My name is Levi Gemmell and I've been playing non-pedal steel here in New Zealand for just a year and a half now. I'm 22 and received my first steel, a '47-'48 MOTS Magnatone, for my 21st birthday. I have since acquired one of the legendary Commodore steel guitars made by Bunny Milne!
I dabbled in slide guitar and fingerstyle blues as a teenager, but have really set on the steel as not only an instrument that I want to devote my time to, but as something that I think is actually really important in many wider senses. I'm sure most of you agree.
On the first Sunday of December last year, I very sadly attended the last meeting of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Club in Auckland, which was formerly a real branch of the HSGA before Mac McKenzie (RIP) passed away a few years ago. With the dissolution of the group after, I understand, decades, I find myself without a community. It was really special to me to see so many people (especially in old age) getting together and sharing with great love, something I believe many of them committed their whole lives to - as I have no doubt so many of you have as well. I probably got there five or six times in the past two years, but I was the only person my age - and I never saw a person (apart from my own friends) that was within twenty years of my age there. I cannot tell you how many times they insisted that I commit myself to this, how many times they encouraged me to persevere and learn this instrument, and keep something going. I found it really inspirational, and now I find myself here.
I have taken quite a few lessons with a man named Ralph Cocks, a lifelong steel guitar player (now 84) and former bandleader here in Auckland, who was an associate of Bill Sevesi, Bill Wolfgramm, Trevor Edmondson, Fred Radich, and many other great players who have since passed away. Those who know about the New Zealand scene will have heard of the Orange Ballroom in Newton where Bill Sevesi was resident bandleader. My man Ralph started out around 1950, and a picture of him has even made it into a famous book here in NZ called "Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964." For two to three years in the late '60s, my teacher Ralph was the resident bandleader at the Kings' Arms, one of NZ's most famous musical venues - at the same time Sevesi was just across the street.
Through Ralph and a few meetings I managed to attend, I have seen some other great players from New Zealand and these have all really inspired me to keep going.
I practice at home as much as I can, and use a variety of instructional materials (tablature from my teacher, Jerry Byrd instruction, old sheet music, King's Hawaiian Melodies, the Sonny Cunha book, and of course discreetly trying to learn from Dick McIntire recordings). However, I have nobody to form a group with, and it seems nobody outside my circle of friends is interested in this music being propagated in our community.
What I really want to know is: is there ANYBODY else out there who reads or posts on this forum, who plays non-pedal steel in New Zealand? I know of a few Weissenborn players who do blues and more avant-garde things, but I just cannot find the non-pedallers who play Hawaiian, C&W, jazz, or anything like that!! I need to get in touch with people, and get out there, because I love this thing just as much as all of you.
I look forward to posting and getting to know some of you, after two years of quietly spectating without an account. Looking back at this post I feel right at home already.
I think you may be right about broadening and trying other things. Do you ever attend the Papanui Country Music Club? Are there any other places you would recommend? I would love to get up and play a song or two next time I visit home!
