The Steel Guitar Forum

Hey, does anybody have their favorite examples of
1). Steel comping that works (saw some of that above).
2). Steel guitar that has broken out of it's pigeonhole.
Your opinions of why you chose your examples would be interesting too.

"It was a real treat working with all the great LA players on the Suite Steel album, but my most haunting memory is playing Yesterday with Sneaky Pete. Pete did a beautiful job of supplying rhythmic arpeggios behind my solo, but when it was my turn to support him, the bottom dropped out of the track. You'll never believe how cold and lonely it got out there for me. Pete and I have known each other since we were teenagers and that experience renewed my respect for his talent and dispelled any notion that all roads for the steel guitar lead to Nashville. Sneaky Pete remains one of my favorite innovators of all time."

Dave Mudgett wrote:

Hey, does anybody have their favorite examples of
1). Steel comping that works (saw some of that above).
2). Steel guitar that has broken out of it's pigeonhole.
Your opinions of why you chose your examples would be interesting too.

For me, one name stands out - Sneaky Pete Kleinow. I just can't think of anybody that's played more effective backup than Pete. Here's "Yesterday" with Buddy Emmons, and Pete supplying most of the backup on the Suite Steel album - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Zgd6Ctz1Q - Pete's almost classical guitar arpeggiation is absolutely killer. It's been discussed before, for example here - https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=357120. Go through his extensive session catalog, and you'll hear him breaking the mold pretty routinely.

Here's Buddy's quote about Pete, and specifically his backup playing on Yesterday (courtesy Scott Murray from that thread):

"It was a real treat working with all the great LA players on the Suite Steel album, but my most haunting memory is playing Yesterday with Sneaky Pete. Pete did a beautiful job of supplying rhythmic arpeggios behind my solo, but when it was my turn to support him, the bottom dropped out of the track. You'll never believe how cold and lonely it got out there for me. Pete and I have known each other since we were teenagers and that experience renewed my respect for his talent and dispelled any notion that all roads for the steel guitar lead to Nashville. Sneaky Pete remains one of my favorite innovators of all time."

Hey, I take guitar gigs. The band I mentioned above is the very first band that I just said, flat out, this is steel only, and it probably won't be the last.

Chris Scruggs wrote: ...Harold Bradley told me that the instrument that sounds like vibraphone on Patsy Cline‘s “Crazy” is actually Howard White playing steel through an amp with the tremolo turned on.
~Chris Scruggs~

Dave Mudgett wrote:Yup - with the band doing 40s-early 60s country, proto-rockabilly, and western swing, most of the above, especially #2. Little melodic things in line with #3 also. More on mid-to-fast tempo tunes, and this stuff has to be concise and out of the way. I tend to lay back a lot more on slower stuff - strictly trading fills works better there. This is a band with 5-6 pieces, so I have to be judicious to keep it from getting too cluttered. But staccato rhythm chops don't usually get in the way, and often help propel the faster tunes.

I still struggle to get the Chuck Berry chucka-chucka thing to sound as good as on guitar, and hence don't use it as much. Definitely more a universal thing - the low root drone is just not there most of the time on 10-string E9, at least I struggle to find it. I'm a guitar player, and still play guitar a lot, but not so much in that band. There's already an electric guitar player and usually an acoustic rhythm player.

When I can deal with the complexity of having a slide guitar with me on a pedal steel gig, my style of slide guitar lends itself to rhythm guitar a lot, thanks to the influence of Sonny Landreth. And on more bluesy and rockin' stuff, I sometimes prefer to just go there. But the guitar changes were driving me crazy in that band - she (the singer) is really trying to move from tune to tune quickly. I need a much quicker and more painless way to do the switching, so I have a few seconds to deal with the context-switching required in my head. I can probably devise a technology solution, but haven't yet. Or a guitar tech - yeah right.