The cover of Marcus Randolph and My Peeples Peeple’s album, “Transplant.”
Marcus Randolph, best known as the drummer in Robert Randolph & the Family Band, will front his own group, My Peeples Peeple, at the Raven Room (above the Horseshoe Tavern) in Morristown, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. Keyboardist John Ginty, an original member of the Family Band, will open the show with his own band.
For information, visit facebook.com/TheRavenRoomMotownNJ.
Marcus Randolph, who is Robert Randolph’s cousin, titled My Peeples Peeple’s debut album Transplant in reference to his own 2011 kidney transplant, which he received from his wife. The album is less reliant on instrumental firepower and more song-oriented than the Family Band’s recordings, with Randolph singing in an earnest, appealingly unvarnished manner, and coming off as both introspective and socially engaged. Some of the material is bluesy and some is funky, and there are elements of everything from hip-hop to the “Sacred Steel” steel-guitar gospel that Robert Randolph popularized (Marcus Randolph plays the instrument, too).
Ginty played on Transplant, which was recorded at Showplace Recording Studios in Dover. He says that Danyel Morgan, the original bass player in the Family Band (and another cousin of Robert Randolph’s), will perform at the Raven Room, too, so you will have a reunion of the three original Family Band members who used to back Robert Randolph in the band’s early days.
“It will be the first time we’ve played together in … over 15 years, I suppose,” said Ginty. “And there will be all types of special guests coming out. A couple of the Blind Boys (of Alabama) are coming out.
“Will Robert come out? Who knows. I wouldn’t count it out.”
Here is a video by Randolph and, below that, an interview he did with HomegrownRadioNJ.com.
