'It's amazing,' Trucks says, 'because we wrote most of this music in a pretty short time span. By January 2021 the band was recording at Tedeschi and Trucks' home studio, Swamp Raga, in Jacksonville, FL, with Derek behind the board as producer. I Am The Moon was written collectively and collaboratively, with band members contributing different perspectives on the poem. 'When Mike said, 'Well, what does Layla think about all this?', I thought that was an amazing way to look at the story,' Trucks says. Mike explains that, the Clapton album is one point of view, Layla as this love object: 'I want you, I can't have you.'' But after Mattison read the original work, 'I realized there are many things going on from different perspectives' and proposed, in his email, 'revisiting this material as a band, as writers.' But Ganjavi’s vast 100-page poem resonated with Mike in an altogether different way. Written by the 12th Century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, the poem is an enduring tale of star-crossed devotion and was the title inspiration for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Mike Mattison sent an email to Derek, Susan, Gabe and Tyler with a suggestion for the group: read Layla and Majnun. The project I Am The Moon, started taking shape in May, 2020, two months after the band was forced off the road by lockdown.

Dear sun dear moon book