Bio:
Soft spoken by nature, South Florida-bred ROOSEVELT COLLIER does his hollering on the pedal steel guitar. Brought up in the "sacred steel" tradition of the House of God Church, Roosevelt built his reputation alongside his uncles and cousins in The Lee Boys, known for their spirited, soul-shaking live performances. Seated front and center, "The Dr." leaves an indelible mark on listeners, flooring audiences with his lightning-fast slide work on the pedal steel.
At festivals, he is a regular "Artist at Large," performing alongside many of music's most prestigious acts, from the Allman Brothers, Tedeschi-Trucks, Los Lobos , the Del McCoury Band and countless others. In 2017, Roosevelt debuted his new project Bokanté - a "World Music All-Star Band" created by Snarky Puppy founder Michael League and featuring the vocals of Malika Tirolien.
As a bandleader, Roosevelt leads his world famous "get-downs" featuring a mixture of "superstars and church folk", his own "Jimi Hendrix Experiment"-style all-star trio, and in 2018 released the long-awaited Roosevelt Collier debut record, featuring an incredible mixture of blues, gospel, rock, and funk all rolled up by producer and bandmate Michael League.
“This record is a record about me,” says Roosevelt Collier. “It’s telling a story of who I am, where I’m from, and where I’m going.”
A transcendent talent on pedal and lap steel guitars — and so proficient, he’s affectionately known as “The Dr.” — Collier’s debut album Exit 16 on GroundUP Music is a potent mix of blues, gospel, rock and, in his words, “dirty funk swampy grime,” as overseen by producer and bandmate Michael League (from the Grammy-winning Snarky Puppy).
It’s also a brilliant reflection of Collier’s life. All of it. Brought up in the House of God Church in Perrine, FL, Collier built his “sacred steel” guitar prowess alongside his uncles and cousins in The Lee Boys, known for their spirited, soul-shaking live performances. On his own, Collier’s become a sought-after talent both on record and on stage, performing alongside musical luminaries in the fields of rock, blues and pop, including the Allman Brothers, The String Cheese Incident, Buddy Guy, Umphrey's McGee, Los Lobos, Robert Randolph, the Tedeschi-Trucks Band, and the Del McCoury Band, among countless others.
“Roosevelt channels something spiritual,” says League, who was instrumental in getting Collier to (finally) craft his own album after decades in the music scene.
“He’s a reason I’m talking about this now,” says Collier. “I’ve had offers to make my own music before. But when Mike came along, it just felt right.”
Exit 16 was recorded over three days of marathon sessions by League and a bevy of talented sidemen, including JT Thomas on drums and Bobby Sparks on organ. “You gotta be able to trust your bandmates, and Mike knew the right guys and knows what I’m about,” says Collier. “This could have been a star-studded thing. But that would have overshadowed what we wanted to do here.”
And what Collier wanted to do was encapsulate all of influences and experiences. “I’m rooted in a lot of genres, so I’ve never really had a focus or to buckle down,” he says, laughing. So on Exit 16 you’ll find an infectious track like “Happy Feet” sitting happily nearby “Spike,” wherein Collier shreds with the spirit of Hendrix. “I actually think a song like ‘Spike’ is about my future,” says the guitarist. “My goal there was to see how we can expand this guitar, this steel.” And, reflecting on his early days, “Sun Up Sun Down” and “Supernatural” feel like joyous, spiritual workouts.
And then there’s the title track, which Collier refers to as “dump truck funk.” Says the musician: “That’s the old do-not-enter gate type of funk — it’s dangerous! Beware of dogs out there.”
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).