Roosevelt Collier says music makes up 70 percent of each worship service at his House of God Church in Perrine, in south Miami-Dade County. Collier grew up in that church, contributing to aural prayers by playing the drums, bass, keys and anything else his cousins and uncles taught him.
But after picking up one instrument, he didn't need any new ones. At 12 years old, he started playing the sacred steel guitar.
"In our church, the steel is the focus," Collier says. "It is what makes that church different from any other church."
Sacred steel is a staple of worship in Pentecostal House of God churches along Florida's East Coast, Collier says. It's a lap or pedal guitar whose strings moan and scratch beneath a steely slide. It's been played instead of an organ in Collier's religious tradition since around the 1930s.
"The simplest way to say it," he says, "it's like a rock'n'roll-funk concert live at church, if that makes any type of sense. Like everybody praising and... shouting."
A handful of musicians who learned to make the steel sing inside church walls have taken the worship tradition to broader, blues-loving audiences. Collier is one of them.
His uncle Derrick Lee is the lead singer of the Lee Boys, the homegrown blues-funk group Collier plays South Florida bars with. Lee said in a 2012 interview, "If you hear Roosevelt play, it sounds like someone crying or singing. It is a religious thing, there's no getting away from it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zQkp183w9Q
"I keep the worship in me," Collier says. "Everywhere I go. Big jam festival, big rock festival, it don't matter where."
He says one Sunday, two of his uncles told Collier and his cousin Little Alvin they needed to settle down with one instrument -- to become specialists.
"Me, being young, [Alvin] was like, 'I'm playing the bass,'" Collier remembers, "and I was like, 'OK.' 'So, 'Velt, you're playing the steel.' I was like, 'OK.'"
Now, Collier plays jam festivals across the country and shares the stage with musicians such as Derek Trucks, sitting at his guitar with his eyes closed, plucking and sliding on the strings above a slim panel that reads: ROOSEVELT "The DR." He's a sacred steel specialist now, at 32.
And in each of those performances, Collier says, "At some point, there's a part of me that's not playing. Like, it just comes that way. It's able to carry through my music and everybody feel it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdaxUAinQWo
It's a bluesy cry that entrances audiences, one that's easy to imagine driving a lively Pentecostal church service.
It drives club and festival audiences, too.
Just this past year, he's bounced between New Orleans (Jazz Fest and shows on Frenchman Street), Denver (LoHi Music Festival) and shows throughout Florida (with jam bands in Tampa and festivals in Live Oak).
"Every show that I play," Collier says, "is to touch somebody through my music, through me playing. That's the ultimate goal of each show."
This Saturday, he's playing an 11 p.m. set at Railroad Blues in downtown Miami. The bar is billing it his "Homecoming Getdown."
Collier says it's different playing the South Florida live music scene, compared to those in Tampa, Denver or New Orleans. He says Miami's reputation as an electronic-music party spot makes it harder for live music audiences to grow.
"There's tons of great bands," he says. "The scene is good down there, it's just up to us to help push it."
Roosevelt Collier's Miami Hometown Getdown, Railroad Blues, 28 NE 14th St., Miami, 11 p.m. Saturday, free entry.
If you really want to hear the sacred steel but can't be at the show, watch this hour-plus recording of Collier in an all-star jam last November at Bear Creek Festival in Live Oak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_RCe1HtIqI
