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ROBERT RANDOLPH<\/b><\/h1>\nROBERT RANDOLPH<\/b><\/h1>\nThe pedal-steel powerhouse blazes funky new trails on his latest set<\/b><\/p>\n
By Bob Cannon<\/b><\/p>\n
On Lickety Split<\/i>, the latest album by\u00a0Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Robert Randolph takes the pedal steel guitar where no one has gone before. In his hands the instrument is no longer just the province of weepy country ballads\u2014it contains multiple personalities, a musical Sybil that alternately evokes the ghosts of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, and nonguitar greats like Miles and Coltrane.<\/p>\n
Randolph emerged from the \u201csacred steel\u201d tradition of his House of God congregation in Orange, N.J. \u201cI grew up watching all these guys play in church,\u201d he remembers. \u201cAt our church, as a steel player you were already sort of the rock star, because there is no church unless the steel player is there.<\/p>\n
Since his explosive 2002 debut, Live at the Wetlands<\/i>, Randolph has redrawn the template for pedal steel. Lickety Split<\/i> continues his exploration into new musical waters, with contributions from Trombone Shorty and Carlos Santana. \u201cWhen you work with Carlos in the studio, he\u2019s one hell of a composer,\u201d says Randolph. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018You do this, and I\u2019m going to play this line \u2026\u2019 And he\u2019ll have listened to some old African piece of music, and you\u2019re thinking, \u2018Well, I didn\u2019t think about that! I would play something totally different.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Lickety Split<\/i> is his first studio album in three years, Randolph says he was aiming for a live feel. \u201cYou put parts into place, everybody\u2019s with you, and you keep up that energy,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes you have a chorus and bridge and a pre-chorus, and sometimes there\u2019s no need for that!\u201d Engineered by the legendary Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin), it\u2019s a high-energy collection that leaves the listener exhausted by its vitality and by the band\u2019s breathtaking way with a groove. And, of course, by Randolph\u2019s mountain of licks mere mortals have never heard\u2014or dreamed of\u2014before. The steel virtuoso sat down to fill in details on his latest project.<\/p>\n
The album’s exhausting in a good way.<\/b><\/p>\n
Thank you, man! You know, I kind of want it to be exhausting. I don\u2019t want anybody to be saying, \u201cHey, what happened to the energy of the band? Where\u2019d everything go?\u201d We wanted to add some songs that people could sing and dance to. The thing about our band is always having this high energy, kind of natural organic style. In the song \u201cBrand New Wayo\u201d that I recorded with Carlos Santana, it\u2019s just straight chords with everybody in the studio and me and Carlos just having it.<\/p>\n
Could you walk us through a quick history of sacred steel?<\/b><\/p>\n
It\u2019s been going on in our church for about 80 or 90 years. It\u2019s all about this music that\u2019s joyous, that\u2019s got a groove. The steel plays these singing melodies that make you feel like you\u2019re in heaven. And the other times it makes you feel like you\u2019re at a rock concert. You\u2019d come out of church after a four-hour service, and nearly three hours of it was all jamming. We also had these collections of tapes and CDs and recordings of old services. Every time we got in the car we\u2019d just put that tape in and go, \u201cMan, I remember this night, 1989!\u201d So we got to know the history of it.<\/p>\n
Is it difficult to reconcile sacred with secular rock content?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Sometimes I want to write different lyrics, and I just don\u2019t write them. That\u2019s the only conflict for me, because the good angel above my head always says, \u201cWhoa, you can\u2019t say those kind of things! Just because you\u2019re mad at somebody and you\u2019re pissed off, you don\u2019t want to say that on\u00a0your record, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a great line in \u201cAll-American\u201d that goes \u201chalf civilized, half buck wild \u2026\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
That\u2019s what\u2019s in all of us! I\u2019ve seen more lawyers, doctors, congressmen at our shows partying. But look, there\u2019s nothing wrong with it. You are who you are, and when it\u2019s time to go to a concert and have fun, you can let it all out, because music is in all of us, and people want to let loose.<\/p>\n
Greatest pop influences?<\/b><\/p>\n
Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown. I loved Zeppelin, but the guitar playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan got me, because he was such a soulful player. We were always taught at church to play soulful, and to always have a connection, not to just play because you want to feel good and show off.<\/p>\n
Do you listen to instruments other than guitar for inspiration?<\/b><\/p>\n
Oh yeah, there are times when I don\u2019t listen to any guitar. It\u2019s really rare, other than Stevie Ray Vaughan. I get all of my voicings from singers, like Frank Sinatra, Anita Baker and Stevie Wonder, or musicians like Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Sometimes I\u2019ve got to get into where I want the steel to sound like this voice. That\u2019s just the natural sound of how we were taught to play the pedal steel in church. We had to sound like a singer\u2014and that\u2019s why I listen to the great singers. If you go to the extended version of \u201cIsn\u2019t She Lovely\u201d where [Wonder] does that great harp solo at the end, and it just goes on and on, it\u2019s just \u2026 wow! It\u2019s like nobody else would even play those notes\u2014where did that even come from? You could tell he was just feeling it. He just said, \u201cNo, let the track roll!\u201d It happens a lot when I\u2019m doing a solo\u2014you just feel so good the producer keeps saying, \u201cRoll tape!\u201d<\/p>\n
How did Santana get involved?<\/b><\/p>\n
The Santana session goes back to when we were in Europe doing the Montreux Jazz Festival. We were backstage jamming with each other, and we started talking about all these ideas. We wound up booking a session in Vegas for two days. Everybody in the band was there, and we recorded about 10 different songs. As time goes on, we\u2019ll release them all, maybe as B-sides, but \u201cBrand New Wayo\u201d and \u201cBlacky Joe\u201d are just the two we decided to put on the record. Everything I recorded with\u00a0him was simply great.<\/p>\n
Talk about your gear.<\/b><\/p>\n
I have two pedal steels that I use. One is a Jackson pedal steel, and the other is a 12-string from the Mullen Guitar Company. The Jackson is a 13-string. Jacksons are actually the sons of the old\u00a0Sho-Bud steels, but they\u2019re sort of the new wave of mechanics and sound and tone. It\u2019s a single-neck, because I figured\u00a0out how to get all the tunings in one complex tuning. It\u2019s a mixture of my own thing, sort of an E9 with C6 with E7. It\u2019s really all over the place, because you have the pedals and these different things that help you get the different chords, which lead to different progressions and different scales. If you tune it like this, you can play country, you can play jazz, you can play rock \u2019n\u2019 roll\u2014you\u00a0can play everything.<\/p>\n
What about amps?<\/b><\/p>\n
I use a Fuchs 212 cabinet with a special head that they made me. Then I use this Fender Vibrosonic, because I need to get the low end and the mid-rangy stuff, so that\u2019s what really works.<\/p>\n
Effects?<\/b><\/p>\n
There\u2019s this company called JAM. They make the best analog pedals, whether it\u2019s a phaser, chorus, flanger or overdrive. I have about six of their pedals that I rotate in and out, depending on the situation.<\/p>\n
Your church influences really show on the breakdown in “Get Ready.”<\/b><\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny, that piece of music actually came from an old thing we used to play in church. One of my uncles showed me a videotape from about 1999 and said, \u201cLook at this jam. Man, you had the whole church dancing!\u201d So I\u2019ve been trying to see how I could make that all happen in this crossover with\u00a0rock \u2019n\u2019 roll and blues.<\/p>\n
How did \u201cWelcome Home\u201d come about? Is Frankie Johnson a real person?<\/strong><\/p>\n Everybody knows somebody with the name Frankie or a last name of Johnson that served in the military. Here in New Jersey I live in back of a big armory, so I spend a lot of time talking to the troops. It\u2019s really been an eye- and ear-opening experience, because they\u2019ll say things like, \u2018You remember so-and-so? He never made it back. He out was here talking to us six months ago. So he\u2019s gone.\u2019 I just want to pay our respects to them. You can\u2019t do that enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ROBERT RANDOLPH The pedal-steel powerhouse blazes funky new trails on his latest set By Bob Cannon On Lickety Split, the latest album by\u00a0Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Robert Randolph takes the pedal steel guitar where no one has gone before. In his hands the instrument is no longer just the province of weepy country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[938,6978,2283],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10764"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10767,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764\/revisions\/10767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}