The Steel Guitar Forum

Forgetting the song and what key..............
??????????? age ???????????????

I once dropped my bar opening for Trick Pony. It was a large venue with a big stage. I started scouting around me for the bar and noticed Trick's guitar player off to my right smiling and holding the bar. I was glad he found it.

I showed up....

There used to be a saying that if you play bum notes during an instrumental break, repeat them, and people will think that that's the way you intended it.

I've had plenty to choose from, but one that sticks out is when I had started playing some non-pedal 8 string steel tuned to G6. After playing the single neck for a few months I picked up a double 8 Fender Professional and had one neck in G6 the other in C6. I was kicking off Heartaches by the Number in G and for some reason decided at the last second to play it on the C neck instead of the G neck. My brain didn't make all the information transfer properly and it turns out I was playing in the key of D. I'm looking at the band with a WTH are you guys doing look and then it dawns on me that I'm the problem. Took a restart to fix it.
Glad to see none of us are alone at screwing up.

Last year, in July. We had an outside concert in 98* with 90 percent humidity. There were about 500 people, many of them musicians and friends. Needless to say I had a partial physical breakdown. Halfway through our set, in the instrumental part of "Look At Us"' , the bar starting slipping and I couldn't concentrate. The whole last of that part sounded terrible. I barely made it to end. I finished the show really sick. It was dehydration, even though I drank a lot of water. It happened to me a month before and I went to the emergency room to get checked out. I guess I never recovered fully. Nobody said anything about my bad playing even though I felt terrible about it. I guess they could see I was under the weather so to say. I'll never let that happen again. Anything else I've ever done doesn't compare to that awful show.

One night I took the double neck even though I don't play C6. Before we started, I didn't have any sound. Tried cords and everything until I figured out I needed to switch to the right neck. Had a similar problem with the new Sarno V8 until I switched it from wait to run. I have had numerous times when I just didn't have something plugged in, including the power cord. Before I got a pack seat, I was using a folding chair at a club. Came back after a break and had no sound. The folding chair had a rubber foot missing and had cut my George L cord in two.

Playin' steel at The Okla. Opry, with fantastic studio musicians, doing a Shania Twain song in key of B flat. I'm not watching the #chart, so I'm just noodling thru the song and forget what key I'm in. It sounds good what I'm putting in, so we're coming up on the tag, and I hear our band leader in my headphones say, "Bill, Here's your chord". And I'm thinkin' to myself, chord? What Chord? I had forgotten, I was supposed to end this song with a giant B flat, all by my lonesome, HUNG OUT TO DRY. Well, I was 4or5 frets off on that ending, and everybody looked at me, and busted out laughing. I even got tickled myself, when the band leader in his dry humor said, "We Give Him One Chord". The little gal we were backing up, turned around and said, "What Happened"? The next time she came to the Opry, I did OK with her song, and apologized for not payin' attention the last time.

Gary Lee Gimble wrote:http://steelguitarnetwork.net/videos/25 ... -time-opps

Oh, Gary! Gotta be tubes in there. What's the end of the story?

Dan,
One tube fell out and a few cosmetic dings which were repaired by my local tube guru, Pete Cage. As of today, said amp is running like a champ.

I don't know enough on steel yet to have had any public screw ups, but I've had more than my share of electric guitar moments. I was playing in a rock musical a couple of years ago and I started a song a half step flat, which sounded fine with just me and the singer, but was a momentary train wreck when the rest of the band came in.

The worst, though, was probably when the singer in the new band I was playing in pointed at me in the middle of some classic country tune (I've repressed the title along with most of the memory...), announced loudly to the audience, "Here's Joe Blow!" and I just basically froze up tight. It's a lonely feeling -- to say the least! -- when all eyes are on you and you're just kind of staring at your guitar like you've never seen it before. It's experiences like this, though, that have taught me to laugh at myself, and thankfully, the audience will usually laugh along.

Some years ago while playing at an outdoor stage, the guitar player nodded for me to kick in and finish the phrase, I thought the guitar was on it's own....I was sure my feet were on the A and B pedals but they were working the B, C's. Sounded terrible!!

Playing naked on the stage of a large auditorium with only the bell of my saxophone to cover my... oh wait, no, that's just my recurring nightmare.

We did a 6 night stand in a club in northern NM. I had had enough of the drunks you know, not to mention the drunks in the audience. So the last night, a sunday, we where to play from 8 - 11 instead of till 1 or 2, whatever it was. Well that last night was open mic with the band. Here I am, playing with one drunken "singer" after another. So, now it's 11 o'clock. I start breaking down, flip the steel, take off one of the legs. Suddenly, I'm surrounded by a bunch of seriously drunked-up cowboy & oil rigger types that want to know where the hell do I think I'm going. I've got a weapon in my hand, the steel leg. I just wanna go home, I've had enough. They are gonna kick my ass If I don't keep backing them up. I'm off the clock now. If they had just offered me a beer or something it would've been fine! Put the leg back on & fliped the steel back & played another hour or so. Last time with THAT band. Serious red-neck jackasses, but I survived & got a story out of it.

We were opening a new club in Southern California. Emmy Lou, Barry and Steve Fishell dropped in. They were kind enough to sit in, and I invited Steve to play the steel. Wearing my best boots that night, significant heels. No low-profile volume pedal, so the rear legs were set super high. I had forgotten all about it until Steve sat down, and I realized how far forward the guitar was tilted. Ahhhhh, run and hide!

Hi Dan,
Good to hear from you!
I remember sitting in with you guys in SoCal but I sure don't remember that you're guitar's legs were too high. We had fun!
I hope I wasn't rude that night.
Please take this off of your "worst screwup" list.
cheers,
Steve
p.s. I've had so many screwups I don't know where to start. One of the worst was glancing down at the setlist for the second song - usually a shuffle with Emmy - and seeing four letters and thinking it said "Rose," which is code for "I'll Be Your San Antone Rose" in A. What was actually written was "Blue," short for "Blue Kentucky Girl" in F. Both songs have solo pedal steel intros and the same tempo. I heard the count and wailed on the intro in A in front of a full house somewhere. The trouble was I was introing the wrong song in the wrong key. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and roll away.

But I must admit the results were really funny to hear afterwards on the board mix.

Fish wrote: p.s. I've had so many screwups I don't know where to start. One of the worst was glancing down at the setlist for the second song - usually a shuffle with Emmy - and seeing four letters and thinking it said "Rose," which is code for "I'll Be Your San Antone Rose" in A. What was actually written was "Blue," short for "Blue Kentucky Girl" in F. Both songs have solo pedal steel intros and the same tempo. I heard the count and wailed on the intro in A in front of a full house somewhere. The trouble was I was introing the wrong song in the wrong key. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and roll away.

So, Steve, tell us the rest of the tale! Did the band stop and start over (doubtful)? Or did they follow you into Rose in A (also doubtful), or play Blue in F anyway and you eventually caught on and modulated yourself from A into F (that's my guess)?

Was playing City Boots years ago with the Garfield County Line band and kicked off "Don't you ever get tired of hurting me" on the C6 neck that should have been on the E9. I forgot to change necks from the the previous number that I did in C6. Boy, talk about a train wreck!

Hi Jim - Emmylou rarely if ever stops. If you messed up, the Hot Band would run you over like a runaway train. :0)

At an outdoor gig in the summer 1983 a fly unfortunately made its way into her mouth during a ballad and she stopped singing for about 30 seconds while we continued. Frank Reckard wisely launched into an unannounced guitar solo and covered the situation brilliantly, and Emmy - like the trouper and pro that she is - joined back in at the next verse. But she only stops if - due to a mis-placed capo - she mistakenly intros a song in the wrong key during a solo intro (like "Pancho and Lefty"), which has happened maybe a couple of times over the years.

Here's what happened with the San Antone/Kentucky Girl debacle: I had a little bit going in my favor because both songs are shuffles in the same tempo. "Blue Kentucky" is in F with the intro starting on Bb and moving through Bb/G/C, while "I'll Be Your San Antone Rose" is in A starting on the IV / D. So, it sounded really messy on the first three notes when the band came in. :0)

All I remember in that moment of sheer terror is that by the time the band hit the C or V chord of the "Blue Kentucky" intro I had somehow "morphed" my way out of "Rose" and into the intro for "Blue." It was a Frankenstein musical mess if there ever was one. I wish I still had the tape, but I remember hearing it after the concert and being surprised that it only sounded half as bad as I expected, and only a quarter as bad as I felt at that moment.

The lesson: don't ever stop!

Not on stage, but on a gig... One night I was playing with a band, and in a short break I needed to go to the men´s room which was located in a closed area outside the bar (which was located in a mall that was closed for the evening). Once I stepped out of the bar the door behind me got locked and I was trapped outside in the closed area. The CD-player played music quite loud in the bar so no one could hear me when I banged the door. After 10 minutes I heard the band started playing without me. I decided to smash one of the large windows of the mall to get out and get into the bar again. But luckily enough a person outside spotted me as I was about to throw a large ashtray through the window and I was able to, with my hands, make him understand that he should go inside and ask someone to let me out. Kinda embarrassing to say the least…

Not really a major mess up, but I had a Fender Twin reverb amp that used to pay my steel through. I was working with Ava Barber (Lawrence Welk Show) and Carl and Pearl Butler (Grand Old Opry), when the reverb fuse shorted out and the most awful terrible scream came out of that amp! Talking about wishing you could jump in a hole. Carl and Pearl just started laughing, Ava just looked at me.

Howard Parker wrote:Dimly lit stage with 2 dobro's D & G tuned.

Kicked off tune with much authority. Took about a micro second to realize I had the wrong guitar.

Too late!

h

I have done this on guitar...
Tune in open D, switch to steel for the next tune, back to guitar, massive first chord in the wrong tuning.

ouch...

Volunteering to sing "Satin Sheets" without really thinking of the lyrics or consequences....

Played a battle of the bands, then rushed to our house gig. I had left my pick and bar box on a ledge behind the stage at the battle scene! Had to schmooze some gal into going and getting it for me! Played the first 2 sets bare-fingered with some sort of shot glass for a tone bar.
Usually if I made a mistake, I'd point at the bass player and laugh! He hated my gutz!