Robert Randolph was tooling around Florida when the call came. The musician, whose sacred steel slide guitar has powered his own Family Band albums and has popped up on records by Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Thomas, Santana, and Dave Matthews Band, was behind the wheel when his office phoned to tell him that Beyoncé wanted him to record with her.
“I said, ‘Record what — you sure you have the right person?’” Randolph recalls, noting his own jam-band style. “I’m the kind who plays and plays and plays on. It was kind of surreal.”
Shortly after her commercial for Verizon aired during Sunday night’s Super Bowl, Beyoncé dropped two songs from Act II, the second installment of her three-part Renaissance project. Details of the album, due March 29, are still emerging, but it’s widely believed to focus on country music. Rhiannon Giddens, the Americana singer and multi-instrumentalist, called it Beyoncé’s “new country record” on Facebook on Monday (on Twitter, she said it was “country-inspired”) and announced her participation, citing “my banjo and viola playing” on one of the new songs, “Texas Hold ‘Em.” “The beginning is a solo riff on my minstrel banjo,” she wrote. Other participants include pedal steel player Justin Schipper, who plays with Randolph on “16 Carriages.”
When Randolph arrived in L.A. a few months ago, he found himself in a room with Giddens, producer and instrumentalist Raphael Saadiq (playing drums and bass), and keyboardist Khirye Tyler. Beyoncé was there too.
