by Evan Benn

Robert Randolph – The Church’s Loss is Secular Music’s Gain

All music reviews typically include a line that tries to explain what popular musicians the artist at hand most sounds like. For example: “Sum 41’s latest effort can be compared to a hybrid of Blink 182’s hyper-punk power chords and the Beastie Boys’ bratty rhymes.”

This isn’t a music review, but just for a quick “You Are Here” mall map of information, so to speak, here’s Robert Randolph in a nutshell:

Preacher’s son grew up listening to gangsta rap and Stevie Ray Vaughn, soon gained a reputation for being one of the best “sacred steel” church guitar players, and now is emerging as a hot ticket on the jam-band scene.

So, in the makeshift words of a music critic, Bob Marley meets Sister Act soundtrack meets Trey Anastasio. Or, here is NU sophomore Noah Rothschild’s crack at it: “He’s like ZZ Top meets…well, I’d like to think of some better bands to compare him to, but I can’t right now.”

Until about two years ago, Randolph, 25, only played his steel guitar at the House of God church in his hometown of Orange, N.J., or at one of its sister churches along the East Coast and in the Midwest. He grew to prominence by playing in the church’s “sacred steel” services, where members of the congregation pray by dancing and clapping to a steel-guitar group.

The blues-gospel sacred steel tradition dates back to the 1930s, when a pair of Philadelphians brought the Hawaiian-influenced sound to their House of God church.

Randolph began playing when he was 16 years old. His mother was a minister, his father a church deacon and his great-grandfather a pastor. His home may have been close to God, but the streets he lived on were rough. So rough, in fact, that Randolph credits his steel guitar with saving his life.

“The more I’d get into playing, the more I’d hear that this friend or that friend was jumped or put in jail or shot,” Randolph told the New York Times. “And the more I heard things like that, the more I wanted to stay in my house and play the pedal steel.”

Randolph played so much that he soon traded his six-string guitar for a more difficult 10-string model. That, too, has been replaced with the 13-string guitar he plays now.

It didn’t take too long for musicians outside the church to take notice. In 2001, he attracted the attention of blues trio The North Mississippi All-Stars and John Medeski, the soul-jazzy keyboardist of perennial jam-band fave Medeski, Martin and Wood.

Randolph joined the All-Stars and Medeski on an album they called “The Word,” which was Randolph’s debut to the music scene outside of the church.

Call it a transition from the House of God to the House of Blues, if you will.

And the House of Blues is where NU’s Rothschild comes in. Rothschild, one of the Mayfest members who originally suggested Randolph’s name as a Dillo Day performer, said he’s seen Randolph play seven times, including once at the Chicago HOB.

“His shows are just awesome,” Rothschild said. “You can’t help but dance.”

Still, putting his finger on what particular hybrid of music styles Randolph plays proved difficult.

“He’s got this funk-soul-bluesy-rock vibe,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

Randolph and his Family Band (his cousins play bass guitar and drums; a non-cousin rounds out the group on organ) released a live album last year, which they recorded at the Wetlands in New York just after releasing “The Word.”

By shifting to the non-religious realm, Randolph upset some of his fellow congregation members at the Pentacostal House of God.

“Most of the ministers will tell you that it’s wrong,” Randolph says on his Web site. “But I’m doing it basically for the instrument. So many people don’t know what pedal steel is and what you can do with it. It’s been hidden for so long. I’m trying to get it out there and make it as well known as possible.”

To help spread the steel sound, Randolph and the Family Band this month launched a 20-city tour that will take them through Evanston on Dillo Day.

After they depart the Dining Capital of the North Shore, they’ll be hitting big cities like Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee and New York to push their debut studio album, “Unclassified,” which comes out in August.

Blackalicious – Born to Be Black

So Blackalicious, the Northern California-bred, MC-and-DJ hip-hop powerhouse, has been performing without one of its two frontmen for several months.

Tim “The Gift of Gab” Parker recently had eye surgery and has been unable as of yet to rejoin Xavier “Chief Xcel” Mosley on stage. The band’s Web site says Gift of Gab would return in “early May,” but according to fan postings from recent shows citing his continued absence, it’s unclear whether he’ll be in Evanston for Blackalicious’ Dillo Day performance.

If Gab is unable to perform, the Blackalicious show will feature Xcel and Lateef the Truth Speaker, who has become a staple in the Blackalicious crew.

The crew began to take shape in 1987 when Gab and Xcel met at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacremento, Calif. They talked about hip hop, they listened to hip hop, then they formed Blackalicious in 1991 and began making hip hop.

They independently recorded three albums, featuring Xcel’s layered beat productions and Gab’s declaratory and reflective rhymes. In 2000, MCA Records won a bidding war, and Blackalicious signed.

The band’s major-label debut, “Blazing Arrow,” was released last year and includes an entourage of collaborations from artists like Ben Harper, Zach De La Rocha (Rage Against the Machine), ?uestlove (The Roots), Cut Chemist (Jurassic 5) and Rakaa and Babu (Dilated Peoples).

They’ve been touring since the album came out. A few days after the Dillo Day performance, Blackalicious will take its tour to the U.K. and other parts of Europe.

Don’t let Gab’s possible missed appearance get you down. Look what this fan had to say after seeing the band perform May 10 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“(They) absolutely killed the place,” writes ‘Jenni.’ “What we need in SA especially is more conscientious hip hop. Too often the music imported is only chart-topping gangsta rap or misogynistic drivel. Thank God for Blackalicious … it’s about time they came to the Motherland.”

Couldn’t agree with you more, Jenni. It’s about time they came to the Motherland of the North Shore, too.

The Crystal Method – Not Computers, OK?

First thing Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, aka The Crystal Method, want you to know is they consider themselves a rock band. Not electronica. Not techno. Not drum-and-bass.

Rock, with the help of some turntables and remixes.

So when computer-beat groups started surfacing in 1997 and were deemed “The Next Big Thing” by the mainstream press, Jordan and Kirkland took note of the hype and continued doing their own thing.

“I’m not too concerned about DJs that can scratch well or can ride the beats for, like, five minutes,” Jordan said in April to the Tulsa (Okla.) World. “I just like DJs that have great records.”

Jordan and Kirkland want to be known for their arsenal of records and how they use them. They say their mission is to wow a crowd in any way possible, including dazzling audiences with light shows and with their lightning-fast turntable moves.

“We like to be out there on the edge of the stage, so people can watch what we’re doing,” Jordan said. “People come to see us. So if we’re locked up in some corner booth where no one can see us, that’s no good.”

The two Las Vegas natives released “Vegas” in 1997 and followed up with “Tweekend” in 2001. They’ve been producing tracks for a third album, tentatively titled “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

“Weapons of Mass Destruction?” Sounds more like an album title for a band like Disturbed or Pissed Off, not two hipster DJ whizzes.

But, alas, Jordan’s half of Crystal Method does a nice job of explaining the title, proposing a solution to war and promoting his band’s live shows: “If we could just get George Bush and Saddam Hussein to come when we’re spinning some funky breaks…”

Now tell me you don’t want to watch them headline Dillo Day, after sunset, on the lake.

Evan Benn is so much more of a rock star than any of these guys. He’s also Pennsylvania’s most promising journalist and the next NUcomment editor-in-chief. You want him, so tell him: e-benn@northwestern.edu.