Robert Randolph and the Family Band Plan New 2017 Album

Robert Randolph and the Family Band announced it will release a new LP in early 2017. The album’s first single is scheduled to arrive in October. Randolph and the Family Band have also promised to hit tour extensively in support of the new LP, due out in February.

For Randolph’s new album, the Family Band’s first since 2013’s Lickety Split, the pedal steel guitar virtuoso recruited a variety of guests including Hootie and the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker, R&B crooner Anthony Hamilton and Snarky Puppy’s Cory Henry.

Randolph, one of David Fricke’s picks for the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, recently rejoined fellow jam giant John Medeski and a trio of North Mississippi Allstars in their side project the Word. The band released its first album in 15 years, Soul Food, in 2015.

“Every Word song is like a soup,” Randolph told Rolling Stone. “You know how on cold days you get the biggest pot you can find and just start throwing in ingredients? And once it’s all done simmering, two or three hours later, you taste it and go, ‘OK, that’s soup for the day!’ I don’t know what our music’s called, but it’s soup.”