The first thing I saw when walking into the Stage 2 room of New York’s cozy Rockwood Music Hall was Robert Randolph’s pedal steel, set up center-stage as always but given the confines of the room, crammed in tightly on a tiny platform with assorted amps, mics, guitars, keyboards and a big ol’ drum set encroaching.
I’d seen that close-cropped setup before, but it was ages ago. I flashed back 13 years to a now-defunct room in Boston called Axis, not much bigger than Rockwood and sparsely attended – maybe 30 people – on what I remember was a nondescript midweek night when no one (in the broad sense) had any real idea yet who this Randolph cat was or what he could do. I was dazzled that night, and on many nights with the Family Band since then. Has it really been nearly a decade and half since the auspicious rise of Robert Randolph began?
Last night’s occasion was a semi-secret industry show – an underplay, for sure – intended to build buzz for Lickety Split, the band’s fourth studio album. As the current Family Band held court over about 50 minutes – four Lickety songs, a pair of easy-grooving jams and a staple, I Need More Love – it was comforting to remember that despite a number of starts and stops over the past decade – celebrity pals, international exposure, sports programming placements, changing lineups – the core mission of the Family Band hasn’t changed. Big-name producers tried to slick them up and the recorded music suffered as a result. But the live Robert Randolph experience is the same sprawling, exhausting, soul-lifting spectacle it was in 1999.
The knock on Randolph has always been songwriting – that the actual compositions are thin and pedestrian compared to the dazzling musicianship and jamming chops they support. That’s still a valid knock, but as ever, it’s also beside the point. Randolph comes from the sacred steel tradition and, more broadly speaking, the gospel world, where one of the main ideas is frissons: get your audience revved up, feeling joy, being in the moment, shaking ass as if you and they had no other choice but to boogie.
That doesn’t make the songs themselves unmemorable or unsophisticated – it just makes them sort of irrelevant. They’re vehicles. I’ve never seen Randolph fail to win over an audience, and friend, that uplift comes a hell of a lot faster if you just let go and put aside that he’s essentially mines the same five or six song concepts album by album.
Of course, if Randolph and his extended family weren’t such superior players it’d be a lot easier to nit-pick. The Rockwood set’s selections from Lickety Split – a “let’s do this” starter called Amped Up, a sunny groover, New Orleans, a gospel rager, Get Ready and a beaut of a spiritual rocker, Born Again – weren’t themselves much to grab onto. But each clicked for an audience psyched to receive them, overwhelmed with the power, punch and deeply felt soul that makes the Family Band the Family Band even when they’re not really playing much at all.
The supporting cast of the Family Band lineup has shifted a bit over the years: Brett Haas plays sinewy guitar, Randolph’s sister Lanesha is a potent presence on vocals, and occasional member Aaron Lipp was along at Rockwood, adding heft on keyboards. The core, however, remains drummer Marcus Randolph and bassist Danyel Morgan – watch how steady and locked-in they keep things when the rest of the band is blowing it out – and Randolph himself, still a jaw-dropper when he really gets going and turns those squealing steel tones into sonic storms. Take a look at him when he’s deep into a solo and you see the same giddy love for the instrument and faith in the creation of this wondrous music that was there more than a decade ago, and is unchanged now. Randolph feels the love most of all and he’s happiest when sharing.
SETLIST: Amped Up, New Orleans, Get Ready, Jam, I Need More Love, Born Again, Jam
