The 125-Plus People, Places and Things Ruling the Rock & Roll Universe : Rolling Stone

BEST JAM BAND

The Word

Robert Randolph was a star in a small world — a virtuoso of sacred-steel guitar, a wild style of Pentecostal-church music — when he was invited to play on the 2001 album The Word with organist John Medeski and the North Mississippi Allstars. "I was only supposed to do a couple of songs," Randolph recalls. "But once we got in there. . . ." The album's improvisations on old spirituals became the birth of a remarkable band also called the Word, with ecstatic locomotion and soloing by Randolph and guitarist Luther Dickinson. "Those guys thought they were just cutting another album," Randolph notes. "I told them, 'It's going to be around for a hundred years.' " The Word tour infrequently (the principals have their own bands), but when they do, they don't bother writing set lists. "It's about translating a feeling in the room," Randolph says. "If a set worked in Chicago, that doesn't mean it will work in Minneapolis." DAVID FRICKE