Susan Tedeschi

When her first album for Verve Forecast came due, Susan Tedeschi had just given birth to her daughter and didn’t have any new material handy. So she resorted to plan B—recording a set of heartfelt, felicitous soul covers.

“When I signed the deal I was pregnant. I had been writing with the band, but we just didn’t have the whole concept of the record,” she explains. “All of our original stuff really wasn’t ready in time, and we had a deadline for the record. So when I got together with the producer and the record company, they suggested, ‘Why don’t we just go find a bunch of great tunes?’”

Hope and Desire doesn’t sound like an afterthought. Despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that the album includes many unfamiliar songs and was tracked in just seven days with no overdubs, using session players rather than Tedeschi’s road band, the 11-track set contains strikingly spontaneous moments. The material was drawn from sources as divergent as Bob Dylan (“Lord Protect My Child”), Donny Hathaway (“Magnificent Sanctuary Band”) and the Rolling Stones (“You Got the Silver”), but the result is pure, gospel-tinged R&B.

“I felt like I was in a more live situation than I normally do [when] making a record,” reflects the raspy-voiced belter. “I didn’t really do any overdubs or anything. With all the other records, every word had to be perfect, and this record is raw and it’s in the moment.”

Nowadays, Tedeschi’s tours require a lot of planning, because the singer/guitarist often devotes her attention to infant Sophia, three-year-old Charlie and her husband—bandleader and Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks. “I have to constantly think of where I’m going,” says Tedeschi, “and are the kids coming with me or are they going to stay with my mother-in-law,” she says. “I can’t just go and do whatever anymore.”