When did you start playing steel?

[Matthew Begay]

I grew up with on my grandparents’ farm and then moved to a city with my parents. I heard a lot of country music from the 50’s to the mid 2000’s until it started sounding too much like pop/rock around 2010. I heard the Tracy Byrd song on the radio called Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got) and asked my dad what instrument that was after the electric guitar solo and he said it was a steel guitar. That peaked my interest and then I saved some money and my parents helped me buy my first pedal steel. It was a single necked BMI from a man in Albuquerque with the name John Feldman; this man knows his stuff! I learned some easy stuff like Gary Stewart songs before I took on harder songs. I posted on my instagram the fact that I wasn’t able to see Tracy Byrd in town when he came but he reached out to me and I met Marty Broussard, who is a very phenomenal musician. This man was kind enough to let me purchase the MSA SuperSustain he was touring with, off of him and it sounds as smooth as butter! I’m an unorthodox kind of player. I learn a little from youtube and the rest from playing along with songs on my phone lol! I’m confident on the E9, currently trying to teach myself some C6.

[Brett Day]

I started playing on December 25th, 1999, after going through a process where I had to try out various instruments because of cerebral palsy in my left hand. I started loving country music at a very young age, and one day, while spending time with my aunt Denise, we were watching country music videos on CMT, and at the time, Ricky Skaggs featured electric instruments in his band. I asked my aunt Denise what the instrument is that looked like a table with strings, and she told me it's a steel guitar(I didn't know any steel players at that time, but I loved what they played on those great records. When I was nine years old, I went to a country music show called The Carolina Opry, and at the time they had a steel guitarist named Myron Smith playing a ZumSteel D-10, and it got me wondering what it would be like to play such a beautiful instrument as the steel guitar. In 1996, after just starting out on piano/keyboards, a band called Ricochet had a hit song on the radio called "What Do I Know", and I loved the sounds of the steel on that song. I wondered if the band Ricochet had a steel player, and a few years later, I found out that their steel player was a man named Teddy Carr, from Lafayette, Tennessee. In 1999, I saw Ricochet in concert in Anderson, SC, and Teddy played a 1994 Franklin D-10, and the sound of it made me think harder about playing steel. So, after renting a steel and trying it out in August of 1999, I got my first steel, a 1974 Emmons GS-10 for Christmas in 1999, and have been playing ever since! I added dobro to the pedal steel in 2017, and the reason for this is because I love both instruments, and I wanted an acoustic instrument so I could play acoustic jam sessions, and with the dobro, I joined my church's band in 2018. I play squareneck dobro since I play steel

[Richard Lester]

I got my first steel, a used d-8 multi kord in 1969.
I know exactly what Herb Steiner is talking about, I had no teachers and didn't even know there was any instruction material to be had. After 3 weeks of practicing, I took the steel on stage and the rest is history. Yup, Herb,I, too, played them smoke filled honky tonks for years, even behind the chicken wire[ which was scary-only did that once] then the wire came down-the owner of the bar was afraid of getting sued. I got stung when I heard Pete Drake and I traded a Gretch flat-top for the multi-kord.

[George Biner]

I am a lifelong rock multi-instrumentalist that never minded country music -- in the late 80s I mixed sound in a small club and a band came in with a pedal steel player -- I spoke with him after the show -- Marty Rifkin -- I should've started playing right then but I was negative to myself about it, not allowing myself to try it. Also, I'd heard that pedal steel guitars were hard to find in Los Angeles.

Fast forward to 2016 -- I went to see Chris Hillman at McCabe's (great little concert hall/guitar store) -- he had a pedal steel player -- Jay Dee Maness -- at one point in the show, Chris held up his hand and asked for everybody, including the band, to be quiet for Jay Dee's solo -- so there I was, in the dark, with this hauntingly beautiful sound wafting through the room -- everybody was mesmerized -- that was life-changing. I realized how much I loved that sound and that I could be one of the few, the proud who would go head to head with this beast to learn it.

I got invited to the Southwestern Steel Guitar convention -- and bought a guitar soon after that -- June of 2017 at the age of 57.

[Rich Sullivan]

June 8, 1991.

[Karl Paulsen]

Was haunted by the Pedal steel sounds for almost a decade from the time I joined my first country band as a bass player in the 00's.

In 2015 my brother got me an Encore, Milkman, Hilton, Steelers Choice, and everything else along with a wad of cash to start lessons.

The whole story is here:
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... highlight=

[Bob Gondesen]

I STARTED PLAYING STEEL WHEN I WAS 9 YEARS OLD , I AM 90 YEARS OLD

BOB GONDESEN
LA MARQUE , TX,

[Jim Pitman]

70's for me. Got a Dobro in 73, then a Shobud Maverick in 78.

[Larry Dering]

1980 with a Supro lap steel. Having already played regular guitar since the 60s it wasn't too hard to make sense of it and play reasonably well. In the middle 80s I graduated to pedal steel. I tolerated a couple used and well worn Sho Bud D10s until 94 when I bought a new Mullen D10 8x4. Still own that and several other makes. The journey has been fun and yet frustrating. Trying to master technique and tone while holding down a job. As Herb stated, teachers and materials were limited in the early days. There's so much more available now.

[Dale Rottacker]

Had to be 1972 maybe 73 ... started on a Fender 3 legged thing then a Fender 400 > Sho~Bud Maverick > Sho~Bud Pro lll > then another and another and here we are today

[J R Rose]

Early 1970. I built my first steel, single 10, two & two. New nothing about them but fell in love with Tom Brumley with Buck Owens. I was forty years old. Been going downhill ever since. J.R. Rose

[Michael Johnstone]

About the summer of 1972 I got a Fender 400 back in Norfolk. I was a blues-rock guitar player then who doubled on steel at first and went about 90% steel by the time I got to LA in 1975.

[Larry Allen]

I was into Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, then the Comets..Billy Williamson was the steel man….I built a steel in wood shop in high school using Carvin parts..in 1958..

[Steve Cattermole]

About 1975, it's all Bobby Black, JD Maness, and Lloyd Green's fault.I heard Emmons a little later, I beleive on a Hargis Pig Robbins album playing Torn Between Two Lovers, and that was a game changer

[Robert B Murphy]

1972, I started learning dobro from Mike Auldridge and Oswald's solo records and quickly fell under the spell of Leon McAuliffe, Herb Remington, and Shot Jackson. Buddy Emmons' solo on I'll Paint Rainbows All Over Your Blues by John Sebastian was a shock to my system that I still haven't recovered from but Herb and Shot will always be my favorites.

[Lynn Fargo]

At eight years old in 1960 I started playing a 6 string Epiphone lap steel. Was gifted a double neck Stringmaster at 10. Played for about 8 years, performed occasionally in a family band, and then quit cuz I was bored since I only played to written music and I couldn’t get the sounds of a pedal guitar that I was hearing on the radio.

Fast forward to 1975 when I heard J.D. Call on a Pure Prairie League record playing on a jukebox. THAT’S how I’d want to sound, I said to myself, so I went out and bought Two Lane Highway, a Maverick, and some Sho-Bud and Newman books. Nobody in my town taught, barely anyone played, so I was basically on my own. Bad as I was, I got hired the next year, then formed a band the following year. The new guys turned me on to Texas swing, and they loaned me the money to buy my Pro II. I played for a few more years in various bands til I started college as an adult learner. Then it was a full time job robbing my time and energy and I never really got back into it til a little over a decade ago. I’m retired now, but feeling too old and tired to want to crawl back up on a bandstand, so I just play at home and occasionally post a vid on YouTube.

My biggest regret is that I didn’t have a decent pedal guitar and teacher when I started at 8. The old brain doesn’t seem to want to soak up new information so readily these days. And the old bones balk at the thought of those four hour gigs. But I still enjoy the challenge of trying to create that sound, even if it’s mostly just for me.