Slide guitar podcast

[Ed Pettersen]

Howdy y'all! I've been doing a slide guitar podcast for the last 9 months or so as I do research for a book I'm writing on slide and I've had the pleasure to interview some real greats. Pedal steel, lap steel, bottleneck...you name it. I'm trying to get 'em up as fast as I can but of particular interest here is Episode 7 with Debashish and Episode 5 with Calvin Cooke though the Sonny's and Arlen's and Tronzo's et al are there too. VM and Salil Bhatt coming up soon as is the great Norwegian player Geir Sundstol. New episode just posted is Jack Pearson:

https://edpettersen.com/blog

[Dave Mudgett]

Excellent, Ed.

I have played slide guitar in some manner or form since I started playing guitar in the late 1960s and early 70s. But up until about 3 years ago, it was just something that I did, mostly focused on standard blues figures. I was sitting at home sick, recovering from pneumonia, and just fiddling around listening to some Johnny Winter, Sonny Landreth, and others, when I started moving in different directons and working on the fret-behind-the-slide stuff, As a pedal steel player, I tend to think about it more like I was using lowering levers on a pedal steel. Of course, some things, including tonality, are different, but many ideas translate in interesting ways.

I've always been a pinky slider, probably influenced more by Johnny over the years than anybody. So once I started forcing the fretting, it came fairly naturally. Of course, it really opens up a lot of options.

I really wish there was a forum community focused on slide guitar playing. There are a couple of places, like Big Road Blues and a dedicated slideguitarist.com forum, that have tried in the past, but they're pretty much dead, as in Big Road, or never took off, as in the latter. As you can see from the lack of response to this thread, an awful lot of (perhaps most) steel players really don't seem to see much of any relationship between steel guitar and slide guitar. There's really no community of slide players here, and "officially", slide discussions are generally moved to the generic "Music" forum. I've asked a couple of times about possibly setting up a slide guitar area, and have always been rebuffed. Of course, I see a strong relationship, but that is generally not shared here. If anything, I see a certain level of indiffference, if not outright animosity.

Anyway - great blog. I'd love to see more of a slide guitar community develop - if not here, then somewhere else.

[Ed Pettersen]

Excellent, Ed.

I have played slide guitar in some manner or form since I started playing guitar in the late 1960s and early 70s. But up until about 3 years ago, it was just something that I did, mostly focused on standard blues figures. I was sitting at home sick, recovering from pneumonia, and just fiddling around listening to some Johnny Winter, Sonny Landreth, and others, when I started moving in different directons and working on the fret-behind-the-slide stuff, As a pedal steel player, I tend to think about it more like I was using lowering levers on a pedal steel. Of course, some things, including tonality, are different, but many ideas translate in interesting ways.

I've always been a pinky slider, probably influenced more by Johnny over the years than anybody. So once I started forcing the fretting, it came fairly naturally. Of course, it really opens up a lot of options.

I really wish there was a forum community focused on slide guitar playing. There are a couple of places, like Big Road Blues and a dedicated slideguitarist.com forum, that have tried in the past, but they're pretty much dead, as in Big Road, or never took off, as in the latter. As you can see from the lack of response to this thread, an awful lot of (perhaps most) steel players really don't seem to see much of any relationship between steel guitar and slide guitar. There's really no community of slide players here, and "officially", slide discussions are generally moved to the generic "Music" forum. I've asked a couple of times about possibly setting up a slide guitar area, and have always been rebuffed. Of course, I see a strong relationship, but that is generally not shared here. If anything, I see a certain level of indiffference, if not outright animosity.

Anyway - great blog. I'd love to see more of a slide guitar community develop - if not here, then somewhere else.

Thanks Dave! The lack of information and community is what set me on the path of writing the book and thus the podcast. In my first episode of the podcast Arlen Roth commented it was time for a new book (he wrote what was perhaps the first when he was 19). Video lessons only tell you so much so I try to ask things that aren't obvious in the videos. I have and will continue to interview as many pedal steel players as possible like Calvin Cooke, Al Perkins, Geir Sundstol et al. Like yourself I do see and hear a connection between slide and pedal steel/lap steel and I only took up lap after starting the book! Now I almost play it exclusively so there is hope <g>.

[Ed Pettersen]

Episode #9 is up with Norwegian pedal steel/slide player Geir Sunstol. Check it out. He's brilliant not to mention one of the characters in Fargo was based on him. Yup, no kidding.

[Ed Pettersen]

Episode #12 with Jeremy Spencer just up. You can subscribe via iTunes, Google Play or however you listen to music here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSlideAre ... Interviews