Your First Encounter

James Cann · From: Phoenix, AZ

This is inspired by the "How Did You Learn" thread, which I misinterpreted (to no surprise!) as the following.

What was your first opportunity like to see, touch, and try a steel guitar? As I learn more and more with it, every time I think back to that first meeting (I was in the Army in Korea) I'm all the more amazed at what I was able to do in those first few minutes. With only basic orientation by the guitar's owner and my musical and mechanical genes, I was playing chords and simple melodies, all of which quite impressed my buddy and mentor and , for some reason, embarrassed me.

So, what was your first day like?

Matthew Prouty · From: Warsaw, Poland

My first moment was all alone with my new guitar overlooking the setting sun on the Virgin Islands. Luckily there was nothing to do on the island (plus they drive on the wrong side of the road so who what to go out and get messed up in that) so I spent all my time with the guitar. It was awesome!

John Billings · From: Ohio, USA

Walked into Ralph Henzil's music store in West Allis, Wisc. Suburb of Milwaukee. I couldn't get Sweetheart of The Rodeo" outa my head. Then I got some Lloyd Green vinyl. Heard "Bar Hoppin'" and I was a goner! Bought a used Miller S-10. It was repossessd shortly thereafter when the broken-nosed owners of the dive we were playin' at burnt the place down. Lost all my equipment. Went to work luggin' cases of soda and saved enough for a Shobud/Baldwin Crossover. It was shortly thereafter stolen along with my '58 Flyin' V! Back to work in the real world, and bought a new, in'72 Shobud Pro D-10. Hung onto that 'un for quite awhile. Then got a Kline U-12. Now I'm back to Showbuds. Just got my third. A Fingertip.

Gary Shepherd · From: Fox, Oklahoma, USA

I think my first time to actually sit down at a steel was at a Harkrider reunion at Broken Bow Lake (Oklahoma). I remember thinking how strang the tuning was. There were about 9 Harkriders and I guess they had grown up playing music as a family band. I imagine they're all gone now but those guys could really play some old swing music.
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Gary Shepherd

Carter D-10 & Peavey Nashville 1000

www.16tracks.com

Paul King · From: Gainesville, Texas, USA

I was around 15 years of age when we went to a youth rally one night. I had been hearing the steel guitar on records and sure loved the sound. There was a young man there who had bought a MSA student model and that was the first time I actually saw a pedal steel in front of me. The next time a gentleman came to our church and played. It was Louie Hallford who is a member here and has been President of the TSGA for a brief period. Louie also plays the Texas show and has played some other shows as well as playing at the ISGC. In 1979 I bought my first pedal steel and sure enjoy playing today. The pedal steel has brought me many years of enjoyment and also allowed me to meet new friends and help some of them out.

Bent Romnes · From: London,Ontario, Canada

My first encounter(s) was hearing some strange but beautiful sound sound an old Jim Reeves record..."Bottle take effect" I think it was, where the player (Pete Drake?) played harmonics. Then, some time later, I heard Tom Brumley on the old Buck Owens records. I was sold on the sound and had finally found out that this was a steel guitar. My first sight of a pedal steel, was likely the late 60's when I watched a Norwegian steel player Leif Dørme do his magic on his Fender 800. In 1971 I did my vacation in Canada and Nashville. One of my main reasons for driving down to Music City was to find out more about the Pedal Steel guitar. I was absolutely awe struck by the steel man on the Opry(who could he have been?He wore glasses and I am sure it wasn't Jeff Newman)I'd really like to find out who it was. It was around Labor Day wkend/71.

Then, back in Norway, I promptly ordered my ShoBud 6139 from Duane Marrs and took delivery early spring, 1972.
I still remember the joy. Actually I have never been so happy receiving any other gift in my whole life.

Ken Thompson · From: Great Falls, Montana, USA

I had played bass and rythem guitar for years in bands. I foolishly mentioned to my wife one time that I think I could learn to play steel. She surprised me by buying a steel and having Oliver English show up with it on my birthday. He set it up, showed me the basic scale and chords, gave me a couple of rudimentary lessons and I took off from there. I self taught while playing along with, and immitating CDs. My wife had no idea that she was creating a monster.

Joe Gorfinkle · From: California, USA

around 1969(I think..)I had been into Country music and was hanging out on 48th St in NY looking at guitars. My friend and I were outside of Manny's when Bill Keith walked up. I was a big fan of his banjo work an I think I had the Blue Velvet Band LP at that time as well. I introduced myself and asked him what he was doing. He said he was going to Manny's to pick up a new Sho-Bud S12 and was going around the corner to Jerry Ragavoy's Hit Factory for a session. My friend chimed in that I was a great harp player(I was OK,not great..). Bill asked if I had a harp. I didn't , but I asked what key he wanted me to get and went right into Manny's. We tagged along , I did my first recording session (on who knows what... they probably wiped the track...) and was hooked. Shortly after that I got a Gibson 6 string, then an Emmons 8(shoulda kept it) and a Sho-Bud Maverick(briefly), after a couple of years struggling and not trying too hard, I packed it in. Early this year , I got the bug and am learning again. 30 years of experience as a guitar player, and some theory make it a lot easier this time though its a challenge(but a fun one)!

Brett Day · From: Pickens, SC

I remember touchin' a steel for the first time because my twin brother had told me about a steel he saw in a music store in Mauldin, SC and I'd heard a lot of great steel on many amazing country songs. After my twin brother had told me about that steel, I wanted to see it up close. So, I went to the store where the steel was and it turned out that the man workin' there was a steel player. He showed me how the pedal steel worked and I rented that very steel the next year. It was a Sierra Artist S-10 with three pedals and one knee lever, and at the time, I had no steel bar, so I used the picks and pedals. After I rented that steel, somehow I knew I was closer to being an official steel player cause in December of 1999, the same year I rented that Sierra, I got my first steel for Christmas and I've been playin' the steel now for seven years.

Brett, Emmons S-10, Morrell lapsteel, GFI Ultra D-10-aka "Redgold Beauty"

Frank Parish · From: Nashville,Tn. USA

I sat behind a Sho-Bud Pro I with a six string playing chords trying to figure out where they were on the Bud. I finally got some instruction from Tom Bradshaw and the first two albums were Buddys black album and Jimmy Days Steel and Strings. It was all by accident that I got the guitar in the first place. We'd lost out steel player as he was borrowing his brothers guitar while he had back surgery. So when he healed up he wanted it back and our guy was gone. To make it all short I talked the band leader into buying the Pro-I for our guy in hopes he'd buy it eventually but he didn't want to buy it and since I'd told him I would if he didn't I got stuck with it and I had no choice but to learn to play it. It never hurt my feeling to pay for that guitar and that was 25 years ago.

Bo Borland · From: South Jersey -

I first saw a steel at age 4 or 5 on the old Jimmy Dean show on TV that was on early in the morning and knew immediately that was what I wanted to play. I played at the 6 string for years until 20 years later when I saw my first steel in person. I'm not sure what happened to that picker or Tom Kenny in Philly but I bought my MSA in '74 and never looked back.
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Bo Borland
Rittenberry SD10 , Derby D-10, Quilter TT12, Peavey Session 400 w/ JBL, NV112, Fender Blues Jr. , 1974 Dobro 60N squareneck, Rickenbacher NS lapsteel, 1973 Telecaster Thinline, 1979 blonde/black Frankenstrat
Currently picking with
Mason Dixon Band masondixonband.net

Rick Alexander · From: Florida, USA, R.I.P.

In 1957 when I was about 10 years old, a friend of mine had an acoustic Hawaiian guitar in the closet. He pulled it out and played it a little and then handed it to me. I believe it was tuned to E. I'll never forget how the bar made the chords sound.
I wrote my very first song that day, it had 3 chords - E, F# and G#. It was called "I Wish". I could sing the whole thing for you right now, but I won't . .
I went on to play regular guitar and ultimately made a good living at it ever since. But I always had a thing for Steel, and about 25 years ago I picked up a Fender Dual 8 Pro and a Fender Champion in a Miami guitar shop (the Dual 8 Pro cost $75 and the Champion was $50).
I played them both at the gig that same night and didn't get fired, and I've been at it ever since.
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BIG STEEL

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

James, I think my first actual encounter with a steel guitar other than watching someone else play one would have been with the US Army in Korea like you did. I was stationed at Camp Kaiser and entered a talent contest at the post service club playing a classical guitar version of Maleguena and to my surprise, actually won the thing and got to go to Seoul for the finals. I placed second there but got hooked up with some other musicians for an army sponsored tour playing clubs and whatever around Korea. We even got to do a TV show on the Korean station in Seoul. Anyway, the traveling show did a variety of music and one of the groups featured was the "Western Spotlighters". We all did different things in different songs. There was a steel guitar there which was a double six Fender or Rickenbacker, I can't remember. One neck was tuned to open E so I learned "Steel Guitar Rag" on it for the western segment and "Sleepwalk" for the pop part of the show. I remember that we made a stand for the steel so I could play it standing up. They had some very large Fender piggyback amps for us to use which I remember were very loud! It was a lot of fun but I didn't buy a steel until I was out of the army in '63 and around '64 or so I bought a MultiKord single 6 with 4 pedals...JH in Va.
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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Casey Lowmiller · From: Kansas

I was still in high school, it was around 97 or 98 and I was in a band. One day after practice, I mentioned I would like to get a pedal steel and our drummer said he had one in his basement. His stepmom had purchased it & never learned it and he was sure that they would sell it.

A few days later, I went to his house and down into his basement. There in the corner sat an old Sunburst Fender Pedal 800. It was dusty, the strings needed replaced & it was missing a few pedal rods. I messed with it a bit, decided I thought it was cool and asked how much.

A few days later and $100 poorer I was driving through town with the Fender setup and tied down in the back of my truck.

It took awhile to clean up, but it sure has that old Fender sound that nothing can compare to.

Casey
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Known Coast to Coast as
"The Man with The Plan"

Ray Minich · From: Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra

1964, the Wagon Wheel restaurant in Angola, New York. A fellow by the name of Tommy Rimer (maybe it was Ryman...) had a white D-10 he was playing with a country group. I was 11. Awestruck to say the least.

Landon Johnson · From: Washington, USA

My first exposure to the pedal steel came after a Gordon Lightfoot concert in, oh, 1881 or so; I really liked the way the steel was used on "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and when Gord came to town I dropped by for the show. Afterwards, and I think this was unusual, the lights came up and Ed Ringwald (aka PeeWee Charles) was onstage doing something to his steel guitar. We talked for a while, and in 1996 I found myself in Toronto. I spoke with Ed again and he asked if I had ever taken up the instrument - three weeks later I received my first PSG, a Carter, and slowly I get better. Ed gave me some great advice on tunings, copedents, picks and stuff - it's great when those who have 'made it' keep themselves accessible to their fans.

Alan Brookes · From: Brummy living in Southern California

Other than the lap steels I'd built myself prior to that, my first hands-on access to a commercially-made steel guitar was in a drum shop by New Street Station in Birmingham, England, in 1964. It was a single-necked 8-string Fender, which the shop owner demonstrated and seemed to have some talent on. I remember thinking at the time that a lap steel was just a plank with strings stretched across, so why would anyone pay for an instrument which was so easy to build....

Corky Anderson · From: Alberta, Canada

In 1979 a friend of mine called me and asked me if I wanted to buy a steel guitar. He could not pay the rent, and knew I had a great interest in the instrument, so I bought his Sho-bud Maveric for $400.00 My first session with that thing was less than memorable, and every time I went near it after that our dog would run for the hills knowing she was about to hear some horrible sounds! I finally got some basic lessons from a local guy and got going. I played that guitar my first year on the road, and I don't know how many times I had to try to fix it.
Finally, in 82' I was able to afford a Beautiful black Sho-bud super pro......shoulda kept it!!!!

Carter D-10 NV 1000/400 Lexicon Mx 200

Tele......twin......boss pedals

Max W. Thompson · From: Texas, USA

About 20 years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a steel guitar player and getting to play a few gig with him. The instrument fascinated me and I asked him a few questions, but I didn't ask to touch his guitar. I did tell my wife and kids over the years that I should learn one of those. Then, one Saturday two years ago, my wife and I were at a pawn shop and there was a steel guitar (carter starter) there, and the price was right, so I bought it. (She said, you can always sell it if you don't like it.) I stopped at a little guitar store and bought a bar on the way home. When we got home I went online and found the carter site, which had enough information to get me started. I set it up and tuned it and adjusted it, and started learning some chords. By Sunday afternoon I was hooked. The next Tuesday I had my first lesson.

Note: At the pawn shop, while I was still looking at the guitar in it's case, a young woman came over and asked "what is that thing?" I told her it was "a pedal steel guitar, like you see the old guys in the country bands playing". She asked, "why is it always the old guys?" and I didn't have an answer. I do now: because it takes so long to learn the thing!

Dick Wood · From: Springtown Texas, USA

I was about 17 when a friend and I walked into a music store that never carried any steels and we saw a MSA sidekick and we looked at each other and said what is that.

Funny thing is,9 years later I would buy that same model and start taking lessons.

Ben Elder · From: La Crescenta, California, USA

Although I'd seen those table guitars on the Buck Owens, Porter Wagoner and Wilburn Bros. TV shows, the first psg I ever saw close-up was in my freshman year of college in Nashville. A guy in my dorm had a birdseye Sho-Bud Maverick. (He also had the first Marshall stack I'd ever seen in person but not on stage and in the custody or a world-renowned Rock God.) That made this ethereal sound a little bit real for me.

Seven years later after having moved to Phoenix, I fortuitously lived close to the long gone House of Guitars (16th Street/Camelback). In that meantime, I'd had plenty of time to read up on psg--especially a '71 Guitar Player interview with Jerry Garcia where he went on and on and ON about how hard it was--especially right-hand blocking. I was well and thoroughly intimidated.

Nevertheless, when I happened in to the HOG, the owner? proprietor? saw me eyeing the steels and asked did I play? Me? Oh, no. (Are you kidding?! Jerry Garcia says it's hard...) He asked did I play regular guitar? Yeah--in my kindasorta way. Sit down then. Here, see these (3-4-5) strings? Put the bar here and play those. Push down the first two pedals and hit 'em again. Slide up two frets and hit 'em again.

That impossibly little demonstration opened up possibilities, although it took another three years until I located my first psg in the New Times (independent weekly newspaper) classifieds.

Birdseye Sho-Bud Maverick. (But to date, my only Marshall is an 80s mini-stack.)

James Marlowe · From: Florida, USA

In my teen years I "played" Dobro in a bluegrass band. Atleast I thought I was playing 'til I sobered up! Kinda like Ben Colder thought he was dancing until someone stepped on his hand!
I'd always been fascinated by the steel.
I bought a six string Fender lap steel from a pawn shop for 48 dollars. Had no idea how to tune it. I knew Dobro tuning didn't sound right.
In 1970 just after getting out of the USAF I happened upon a music store in Colonial Heights, Va. I saw an Emmons ps sitting there. So I strummed the strings to get some idea of how it was tuned. It sounded awfull to my ears. I thought, boy this thing sure ain't in tune. About that time the owner, Sam Lail (?) came over to help me. He sat down and played "Danny Boy" on that out of tune thing!
I wasn't employed yet, so didn't buy. It wasn't until the late 80's that I did get my first psg and figured out that out of tune sound was the E9 chromatic! Now almost 40 yrs later, I can tune it, but my playing........well that's another story!

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