I was screwing around a few years ago looking at YouTube and stumbled on Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks at either a Crossroads or a New Orleans Jazz Festival. She was playing her blonde D'Angelico and with that sweet little girl speaking voice she has said, "This is an old Junior Wells Song" and then proceeded to build a roof over the grounds, set it on fire and send it up to the sky. She was playing with passion and riffing with Derek and just making you know that old Junior, if he is conscious in the universe, was smiling, riffing on the harp and turning to Muddy and saying, "See, that's what I'm talking about..." and then she stepped back and handed the lead duties off to the one basically amazing guitarist who as usual, on his Gibson SG Classic, proceeded to remodel the whole damned stadium, again making his kind of adopted Uncle Dwayne, sitting on the other side of Muddy and leaning forward, to take a swig of Jack Daniels, and scream" Cook it, Kid, Cook it!"
Supposedly the Derek Trucks band and the Susan Tedeschi band are still in existence, but since most of both bands plus some others are in the TTB, I suspect that occasionally everybody just needs to take some time off. In this recording of their complete performance at ACL this year, Susan alludes to the fact that when they started talking about having one band, they watched Mad Dogs and Englishmen and said, "Yeah, that looks like fun...the whole traveling circus." I suspect that they're a lot more disciplined than that was, but still..not a bad inspiration.
There are other great bands out there doing something like this, but they remind me of one of the early 70s Van Morrison tours, maybe The Band and Street Choir -- full horns, double drummers, chorus, and so on. This is a privilege to listen to and fun to watch. Enjoy...
