ROBERT RANDOLPH – PREACHER KIDS: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- Jun 30
- 3 min read
ROBERT RANDOLPH
Preacher Kids (Civilians)
HOLY BLUES TO DAMN YOUR SOUL Sister Ferdinand! So this is what it sounds like in 2025 when God is asked to make room for some not always exactly godly things to sit next to Him (or Her or, you know, whatever floats your holy boat). It’s all loose clothes, looser morals and lost innocence in a world of gender fluidity!
Well, not quite. Or not only. Sure we hear on Preacher Kids how “2am at Tootsies, makes me feel at home”, along with the perfectly reasonable line that at this point “ain’t nobody sinning alone” – oh yes, preach my brother in Christ – but there’s another song here where our man declares he needs “that choir woman”. Bless.
Yes, ok, she’s one who “speaks with tongues of fire”, which conveniently is rhymed and timed with him being a “slave to her desire”, but look at the small print y’all. God is in the detail, right?
The holy trinity of Robert Randolph, his previous long-term group, The Family Band, and, just as importantly, his “sacred steel” guitar, didn’t only sing the holy word in their bluesy gospel fare – unlike recent barnstorming, funky but always testifying visitors here, Annie And The Caldwells – but it did ground the work. His personal background had been not just gospel but deeply-ingrained gospel. Like generations of it, so it’s in your bones as much as your heart. So that it infects your thinking and reactions – oh, the guilt! – and your language, whether you are a believer anymore or not.
Now that status is more complicated as Randolph, the proverbial son-of-a-preacher-man, and a supporting crew with similar religion-centred upbringings – the “preacher kids” of the album title – repeatedly show there’s a hard-charging, guitar-led, salty-and-sweaty world out there beyond the spiritual. Even if you don’t like that truth. “It’s hard to understand, when something breaks tradition/And lots of people try, most just get to bitchin’”, as he sings in the punchy Sinner.
Not that you need to leave your own deity at the door to listen – he hasn’t gone over to the darkside holus bolus – but you do need to allow for those complications. Or maybe you need to shut it out and just go with the flow.
The choppy, urgent flow of Gravity for example, where brisk drums smack you on the backside, encouraging you to follow the waggling guitar. At first it feels like it’s going to lead you astray, only to encounter a churchified choir and urgent organ that might yet straighten you out, except that everyone piles in and soon it’s a mess of bodies, burning solos and abandon.
Or maybe the sterner flow of When Will The Love Rain Down, where the controlled power of guest vocalist, Judith Hill, brings both judgement and need, Memphis preaching and Queens attitude, to the fore. Here guitars are turned on each other, combative but collaborative, only to fall back in something like awe for a solo that almost nonchalantly wah-wahs its way past any roadblocks.
Whether it’s the slow swing of Big Women (he’s in favour, if you’re wondering), the even slower grind of Roosevelt Pool, or the cocky little swagger of King Karma, Randolph is pretty comfortable with the overtly sensual, in rhythm and in guitar tone. He’s also prepared to be funny or brazenly sly, which always makes the sensual better (or so I’ve read), especially, but not only, for “a church boy” in love with the blues.
That kind of stuff leads to sin, and sin is not good for us, obviously. Not if God is looking. But what if She is too busy working a groove into a barroom dancefloor, listening to Robert Randolph, to notice? Ah, blessed day. And night. Especially night.
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