Robert Randolph Talks 'Preacher Kids' | LPtv

Hey everybody, this is Lindsey Parker at Liquor Store Pizza. We're here with Robert Randolph. Two causes for celebration today. It is the record release party for Preacher Kids. It's also Noel Day or Leon Day, that's why Got my flare on, Christmas in June. So, happy release weekend Noel Day to you. Yes, thank you. It's happy release weekend Noel Day. Celebrating the master. You've played with Leon Russell before. with Leon Russell. Actually, I played one of his last live festivals that he played. Oh, wow. What was that like? What what what was the circumstance? we were somewhere it's kind of weird because I didn't think about it till maybe I was just sound checking and I forgot.

Cuz he you know, it wasn't that long ago. It probably had to be within what year did Leon pass? 2018-ish, maybe? Okay, so maybe like 2017, somewhere around there. It was summer 2017. He uh we were playing right before him. Actually, he was playing on another stage at this festival. And after him, yeah. I mean, well, we played before him anyway and he was like he sent the message, Leon, I want you to come play with and jam with him. So, I jammed with him and he hadn't played many other shows after that. You know, so um that was the last time I played with him. First time I played with him, I got we were in uh the Village Studios here in California and and um Not Malibu, what is that? Uh Santa Monica.

The Westwood area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. West side. I don't know. I'm an East Coast guy, so to me it's all yeah. All good. But yeah, he at that time T Bone Burnett was producing my record and the record with um Elton John and Leon Russell at the same time. So, we were in like two different rooms. So, I got a chance to spend a lot of time with Elton and Leon and Leon was you know, we wanted to just talk to for like every day for like the another whole like week or two, you know? And it turned into where I played on their record and then Leon actually helped us write and record this beautiful song. It's from off the Robert Randolph record called We Walk This Road. He wrote He helped co-write and played the piano on this very beautiful intimate song called Salvation.

And it's just really one of those We only played it live one time. Only one time? Yeah, because it's kind of one of those moments where it's it's really just like bass, my pedal steel, and piano, and drums. And but the way he played the piano on it was the most simplest beautiful

thing, you know? And before that, we were trying to record it. Actually, you know what's funny? We were trying to record the song without him. And T-Bone was like, you know, uh since you and Leon, you know, you guys came wrote the song and let's just have him come in here, you know, and so he just gets on the piano and it just turned out to be that version of the song. And so then he wind up telling me that whole week about a funny story about how when he was a young kid, he just went on tour, right? He was touring. And

somewhere, maybe somebody might know the exact, but he was telling me the story, it's the most bizarre story. He's like, you know, I was on tour I was touring all these years and one day I came home, I think he said his wife bought a TV. And he had never seen a TV before. That's what he said. And he said he got home and he watched He turned on his TV set. Like, what is that? He said it's a TV set. And he turned it on and it was like Tom and Jerry and like The Jeffersons or something like that. I forget what show it was. And And he's like, nobody Nobody saw him for another like 15-20 years because he thought the TV was the most fascinating thing. So he just sat It's all he wanted to do was sit on his couch and watch his TV set.

Jeffersons are pretty great. You can binge watch that stuff. Well, I definitely want you know, obviously we're celebrating Leon's legacy, but we're celebrating preacher kids. You've worked with a lot of people, you know, you just mentioned a few names. You were recently on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, but you have some pretty great luminaries on this, which is actually kind of incredibly your first solo record official solo record. Yeah. Shooter Jennings, free to choose yes. Shooter Hall who's a goddess sings on it. Margo Price who's a goddess. You're on Sun Records, the legacy. Like there's a lot of like impressive all star stuff happening. How did this come together?

You know, we were um well, you know, I started writing many songs and I was doing two records kind of like concepts at the same time. One in Nashville then I text Shooter because actually one of my neighbors was like you need to make a record that sounds like this. And it was like the Yellow Wolf record, right? And I was like Yellow Wolf Yellow Wolf, it was the uh Yeah, Yellow Wolf who did the uh that that collaborative thing with Shooter. I forget the name, but they were a duo. Yeah, that was good stuff. And so I was like, you know, I know Shooter and I was like I'll make a record that sounds Yeah, that's a great That was a great record.

Yeah, so I like DM'd him or something on Instagram. And you didn't know him? I knew him just from like we would always just wind up in the same bar somewhere. Literally. Nashville or here, right? And um oh through the through through the years. And so he's like, "Hey man." He's like, "Well, let's just figure out a time. Won't you just come to LA and let's just see if we even like each other, you know." And that's literally what we did. I I flew here. We went on Zac Brown tour and I flew here. Like we had like four days off, so I flew here and we put a bunch of people together in the studio at Sunset Sound and Wow.

The first song right there. Yeah, we just jammed for like a whole day. And the first song we actually did was When Will the Love Rain Down. That was the first thing and then then was Choir Woman from off this record. It's those two songs and then he was like, "Okay, I think we got a vibe. Let's you know, let's come back in a couple months." So we came back. That was the start. I read like something on Rolling Stone, a little interview you did on Rolling Stone where you basically, it seems like the whole thing was kind of maybe not improvised, but kind of seat of the pants. Like not planned out.

Yeah, we were kind of writing. So so the pedal steel guitar has its own way of like writing a song for you. It's kind of like AI. Except actual intelligence. Actual intelligence. Well, it depends on whose hands are on it, right? So maybe my hands are some kind of intelligence. I think your hands have been. I think that's fair to say. Um but yeah, so it just sort of manifested. we we had all of these musical pieces that just came from jams. And so while we were jamming, I would like hum a melody or Shuggie would hum a melody or one of the guys in the band would hum a melody and we would kind of like build these sections of jams together. And that's how we kind of like came up with a lot of these songs.

Like for example, like When Will the Love Rain Down and Big Women and those songs, it was played exactly like that. There was no overdub. Wow. What made you, you know, you talked about wanting to do this kind of rock record, which is a you know, a bit of a departure from what you do with the Family Stone. What made you, I guess 20 years in to your career, want to do a rock record per se? By yourself? Well, it's I guess it was more of like just kind of expanding and exploring and and getting with Sometimes you you know, I tell people all the time, you got to mix the characters, you know, to get a different type of dish, you know? You got to get all of the You got to say, you know, let's bring some wacky people in here, you know?

Who are the wacky people besides maybe the ones I've already mentioned? Well, my guitar player actually, it's kind of funny cuz my my this new version of this band is like everybody's a little bit different. Even though we all come come from church in some facet. Mhm. The guitar player, Tash Neal, who was already, you know, he comes from the band The London Souls and he was already this kind of really badass great blues rock guy, you know? And so I never kind of played or up said in the studio and done that kind of idea and have somebody like kick me in the tail the whole time, you know?

From a guitar standpoint. Mhm. And so it was a little just just a different mixture of characters. Again, there was Shooter coming in and kind of bringing his edge. He's a character. Yeah, yeah. He's a total cool character, right? So and then also then Judith. By the way, I can't talk say enough about her because, you know, I would, you know, we had these melodies and we had these ideas and I had these themes and and I would send them I like like sending people to tracks. Say, "Hey, let me know what you have. Let me know what you got, you know?" And and people would send stuff. I'd be like, "Ah, that's not it." It just wasn't it. It wasn't wrong, but it was kind of wasn't it was all kind of other things we were writing about. So we get on phone to Judith, you just send her something and it's just like you know, seriously, I mean, it's just like magic. It's almost like we we even we even make magic together, which is not even like wasn't even planned.

She's so great. I've Oh, she's wonderful. She's I think she's one of the best artists alive because she's a one of the most greatest great singers that we have today, great guitar player, great piano player, and a hell of a songwriter, which I mean, you know, people don't talk enough about songwriters. Black Widow album is insane. Yes, it is. It really something. got so much emotion, you know? Isn't that crazy? You collaborate with so many people. I didn't mention that you brief briefly uh well, I briefly mentioned that you collaborated, you know, famously on Cowboy Carter with Beyoncé, which was an example of her doing something different genre-wise. Was any of that sort of an influence to you on the idea of like, "Oh, I'll do a rock record." You could do a You could do a disco record. You could do a hip-hop record. Do whatever you want.

Yeah, I mean I mean I kind of just like I don't know. Like I said, we when we started this record, we were I was doing like two different concepts. Mhm. One was like more funkier and more like kind of Sly Stone on us and then this one was like I was like, "You know what? It's only four of us." Cuz what will happen is a lot of it with today's technology and all the ideas, like you know, you get in the habit of creating all of these sounds. And so you're like, "Hey, man, it's only four people in the band and we got like we got like a 10-piece orchestra and all of that going on that we've overdubbed." And this one was like very raw and like energy and the funk and everything was just like loud and and so that was just the approach to doing that, you know?

Are you going to do the other one? The second the other one you had in mind? The other concept? It's It'll be yeah. Are you working on it already? Yeah. I'm going to finish that up, too. When's that coming out? What can you tell me about that? to see. Are you working with Shooter on that or is that a whole other No, it's a whole different thing. Oh. It's kind of funny because we she mentioned Vance Powell and so that was like the whole thing about it, you know? So before I let you go and go perform out there, the album Preacher's Kids a couple days coming out this week.

What's the significance of the title and I do think there might be a through line lyrically or I wouldn't say it's a concept album, but there is a theme running through it lyrically. Yeah, well, I think that the really the the concept and the theme behind it it's like spending me coming from church the band come we're all like preacher kids, but just compiling all of the stories and watching all of the documentaries of a Refael comes from preachers and Sly Stone and I mean even guys like George Clinton and his and so many you know James Brown and Ray Charles and all these different people and like all of these we all have similar stories.

And so Which is in a nutshell? It's just that we've all come from that this whole strict sort of um uh uh um traditional type of thinking or teaching or or growing up that way and then

kind of like being like rebelled on in some way and then but us all having a vision to go out and share this beautiful music gifts and have all of these different uh uh new outlook on songwriting and concepts and like it's all the same similar stories. We've all been through the whole traditional church struggle coming out and that. So that's really what the concept is Preacher's Kids. The story of all the preacher kids. Can't wait to see you tell the story out there uh on Noel Day. On Noel Day the first Noel. I'm really uh happy to celebrate uh the first This is my first Leon Day celebration officially.

Oh wow. Came dressed for it. I see. Um but I'm excited to celebrate with you. I'm excited to hear this record live and I'm excited for that that concept or the next record. Oh yeah. We got lots more music coming. Well you have to come back to Lickerish Pizza when that record comes out. Yes we will. We'll see you again soon. All right. Thanks for coming. Thanks for so much.