Imagine going on tour with Eric Clapton and playing Royal Albert Hall, performing at the Bonnaroo Festival and recording an album with John Medeski of Medeski, Martin & Wood. That’d be pretty awesome right? Robert Randolph has done all that and more, and he’s only 26 years old.
A pedal steel guitarist since the age of 17, he performs tonight with his band, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, at Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore.
Randolph, whose parents were a deacon and a minister, grew up in the House of God Church. He became involved with music at the church when he played drums for the youth choir. Randolph’s relatives, many of them musicians themselves, encouraged him to try the pedal steel guitar, which was initially used by churches as an inexpensive alternative to organs. Randolph originally started playing a simple six-string lap steel guitar and later received lessons on the pedal steel guitar from sacred steel legend Ted Beard. Currently Randolph rocks out on a custom-made 13-string pedal steel guitar he created by combining two eight-string lap guitars.
The pedal steel guitar has a recognizable slippery steel sound popular in country music and Hawaiian hula dancing. He creates a distinct sound full of distortion and other pedal effects, certainly unlike anything that would appear in a country music song.
After being discovered in 2000 at the first Sacred Steel Convention, Randolph was invited by Medeski to contribute to The Word, an instrumental blues and gospel album, with North Mississippi All-Stars. Interest in Randolph grew rapidly as the jam band scene embraced him. By 2002, two years after he began playing professionally, Randolph had shared the stage with former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, Medeski, Martin & Wood, the North Mississippi Allstars, the Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule and Dave Matthews. In 2004 Randolph was named one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists.
The band, comprised of two of Randolph’s cousins, bassist Danyel Morgan and drummer Marcus Randolph, with Jason Crosby on the organ, combines gospel elements with modern R&B, funk, soul, blues and rock music. Its first release, Live at the Wetlands, and quickly followed by Unclassified, released by Warner Bros. Records in 2003. Unclassified features Randolph’s supercharged pedal steel and soaring notes mixed with lyrics influenced by his devotion to God.
Robert Randolph and the Family Band perform tonight at Ram’s Head Live!, 20 Market Place, Baltimore, MD, 21012. Tickets are $30.80 online. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the concert begins at 8 p.m. For more information call (410) 244-1131.
