Robert Randolph

It's just a few years since the world at large learned about the Sacred Steel tradition. Arhoolie's Sacred Steel CD (now virtually a franchise) took people inside the Jewel and Keith Dominion churches of the House of God, where lap and pedal steel guitars, rather than the more usual organ, is at the heart of the music.

Since then, the genre has created stars like the Campbell Brothers, but one whiz has broken out. Robert Randolph, leading the Family Band (which really is mostly family) has found a wider audience with his thrilling Live at the Wetlands disc, released on his own Dare label, then picked up by Warner Brothers, in addition to his participation in The Word with John Medeski and the North Mississipi Allstars, and Higher Ground, where he and the band back the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama.

"You can minister to people to do good and to be good to one another through music, especially in a time when there's so much going on in the world."

It's been a very fast rise for the 25 year-old, who only began playing eight years ago. Three years ago he was an assistant paralegal, performing in church on Sundays; now he's the next big thing on the jam band circuit, with a studio debut due later this year.

"I've managed to deal with it pretty good," he says. "I'm learning to deal with it every day. I keep the teachings I learned in church with me, stay prayerful, and whenever the tough times - you know I may sing about tough times, telling someone else how to get through them - come, and I get down a little bit, I still got a long ways to go, that keeps me going. I'm sure I'll be 50 times busier when the new studio record comes out and we're touring, playing bigger places. I'm learning how to deal with it."

There's little doubt that Randolph is making a lot of people think twice about the pedal steel. He combines the energy and style of a Duane Allman with real gospel roots for a stew that has nothing to do with Nashville. And he tears down the house everywhere he plays. He started out "on lap steel first, for a couple of months, then I went to playing a 10-string pedal steel guitar." He practiced incessantly, but it wasn't until he spent a month studying with Ted Beard, one of the church's leading players, that he began to improve, accompanying services in his New Jersey church along with two of his cousins.

Sacred Steel concentrated on the Keith and Jewel Dominions in Florida, but as Randolph explains, the church, which was founded in 1903, "is everywhere. The Church is established from Wisconsin to the East Coast and Southeast, there's even some on the West Coast. There's been lap steel since the 1930s. There are a lot of different players now, and you'd only be able to tell them apart after hearing all who the main ones are. There are a bunch of different players and you'll see more kids coming out. What I'm hoping is that you'll see young Canadian kids, Japanese kids playing that style. Calvin Cooke, Lorenzo Harrison, and all of them were the greatest musicians I've ever heard. Had they come out 20 or 30 years ago, they'd have been in the position I'm in. The church was stricter with them than with me, because of the time. They're my main motivation, what they did for the whole tradition. They were playing in church to a small congregation - there are only 12-13,000 people in our whole church organization - and now we have over 200 steel players, and a bunch of kids who want to be steel players. They started that, and it never got out of the church so they could show their abilities."

He still plays in church, whenever his schedule allows, although he comes in for some criticism for having strayed to the secular side.

"Some people voice their opinions, some of the older elders and ministers of the church. They say what they have to say, and I have no problem with that. I deal with it from a musical standpoint, as I grow older, that music is a ministry. You can minister to people to do good and to be good to one another through music, especially in a time when there's so much going on in the world. You can minister to people in song how to do better in life, and get through situations."

In addition to his own disc, Randolph's been helping his hero, Calvin Cooke, make his first album.

"It's a great album, he's written great songs. I've got to make a better record than his! I produced it, worked on some arrangements - I spent more time on his than on mine! I've tried to play and perfect his notes, implement his whole style and move on. So this is about giving back to him what he did for me."

Robert Randolph

"You can minister to people to do good and to be good to one another through music, especially in a time when there's so much going on in the world."

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