Grammy-nominated pedal steel virtuoso Robert Randolph is sitting at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records on June 25, and he has two reasons to celebrate today: The release of his debut solo album, Preacher Kids, and National Leon Day, the year’s halfway mark to Christmas and a perfect excuse to honor his late, great friend, Leon Russell. (“Leon” is “Noel” spelled backwards, you see.)
“I played with Leon Russell, actually. I played one of his last live festivals that he played,” Randolph tells LPTV. “We [Robert Randolph and the Family Band] played before him, and he sent the message: ‘I want you to come play and jam with me.’ So, I jammed with him, and he didn’t play many other shows after that. That was the last time I played with him.”
The first time Randolph and Russell played together was at L.A.’s Village Studios, when T Bone Burnett was producing the Family Band’s 2010 album, We Walk This Road, and the collaborative Elton John/Leon Russell record The Union there at the same time. “We wound up just talking every day for a whole week or two.” Randolph says. He chucklingly recalls one “most bizarre story” Russell told him, about how when Russell finally came home after years of nonstop touring, “his wife bought a TV — and he had never seen a TV before! … And he turned it on and it was like Tom & Jerry and The Jeffersons or something like that, and it’s like, nobody saw him for another 15, 20 years. Because he thought the TV was the most fascinating thing. So, he just sat. That’s all he wanted to do, was sit on his couch and watch his TV set.”
More seriously, during their bonding time together at the Village Studios, Randolph ended up playing on The Union, and Russell, in turn, ended up playing on We Walk This Road. “Leon actually helped us write and record this beautiful song. He helped co-write and played the piano on this very beautiful, intimate song called ‘Salvation,’ and it’s just really one of those things — we only played it live one time. Because it’s kind of one of those moments. It’s really just bass, my pedal steel, piano, and drums, but the way he played the piano was the most simple, beautiful thing.”
Russell is just one of the many luminaries Randolph has worked with — his other collaborators have included Dave Matthews, Santana, Norah Jones, Ozzy Osbourne, Eric Clapton, Robbie Robertson, Taj Mahal, Metallica, Sheryl Crow, Jack White, Jon Batiste, and Buddy Guy, and he recently reached an entire new audience when he played on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tracks “16 Carriages” and “Ya Ya.” So, when it was time for Randolph to go solo with Preacher Kids, he of course enlisted a who’s-who of roots music stars. Shooter Jennings produced the album at Hollywood’s hallowed Sunset Sound Studios and at Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Studios in Nashville; the project features a collective of musicians who, like Randolph, grew up as preachers’ kids, like Judith Hill and Margo Price; and the album is out on Sun Records, the original label home of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison. The fact that such a prestigious project came together so organically and unexpectedly is one again illustrative of Randolph’s unorthodox career.
“I started writing many songs, and I was doing two records, kind of 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 the Yelawolf record [a joint album that Jennings and Southern rapper Yelawolf made in 2022 called Sometimes Y]. And I was like, ‘I know Shooter’ … So, I like DM’d him or something on Instagram.”
Jenning recalled Randolph from how they “would always just wind up in the same bar somewhere, literally, in Nashville or here and through the years,” and Jennings impulsively invited Randolph to meet up, saying, “‘Why don’t you just come to L.A. and let’s just see if we even like each other?’ And that’s literally what we did. … We had four days off, so I flew here and we put a bunch of people together at Sunset Sound. We just jammed for a whole day, and the first song we actually did was ‘When Will the Love Rain Down,’ and then ‘Choir Woman.’ And he was like, ‘OK, I think we got a vibe.’”
It’s incredible that Randolph waited 20 years into his career to finally make a solo record, which is a rockin’ departure from what he does with his Family Band, but as Randolph says, “I guess it was more of just expanding and exploring and getting wet. I tell people all the time, ‘You gotta mix the characters to get a different type of dish. You gotta bring some wacky people in here.’” One thing the new album’s characters have in common is they’re all literal “preacher kids” who have “come from that whole strict sort of traditional-type of thinking or teaching, growing up that way, and then rebelling in some way. Us all having a vision to go out and share these beautiful music gifts and have all of these different, new outlooks on songwriting and concepts, it’s all the same similar stories. We’ve all been through the whole traditional church struggle. So, that’s really what the concept of the album] is. … and there was Shooter, coming in and kind of bringing his edge.”
But Randolph “can’t say enough” about one collaborator, 20 Feet From Stardom/The Voice/This Is It diva Judith Hill, who co-wrote “When Will the Love Rain Down” and “Choir Woman” as well as the vibey “Big Women” which opens the album. “I mean, it’s just like magic. It’s almost like we make magic together, which wasn’t even planned,” he raves. “I think she’s one of the best artists alive, one of the most great singers that we have today. Great piano player, and a hell of a songwriter… and she’s got so much emotion.”
Preacher Kids may be Randolph’s solo debut, but he’s already planning to release that other record he was simultaneously working on in Nashville before he and Jenning linked up, which he describes as “funkier” and “a whole different thing.”
“We got lots more music coming,” Randolph promises with a grin. Hopefully that record will come out in time for Leon Day 2026.
