Interview | Robert Randolph Discusses New The Word Album
By Andy Kahn May 4, 2015 • 10:35 am PDT
There was magic in the air in 2000 when The Word – the gospel, R&B and funk supergroup consisting of sacred steel guitarist Robert Randolph, organist John Medeski, and The North Mississippi Allstars: guitarist Luther Dickinson, drummer Cody Dickinson and bassist Chris Chew – first got together to record a spiritual album and then tour in support of that eponymous debut. There was magic in the air every night when Randolph lit audiences up in small clubs across America with his blazing inferno style of sacred steel guitar playing, something many music fans had never seen nor heard played in a contemporary setting at the time. Today, he’s one of the most renowned and inspirational players on the improv rock scene. While The Word has gotten together sporadically over the years to perform, Soul Food is the band’s first new record since their debut in 2001.
JamBase contributor Bill Clifford recently connected with Randolph on the phone to chat about how and why the time was right and about the magic in the air again.
Bill Clifford: Do you get the same kind of spiritual energy and feeling from a live music audience as you take away from a gospel church congregation? What are some of the subtle differences?
Robert Randolph: To me, the only difference is that when I play in church it’s sort of less of a performance and the mood from playing and that togetherness and that sense of seeing people, you know, dance, laugh, cry, sing along – that’s all sort of the same enjoyment to me, whether it’s playing in church, or playing at my concerts. To me it’s all the same, it’s all relative because … being that we don’t get to play in a closed box church anymore, you know, concerts is where I sort of see it as our church now. Because I always like to create music that is uplifting in some sort of way.
BC: What do you remember about being in the studio with these guys, Medeski, a seasoned musical pro and The North Mississippi Allstars, a burgeoning young blues rock band, for the first time? How was that experience different 14 years later, and also now that you’ve established yourself as a prominent guitarist and musician and have been in recording studios many times yourself?
RR: Well, I think early on then – which is actually the first time I had been in a recording studio trying to be a part of something like that – to me, it was kind of like, you know, I actually had a job then, a nine–to–five, (chuckles under his breath.) I was an assistant paralegal at a firm in Roseland, New Jersey. I remember going to the studio and meeting these guys, cause I hadn’t meet them before then. The Allstars and Medeski had this vision of doing a gospel record that was sort of in the vein of those first two sacred steel recordings. They got a hold of me and found out I lived in New Jersey and Medeski at the time lived in Brooklyn.
So The Allstars flew up here, and they had a show at the Bowery Ballroom and so we just kind of used that time to record this record. I had no clue really what was going on; like, “OK, what do you want me to play? Let’s see … “ That’s really what it was. They were like, “We heard you do this thing on that record … What else do you play? Let’s play on that.“ So we just kind of played on that kind of thing, you know?
But this [new album] now was more of like we’ve been recording, we’ve been traveling, we’ve been doing this and that, so it was kind of like, coming in with guns blazing right. “OK, let’s rock, or let’s get down.” You know?
It got to the point where we had done the first sessions in Brooklyn, at the Brooklyn Recording Studios – which is one of the greatest studios to track at – and we did the second sessions down in Memphis at Royal Studios, which is Willie Mitchell’s old place where all the Al Green stuff was recorded. And that studio, they didn’t remodel, it looked exactly the same as when Al Green recorded “Love and Happiness” as it does right now. Same gear, same mics, same drums.
By the time we got to Memphis, after the first day – after the second morning – I had to tell those guys, “Listen, we can’t play anymore, we’ve got 25 songs here we’ve got to sift through, we need to finish.” (Laughs) Because every time we sit down and play, “Oh, let’s do another song, another thing, another and another.” And every song was just as good as the next one. “We’ve got to finish so that we can give the people music to listen to. We’ll put all these other things out there as exclusives, but let’s not play anymore”’ Which speaks to all this creative energy.
Cody had written specific songs, Luther had specific songs, Chris Chew had songs, Medeski had all these ideas, I had ideas. So we would have just kind of kept going. Some ideas were ideas maybe I had for The Family Band, or Medeski for MMW. But then we all said, “OK, let’s bring it into The Word thing,” so it worked. For example, “New Word Order” which Cody had specifically written for The Word. He got the chord changes from listening to Martin Luther King’s (sings in tune with chords of the song Soul Food “New Word Order”) “Free at last, free at last, Thank God almighty, we are free at last.” That’s where the chords come from.
BC: How and when, did you and Medeski and The North Mississippi Allstars determine that it was time to get back in the studio together and make an album and tour to support it?
RR: Every year somebody would mention it, somebody would mention it, because, with so many different music fans or listeners – and there was always some promoter or radio guy or a magazine writer that would say, “Hey, so when is the next time you guys are going to record The Word?” I mean that has happened from every year that we first did the record to now, you know? The Family Band was supposed to be performing a show in Brooklyn, but we changed it to a The Word show, and we wound up doing a The Word show at The Capitol Theatre (in Port Chester, New York). So I said, “Let’s use the money that we make from this show to go and make the record.” And they were like, “Oh, that’s a good idea, let’s do it!”
BC: When you all got together in the studio in NYC, did you each already have songs written specifically for a gospel (The Word) album, or was it a more off-the-cuff kind of thing, where you just got together and played and saw what stuck?
RR: Well, we all had these ideas that we sort of listened to. Like “New Word Order” Cody had this song and “Hey, let’s try this one.” We would play it, and OK we’ve got this one. And Medeski had that tune that he had, I forget the name of it now, the titles have changed like three times already. (After hearing a list of song titles from the recording,) Yeah, “Swamp Road” was the one, “Swamp Road” was the one Medeski had that I think it was a tune that MMW played and he played it (in the studio) and I was like, “Well, hey, we should try that because this will sound different,” so it’s something new. “You Brought The Sunshine” is one of the more famous gospel tunes recorded by The Park Sisters with vocals that I just always loved and always wanted to play instrumentally. So we did that. But some of the other songs were just plug and play, just see what happens. The song “Come By Here,” we had just come off a dinner break, and me and Cody just went into the studio and started playing. Next thing you know Luther runs in, plugs in the guitar, Medeski runs in and starts planking and next thing you know, that songs is literally about 14 minutes long and we had to edit it down. (Laughs) Because there’s so many other songs that were going to make – everybody will be able to download them through iTunes exclusives or whatever, Spotify, all the other stuff, people will be able to hear all the other tracks which were recorded and are just as good as what’s on there.
BC: What about the two different versions of the title track – “Soul Food I” and “Soul Food II,” did you record one in NYC and the other in Memphis?
RR: No, it was just two different – those songs actually ran right after each other. They were both recorded in Memphis. I think they decided to use it as the title, because Willie Mitchell’s daughters had cooked this whole big spread, a soul food spread. We went in and we ate all this food and we ran into the studio and right after that we were on fire. That’s when I said, “Look man, let’s not play any more,” because jeez! It’s so good and we just keep recording the music.
“Soul Food I” and “II” came after that, another song and another came after that.
BC: Do you spice up your songs – songs that you wrote and brought to the recording sessions – any differently for a gospel album rather than for a Robert Randolph and The Family Band album?
RR: You know, I don’t think so man. I would say between the years 2004 and 2008 or 2009, I kind of used to have that mentality where I used to think like, “Now I’ve got to do this different or that different.” Now, I just record, you know? And whatever it is, it is.
That’s something I sort of learned from mistakes, good or bad, and from talking to guys like Santana or Eric Clapton and T-Bone Burnett, just guys giving artists advice, like, “Look man, when you go into the studio, you just record, if you feel like you’re in a gospel mood today than you finish up in a gospel mood, do what you have got to do, don’t try to cater to one audience or one type of fan base.” Especially Santana, he said, “Listen, artists, we don’t do that. You find a song, and if it’s a great song, you just record it, you feel good about it and it is what it is.”
BC: You’ve got Ruthie Foster and Amy Helm recording vocals for two songs, “Come By Here” and “Glory, Glory,” how will you incorporate those songs on tour? Will they be played live?
RR: Oh yeah, they definitely will. We’ll try to get Amy Helm or Ruthie Foster to come on out to play on those two. We’ve done some other stuff too, so we’ll be playing all those songs live. I’m sure live they’ll all be different. I don’t think any of those songs, other than the ones that have a certain melody that we play in – for me, it’s always hard to repeat the same thing, because if I’m playing, it’s just like – there’s times we’ve been in the studio and a producer or somebody will go, “Hey, can you play it again?” I’m like, “Dude, if you wasn’t recording it, it’s not going to be the same.” (laughs). That’s just something that, I don’t know, I can try to do a lick the same, but if you wasn’t recording … that’s the whole Jimi Hendrix way – Eddie Kramer said, “Look, we always had a tape rolling with Jimi Hendrix, if we didn’t, none of these songs would be heard today.”
BC: The last word: What else should fans know about this album and tour and about the band this go around?
RR: I think we’ve all sort of grown musically and collaboratively and we’re making all this great music together and everybody has all this energy. There’s some sort of magic that doesn’t really happen with other bands, but it happens with The Word for some reason. I don’t know why but it just happens. We’re all feeling good about the record we made and the tour coming up and all the festivals and we just want people to enjoy it and dig it. It’s really going to be awesome.
The Word’s Soul Food album is available for purchase here as well as via a variety of retail outlets and online services. Look for The Word at a number of festivals over the coming months including sets at Hangout, High Sierra, All Good, Forecastle, XPoNential and Gathering Of The Vibes.
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