Robert Randolph - Family Funk

Robert Randolph and the Family Band totally ripped apart J&R’s legendary pop music store. Taking the in-store stage at the crack of Noon-Thirty, the Newark-based band jumped into their power-funk music right where they left it the night before: in full block-party mode.

It’s an out-sized unit, 7 players, enough to strain the confines of any record store, even J&R. Robert, seated at the pedal steel, surrounded himself with rockin’ jazz-jamming, funk musicians: two guitarists, a keyboardist, one cousin on bass, another cousin on drums and his younger sister on back up vocals. A family band, a jam band, an enthusiastic, house-rockin’ band. A jubilant, incendiary assault on an appreciative, lunch-time crowd, shaking off the shackles of wage-slavery, with broad smiles & moist eyes, dancing in the music store aisles.

Molding every angle of every instrument and 5 voices into a stomping groove machine, The Family Band strutted on top of Robert’s slippery sacred steel guitar work, which intermittingly burst through the pop-funk chaos with screams of earthy delight and ecstatic release.

The Family Band plays tonight at Roseland, a hall more appropriate to their huge music, but it should be (and no doubt will eventually be) MSG or Giant’s Stadium. This family could easily thrill tens, even hundreds of thousands. Those of us lucky enough to be downtown will never forget this day.

So you don’t miss out on the unusually powerful performances that J&R brings downtown, Real New Yorkers Know to keep in touch with Live@JR.

Order your copy of Robert Randolph’s new CD, Colorblind today!