Robert Randolph is currently on the road supporting his recent release We Walk This Road, before another high marquee gig as a member of the Experience Hendrix Tour, which the pedal steel guitarist joins in Toronto on October 28. His new album, produced by the ubiquitous and formidable T-Bone Burnett, is a wonderful distillation of over one hundred years of American roots music. Indeed, We Walk This Road is also a celebration of African-American songs, and the work is significant because it marks the first time Randolph, a gospel-based performer, raised in the traditions of the House of God Church, had been exposed to those ancient pearls from the American soundscape.
Jambands.com sat down with Randolph on a tour off-day, and spoke with him about his continuing musical education, whether it is under the guidance of Burnett, or via collaborations with the likes of Leon Russell or Robbie Robertson. The musician quipped that playing with these bastions of historical importance can be a “contagious disease,” but so is the man’s own music, which has always sounded like more of a celebration of the human spirit, rather than an ode to the depressed shortcomings of a society that doesn’t care. Randolph takes note, delivers the goods, and hopes that we enjoy the results. After all, in the musician’s own words, “that’s what I’m here to do.”
Let’s begin with a description of the significance of the Slide Brothers [who also will be touring with Randolph on the Experience Hendrix Tour].
The Slide Brothers are Sacred Steel. These are guys that I grew up with in my church who are like my Muddy Waters and B.B. King. I grew up watching them in church, wanting to play like them. So, now, I have the opportunity to take those guys out with me and travel with me, and really have the rest of the world know who these guys are and who my major influences were growing up.
Your unique upbringing shaped who you are today.
I guess growing up in church, and being a part of the church thing, and also growing up in an inner city here in New Jersey, a rough county, a rough town, and all that, I guess you see the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Being able to have this gift from God to be able to play music, and write songs, or to perform, I could only help but to go out there and to share joy, give people some sense that when things go wrong, there are uplifting songs and music and dancing—just to really uplift people. That’s who I am. That’s what I’m here to do. (laughs)
When you were exploring older records to help inspire the songs for We Walk This Road, did it open up some new paths, some new music that you were not familiar with in the past? How much was producer T-Bone Burnett a part of that process?
T-Bone was a big part of the influence of making this record going forward. Even going forward, to be able to sit down with a guy like T-Bone…a guy like T-Bone doesn’t really understand, he doesn’t really care about radio songs. That to him is like “What does that mean? If a song is good enough, it should be played on the radio. It’s not…you can’t be sitting here and writing a radio song for a hit, or whatever that means.” (laughs)
He told me, “You have to be able to make great music for the fans and the listeners and have people catch on because 30 years from now, you all want to be doing this, and you want to be writing and singing songs in 30 years when you’re Clapton’s age and all that.” (laughs) “That’s what a hit is. A hit is not like getting on the radio today. It’s about when you are 50, and you are able to tour arenas and look back and sing songs that we wrote 30 years ago, and have a couple generations of fans singing these songs.”
To be able to sit and make [ We Walk This Road ] with him, and learn about so much of this great music that has been recorded in the last hundred years that I hadn’t heard of like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Blind Willie Johnson, and a lot of these old gospel field recordings and stuff that we used as inspiration was a great thing to me.
The snippets of historical songs are featured as segues, and serve as preludes to your cover versions and new material written by yourself, Burnett, Tonio K., and Peter Case, which are rooted in the past with an eye for the present.
Yeah. That’s what we sort of went for, even when you’re talking about the lyrical content in songs like “If I Had My Way” and “Dry Bones.” You have those old segues there, but we sort of re-wrote them and changed them, so that people of today would be able to relate to a story that is about something going on in their life, or something they’ve seen, or whatever, and to give them something, a goal to shoot for. It was really that sense of the thing that we wanted to do, to remind people where we got it from, and also to educate young artists and musicians about that stuff. Now, people are like, “Man, let me go dive into that stuff. Let me see what I can do.” That’s all T-Bone really wanted to do. He said, “Look, I want to work with you on this project, and then, when you’re down the road and working with other people, and doing some other stuff, you can remember this moment where we sort of looked back at this stuff, and how it helped you create a whole new realm of music going forward.”
You had some good company playing with you on this record, as well. Ben Harper plays slide and sings on the track you just mentioned, “If I Had My Way.”
That was the great thing about Ben Harper. We’ve been friends for a long time, and we always wanted to work together. It just so happens that this time, we were working at a studio about a mile from his house in California. We finally had our guitars, and we were writing songs. T-Bone played that “If I Had My Way” jam and Ben Harper’s eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store. He said, “Man, I always wanted to do something with this song!” He ran into the vocal booth, and it just turned out to be this great event of a day. (laughter) It ended up turning into about 5 in the morning by the time we got out of there, and we started at about noon. We had done so much other stuff, and this and that, it just turned into a great feeling. Even today when I see Ben Harper, he says, “Man, I just love that song.” (laughs)
How about your version of John Lennon’s “I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama,” which features Doyle Bramhall II.
On “Soldier,” yeah—that’s such a great song. Doyle just happened to be in there that day when we were doing that song. We said, “Hey, why don’t just come on, and put some vocals around you, and have you do this, and play on it with us.” We cut it live with Jim Keltner [on drums], which is a great thing.
Then, when you talk about “Shot of Love”—that’s actually Keltner’s second time recording that song. He recorded the original version, and he didn’t even know it until we finished the song, and started to mix it. He said, “Man, that’s actually me playing the drums on that original.” (laughter) It was great for him to be a part of that. [Author’s Note: “Shot of Love” is the title track of Bob Dylan’s third Christian album, which was released in August 1981, and featured Keltner, among many others.]
Thinking back at our discussion about some of the American historical material makes me think of the European dates you played with the Family Band in August. How do the European audiences relate to the more American-based lyrical content? Do the songs bypass that issue by offering a universal appeal at this point?
Well, you know what? It’s universal now. Don’t forget—when I talk to guys like Clapton, they were listening to Chess Records music and all of that stuff years ago. That was the biggest thing to them. The way he actually explained it—actually, T-Bone explained it the same way. T-Bone said, “Listen, I remember when I was listening to Bo Diddley and, in those days, in the South, you couldn’t listen to that kind of music. Your parents didn’t want to catch you listening to that music.” So, it went to Europe first and guys like Clapton and the Stones got that music before those records were known here in the States. When we’re traveling abroad, the blues artists, the older music, and the American music, especially the older, more authentic stuff,—the [European audiences] really take pride in that stuff; that was their first library to a lot of that stuff.
Jimi Hendrix was an American whose career took off once he moved to England, and, now, it’s come full circle with your slot on the Experience Hendrix tour.
Oh, yeah, man. The Experience Hendrix is such a great tour for anybody that loves Hendrix or loves guitar. You get a chance to see (laughs) everybody jammin’ out for 20 minutes, 30 minutes at a time on all your favorite Hendrix songs. It just goes to show that Hendrix made all this music in such little time and left this legacy behind that, here we are, 40 years later, and we’re singing the same songs, and you still can’t compare it. The sounds of Hendrix and the way he played—he’s probably the most influential guy of all time in music. When you talk about his songwriting and the way that he played, it changed the guitar forever. It’s really mind-blowing. It’s great for us to be a part of that tour. All the guitar players get together and we get to appreciate his legacy. Every night, we all go out there, and we play, and then we go back and sit on the bus and listen to old Hendrix stuff: “Man, that’s nuts how he got these sounds, and how he played this stuff.”
Musicians talk about how they communicate through their instruments, but Hendrix actually did. Are you ever tapping into that language vibe when you’re on stage? Do you also feel that historical resonance coming through when you are playing, like all the musicians that came before you are linked with you in a way?
I guess it’s sort of that, too. It is sort of that same feeling that the guys who came before me are coming out and doing that. You know…it’s such a cool…you can’t explain it—when you hit that moment, and you’re on stage, and the crowd is cheering, and everything is clicking, it’s this out of body/out of mind experience where you’ve entered this other dimension. Because, don’t forget, as musicians and recording artists, that’s what we all dream of. We all dream of sitting in a house one day and writing a song, taking it to the studio and recording a song, and having the full trilogy, which is the fans and the writer and everybody singing along and happy about the material. There’s no better feeling. (laughs) There’s nothing else to live for.
And you’ve had some time to think about that, too. It’s been ten years since your first club dates, with some rather legendary appearances at Wetlands Preserve, too. Your music has evolved over the years, but you still remain quite grounded. Again, would you credit that to your upbringing and its impact on your live persona?
Yeah, I guess it is the upbringing and church, and being around that atmosphere, knowing not to take things for granted, and this is what we’re here for. We’re just individuals that are a little different than somebody else. (laughs) Everybody’s got their own craft. If a pipe breaks in your house, you can’t fix it, and you have to call a plumber. When the plumber leaves, everything’s fixed, and you go, “Wow, man—how’d you do that?”
[Musicians] have a musical gift from God that’s able to go out and tell a story, talk about the influence, and go out and be an influence to younger artists, as well as older artists, to keep this musical legacy going. Music is a universal language that we all turn to when we need a change or something, when we need to relax, or need to be upbeat, or need to be picked up—that’s what we all turn to music for.
You played with a fine group of collaborators in the past decade, as well. Do they bring new ideas to you that are influential to your own music?
You never know until you’ve been around somebody like Keltner when it comes to playing drums, or creating music, and watching him do it. Nobody’s better. Watching him create drums and surrounding the thing is so unconventional to what we are all used to seeing. Even Steve Jordan, who is a world-renowned drummer and has played with everybody, even he was blown away. He walked into that studio session because he was down the hall mixing the John Mayer record. He walked in there and saw Keltner doing his craft, and he said, “Man, what is goin’ on there?”
When you see stuff like that, with all the stories, taking it all in, and really having fun…it’s just being a part of something. It’s really cool and great to have him really tell me a lot. You know what’s funny? He can tell you about a life story that then just changed how we approach music. It’s just little things like that. He talked about Dylan and T-Bone and all of them in the studio years ago, and you just think, “Wow, isn’t that something.” Just certain stories. (laughs)
You’ve got your stories, too, and ten years down the line, your eyes are open, your ears are open, your mind is still wide open? Ready for another decade?
Yes, sir. I hope so. (laughter) Definitely. Probably another twenty years because we haven’t even reached a full-on…whatever we’re going to do. There are so many ideas that I’m ready to crank out another record now.
