, and it kicked off a whole new world for me.”
That world came with a soundtrack. “I remember going to Stereo Jack’s on Mass Ave and spending over $200 on CDs—T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, Coco Taylor, Freddie King, Otis Rush. It was like discovering a secret language nobody had told me about.”
Boston’s mid-’90s blues circuit was quietly thriving—House of Blues had just opened its first location, and Tedeschi found herself right in the mix. “It was timing,” she says. “All of a sudden there was a scene, and I thought, maybe I should start my own band.” She did—first with other local players like Adrienne Hayes and Annie Raines—and eventually, Just Won’t Burn became the calling card that took her national.
It’s easy to forget how weirdly perfect the timing was. “I was opening for the Allman Brothers, that’s how I met Derek,” she says. “There was a real appetite for guitar-driven music then. People forget how big the blues scene was—it comes and goes, but it’s always there.”
Listening back now, the album walks a line between purist grit and soulful invention. Her cover of “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” still smokes like a live wire. “I wanted it to sound more like Stevie Ray Vaughan—Texas blues instead of swing,” she says. “I remember thinking, let’s make it a rocker.”
Her original “Looking for Answers” hints at the songwriter she’d become—more introspective, more melodic. “That one came from open tuning,” Tedeschi says. “I was listening to Led Zeppelin and how they took blues and made it their own. It was me trying to do the same.”
The new 25th-anniversary edition of Just Won’t Burn unearths alternate versions, including a grungier take on “Looking for Answers” and the previously unreleased “Wasting My Time.” “That one started as a country tune,” she says, laughing. “I told the label, I’m still gonna release the country version someday!”
Tedeschi admits that ‘90s alt-rock energy seeped into those sessions. “I always loved punk and that Seattle grunge sound,” she says. “There’s something cathartic about it. I guess that’s my angsty side creeping in.”
That might explain why she’s still toying with the idea of a full-on punk rock record. “I think it’d be fun,” she grins. “Maybe I’ll call Dave Grohl and get him to help me out. No one would see that coming.”
Her roots, though, remain firmly planted in soul and storytelling. “I grew up on Bob Dylan, Mavis Staples, and country blues. The writers who told stories—that’s what I connect to,” she says. “That’s where the heart is.”
These days, the heart’s still beating hard inside the Tedeschi Trucks Band, whose 2022 four-album cycle I Am the Moon turned a Sufi love poem into one of the most ambitious projects in modern roots music. “That was such a beautiful thing,” she says. “It happened during the pandemic, so we had no time limits, no pressure. Derek and Mike Madison started bouncing ideas, and suddenly it turned into this big conceptual piece with films, episodes—everything.”
She says the group may do something like that again—but with less fear this time. “After doing four albums in a row, one record doesn’t seem scary,” she laughs.
As for Just Won’t Burn, its flame hasn’t dimmed a bit. “I’m shocked people still love it,” she says. “That was the record that let me make a living doing music. I had no idea it would lead to touring the world, or playing with Derek, or opening for the Stones. I’m just grateful it happened.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
