Such an unmanageable beast!

[Ken Anderson]

I started playing at 49 after years of the 6 string variety.I have a boat canvas business and have sewn for 30 years.with all the foot/knee and hand control you need for sewning with a big industrial machine I felt at home sitting behind a steel.


this week alone I have seen 3 great players with Brad paisly amd his warm up bands and I just got home from vince gills concert at the minnesota state fair.He had a a great player with him.

My wife said"don't you have one of those"

Ken

[b0b]

I didn't practice at all for ten years while I built my career. I did play every weekend, though, for the money. The steel stayed in the case during the week.

[Ben Jones]

Thanks for sharing all your stories with me, very interesting. I played in bands thru grad school...but it was for fine art

Ive always wondered what made people stop and then start back up again. I remember Garcia saying he was really into steel for two years but finally gave it up because he felt he had to spend more time on guitar.

Personally, while I dont intend to give up playing, I am kind of at a low moment in my progress..kinda stagnating...and sometimes i wonder if I'll just throw in the towel. I need some inspiration right now I guess. Cheers.

[Leonard Imbery]

Here's another weird steel story....I bought my first steel in the mid '70s....Took a loan out and bought a brand new double neck MSA and an amp...I didn't have a clue about how to play the thing, but I figured I must be serious because I spent all that money!....
I had a very basic introduction from a guy who didn't know much more than me but he at least showed me what strings to hit for basic chords and what the AB pedals did....
I fumbled around playing with records and actually sat in with a band after only about 4 months....basicly, just playing pads for the tunes and not much else....but hey, a steel player was considered a luxury....I actually played semi-pro for about 20 years and even played on "Nashville Now" with a group in the '90s!....All the time basicly faking it as I could hardly play....
I quit in the mid '90s as I was sick of the boring Country music scene and went back to playing my original instrument ....the accordion (another whole and much longer story!)...I sold my (now almost worn out steel on ebay and figured, if I ever had occasion to play again, I could always buy another...and now, a couple of weeks ago, I spotted a brand new Carter S10 that someone had bought 3 years ago and only set it up once!....So now I've got a new axe, and I'm sorely out of practice in regards to my meagre playing ability in the first place....but here's the thing......There is the wealth of the Internet now!....So much steel playing, and webpages, and material available that I only wish I had access to in the '70s!....
So I'm starting to plug away again and may even be playing out in a couple of months, as I've had a lot of interest from some of my musician friends....
My advice for anyone starting is....Don't just sit in your basement trying to learn tablature....play with CDs, play with "real" people....throw a few tunes together with them with the goal to have a set of maybe 10 tunes....Then get a gig opening for someone.....That way you have a lot more fun and you get out there on stage....which is really what it's all about!!!!
Len from Canada

[Bill Ford]

In 1979, I had a job offer that was real hard to refuse,$1 per hour raise + additional 8 hrs overtime( which added up to more than I was making on weekends picking). Besides,I was tired of Smokey bars,drunks,and trying to keep decent musicians.

Retired in 1999, started messing with it again, playing for the fun of it, playing jams/get togethers. Not going back to the club scene!!!!

Bill

[Jake Hoffman]

Fascinating thread - Misery does, indeed, love company. After a dozen years of playing bluegrass 5-string banjo, I suddenly (overnight) became addicted to the pedal steel guitar. I still don't know why or how. In 1972, I located an 8-string Fender, 3-pedal cable pull painted robins-egg blue, then bought a Sho-Bud Pro II D10 in 1974, solely because Bobby Black had one. I struggled like you all describe - I picked too hard (banjo?), I lifted the bar up and down like I was chopping onions, I mashed pedals like I was driving a tractor, and I worked the volume pedal like an old-fashioned sewing machine. I played with headphones out of sheer embarrassment. I listened to every steel player I could find (live and recorded). I was sick with envy. But it slowly came to me - playing, playing, playing with anyone who would take pity on me. I played in a 6-piece bar band called Tarwater, 6 nights a week, up and down the corridors of the intermountain West. I got good! In 1978, I left the road, dusted off my college diploma, got married and became a "normal" person. I still played the odd job, In 1987, I suddenly (again, overnight) developed what was later diagnosed as focal dystonia, an uncontrollable cramping of my right hand which turns out to be most prevalent in musicians, from piano to violin to guitar (this is often called "writer's cramp") thought to be a result of over-use of fine motor functions, like finger-picking a guitar. This "muscle memory" that one of you mentioned played a dirty trick on me by short-cutting tactile feedback in the basal ganglia of the brain. My fingers "anticipated" the intended memorized movements, and contract inward, sometimes violently. I was sick with grief, I tried everything - Botox, biofeedback, even total immobilization for 6 weeks (based on an Italian medical study) which backfired and lead to severe Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and surgery.

I quit - cold turkey. It was horrible. I was addicted, for cryin' out loud.

A couple of years ago I revisited the Dobro, playing with just a thumbpick. My left (bar) hand was remarkably adept, but my note selection was limited. I got by.

In March of 2007, members (surviving) of the old Tarwater band called me and said that an old fan of ours wanted to produce a "comeback" reunion CD and wanted me to play steel - in Nashville. I said "You are ought of your ever-lovin' minds! I haven't played in 20 years." I was petrified.

But at my age (62) I convinced myself that I would look back and regret this opportunity for the rest of my life if I didn't give it a shot. I practiced like a mad man for 3 weeks (all the time I had!) - with just a thumbpick. I was in the studio for 2 and a half days (end of March) and played steel on 10 of 12 songs, 9 of which were orginal material that I had never heard before I sat down to play. I still don't know how I did it.

My apologies for rambling on. But the message I want to deliver is that it can, and does come back, for those who were once there, and for those that are starting, don't sell yourselves short because it's too hard to get it right the first time, or you feel like you are physically unable to coerce incredible sounds out of this marvelous instrument. It is amazing what you can do, even with a single thumbpick and a curled up hand, if you have the confidence, the inspiration, and the guts to make yourself believe it.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. If you want proof, visit www.tarwaterband.com/index/html. The cd is Tarwater: From the Heart. You can hear most of each song there. I am playing steel on all but "Boppin' the Blues". And that's me singing "Smoke, Smoke Smoke (That Cigarette)!

[Robert Harper]

Hey I did not start playing anything until I was thirty and sucessful. now I play a little steel at church and for my self. I will never be a Emmons or Seymour, but I enjoy the challange. I also like to see people shake their head when they look at the instrument. Its wonderful

[Stephen Silver]

I too, had quit playing for a couple of 8-10 year periods of time. I started playing when I was 21 (thank you Sneaky, Rusty, Cage, Al Perkins, JayDee) and played out until my mid 30's. Wasn't a too bad player either. My first disappearance was at age 33. I was happy playing with great musicians for little money, and I was hppy playing mediocre music for big bucks (at least it seemd big at the time) but then I wound up for a few years playing with mediocre players for little money. That was the last straw. I went into the computer biz in about 84 and didn't play again for 10 years....under the bed hidden away. I felt like I was a junkie who could do nothing but quit cold turkey. Then one day my daughter found some pictures of me playing and asked why I didn't do that any longer! (the words of an 8 year old are precious) and I really couldn't answer her question, so I brought it out and played again fro about 5 years. But the country scene in the Bay Area was pretty dead, and I found working clubs till late and the demands of work to be too much, so I put it down again for about 10 years once again.

I divorced and re married a wonderful woman who asked me why I no longer played. Once again, I didn't really have a good answer. And out it came again....

At this point, I cannot deny my DNA...and I think that's what it is all about. I play music, have since I was 4 years old. It is a lot of who I am.

Funny thing, when I started up again, my speed had disappeared, but my tone and timing had drastically improved. My former wife came to hear me play a gig recently with the wonderful Michael O'Neill out of Gig Harbor, WA (Dan Tyack did his records)and said I sounded better than she had ever heard me.

My chops are coming back, not completely, but week to week, stuff is coming out of my amp that sounds pretty doggone good. I find playing to be a Zen experience for me, an in the moment time that I cherish. Nothing else except racing cars comes close to shuttering my thoughts out completely and focusing on the moment.

I will never again deny myself the great pleasure of playing pedal steel guitar. And for those of you who are starting out or rather new to the instrument, take pride in your accomplishment. Better to try and fail than to never try at all!!!

SS

[Chris Schlotzhauer]

"Suchan, Unmanageable Beast" . My wife sez it wouldn't be without a certain amount of truth."

[Landon Johnson]

I stopped thinking about my blocking and --- guess what! I am blocking!

The palm blocking was tough for me - not too bad with the pick blocking. I would deliberately sit at the steel and try and palm block - now I practice blocking using different grips - can't pick block there! At least I can't. I can only pick block when I am playing the same grip after the block as before...

I have learned that I simply needed to think of it in terms of letting the string play or 'unblocking' rather than blocking - that's all it took! I now keep my hand on the strings unless I want a note to play, and I unblock to allow the note. Kind of the inverse of blocking, right?

Am I in any way on the right track here?

Now it's just doing it over and over to make it smooth and get the transition between notes so that the new notes start as the old notes stop. That's just practice that can be done jamming to CDs, BIAB or whatever. Once the feeling is there, it's just making it second nature that takes time.

My new Carter is now named 'Mickey' after Mickey D's because "I'm LOVIN' it!"

Landon

[Eric Jaeger]

It seems like most of us who aren't pro have much the same story: an early love superseded by reality. In my case I started off playing guitar back in the 60's, and switched to bass because there are *always* too many guitar players, and everyone needs a bass player. I learned to appreciate steel from Lucky Oceans and Bobby Black (both were local at the time), but that's also why I didn't' try playing it -- I thought that was the basic level you had to be at to be creditable!

I played bass and acoustic guitar in bluegrass bands in the 70s, but when the computer business started to take off I dropped music entirely, sold off all my instruments (a *very* bad idea) and went heads-down into high tech for 15 years. I came back to music through what would be called, I guess, "alternative acoustic": Tony Rice, Tom Russell, Jimmie Dale, and gradually eased back in, discovering that a lot of folks in high tech had similar latent musical desires, and wanted to get them out again. A supportive girlfriend bought me my first guitar in this period!

Six or seven years ago I finally got the bug to try pedal steel, or got over my fear. I've been wrestling with it ever since, and while I'm good enough to play out in some pickup gigs, the whole exercise is one that's really just for me. I can't imagine ever being satisfied with my skill, so I can probably rely on learning for the rest of my life.

In retrospect, dropping playing may have been the worst decision I ever made, because I can't imagine now how I ever got by without it. Music is a passion of the spirit, and one needs that to live.

-eric

[Tim Pfeiffer]

I had no idea there that so many of us could fit into the same boat. At 51 I just started psg. I'm addicted to the beast. I have always loved the sound of steel. I spent most of my years playing guitar. Earlier this year I bought my first lap steel (GeorgeBoard Blue Lagoon) and fell in love with it. I bought the lap steel because I didn't think I was smart enough to manage all those pedals and knee things. It was probably a good way to progress into psg. I get very discouraged but keep reminding myself that it's the challenge that makes it fun. But I just wanna be good so I can play something NOW! I remind myself every day that I need to learn to crawl first. Then walk. Then run.
Cheers to all of you and good luck!
Tim