How to become an Icon of PSG with no practice!

[Bo Legg]

since for the last 2yrs I've spent all my gig picking on Lead guitar and leave my PSG at home a strange thing has happened!
I'm kind of the new unknow guitar player now and folks are asking around about me.
So when folks reply they say "He is a PSG player"
After 2yrs of not playing the PSG the rumors have progressed to now I'm a really really good PSG player!
The way rumors are going I soon will be right up there with Emmons and Franklin!

[Bill McCloskey]

I used to be the 10th best Eharp player in the world. Unfortunately, an 11th person started playing.

[Mike R Johnson]

since for the last 2yrs I've spent all my gig picking on Lead guitar and leave my PSG at home a strange thing has happened!
I'm kind of the new unknow guitar player now and folks are asking around about me.
So when folks reply they say "He is a PSG player"
After 2yrs of not playing the PSG the rumors have progressed to now I'm a really really good PSG player!
The way rumors are going I soon will be right up there with Emmons and Franklin!

That's hilarious! It's amazing how rumors can spread and take on a life of their own. It's like you've become a mythical PSG player, even though you haven't touched the instrument in years!

I can just imagine the whispers at the gigs: "Have you heard about that guy? He's a steel guitar mastermind! He's been hiding his skills, but trust me, he's a virtuoso!"

You should start embracing the legend and see how far it takes you. Who knows, maybe you'll even get asked to play a PSG gig and you can just wing it. After all, you're supposedly a "really really good PSG player" now!

[Tony Prior]

since for the last 2yrs I've spent all my gig picking on Lead guitar
The way rumors are going I soon will be right up there with Emmons and Franklin!

I haven't sat behind my Steel in about 8 months now, I too have been playing only Tele and Mandolin . I'm gonna shoot for 2 years then maybe I can join you in the ICON category !

Who knew !

tp

[Brett Day]

I took a break from pedal steel for six years mainly because I wasn't sure what bar to use, but in 2021, while playing acoustic jam sessions with the dobro, I started missing the steel, so I got my steel back out and love it!

[Larry Dering]

I can't picture not playing steel for x number of years after playing for years. I never stopped playing guitar when I took up my steel journey. What would make one quit and go untouched for extended periods? I leave several set up and ready and the same with guitars. If you pack them away it will curb the desire to play.

[Andre Dardeau]

I’m the opposite, my band only hears me play steel and acoustic rhythm and the other day I was messing around with a six string arrangement of Stars Fell on Alabama I worked up to practice voice leading and now they want me to play more guitar! I had to tell em I need the practice playing steel, I want to stay on that!

[J D Sauser]

I know the feeling. When I started playing in the 80's as a teen, with a little known Rockabilly band in -of all places- Switzerland, I think there was one guy playing PSG in that period's style country bands and "Hawaii Johnny" who'd show up at fairs in a little camper trailer playing a very, but VERY cheesy interpretation of "Hawaiian" music off a very strange non-pedal steel with lots of switches which seemed to be an integral part (solidly built into) of the trailer... selling cassettes.
I didn't even know how to tune for the first year until someone tuned my 8 string up to what I much later found out was A6th. I had no clue, no internet, hence no youtube or steel guitar forum. I don't think I was much good, I struggled trying to pick of Hank Sr. records... but I played on various concerts and even a large multi-band festival and I was quite a "screamer" playing Dixie Cannonball sitting on the edge of the stage on my "screaming" Gibson UltraTone. The petty-coat girls seemed to think it was hot and I rarely went home alone. When I pulled my first drivers license, the issuing office in Bern asked about my profession -back then they put that on the license- and I cockily stated that I play steel guitar and it wound up saying "SteelGuitarist" on my first driver's license... so it was official! Ha!.
Other bands approached me, some much more successful, about joining, with guys I really looked up to, but I did not because, deep down, I did know I could not really play more than along with half a dozen tunes I was expected to make sounds with the band I was with.
We all got older quick, some married, some got a legitimate job, I graduated as a precision machine engineer and we all scattered and lost sight of each other. Reality caught up with us.
I sold it all (sadly my two Gibson, but luckily my "evil" red-knob Twin Reverb found a new victim to bother too) and only got back into in in 1993 after my first trip to the US (Nashville, where else would you go to find a steel guitar pre-internet?).

So yes, "we" are "special"... even though... we're not always specially good.

... J-D.

[Doug Earnest]

Back in my hometown recently I ran into some people who were always at whatever musical function I used to be playing at. We had a nice visit but they couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to play for the public any more. I came up with the line that it was better to quit as a legend than as a has been!

I was a pretty fair local critter club guitar picker and singer, played some steel and could fake my way through a few fiddle tunes very well but not a real picker in any way. But the other locals were even worse than me so that made me the star! ha ha Now I don't dare show my low grade mediocrity for fear of tarnishing my reputation from long ago.

[Bo Legg]

Now I can't ever play the PSG again! It would spoil the myth. Sad because I was Hall of Fame in my price range

[Brandon Mills]

I wish my license said “Steel Guitarist”…… then maybe people would believe me!!!! LOL

[Jeff Peterson]

I shaved my beard once on the road with Clint and had several shows that some folks told me I was way better than ‘the guy’ he used to have…just said thanks..lol

[Doug Beaumier]

After 2yrs of not playing the PSG the rumors have progressed to now I'm a really really good PSG player!

I reminded of what the newspaper reporter said in the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance".

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

[J D Sauser]

I shaved my beard once on the road with Clint and had several shows that some folks told me I was way better than ‘the guy’ he used to have…just said thanks..lol

Beautiful one ... J-D.