The Steel Guitar Forum

http://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/inde ... &Itemid=38

It's getting close (and I still have several pieces to round up, string and deliver) so I figure it won't hurt to start beating the drum. I'll shamelessly but relevantly try to drop in plugs around the Forum's various sections.

The show opens October 11 and runs into March. (Carlsbad is in northern San Diego County and shouldn't be too long a car ride from Anaheim for those attending the NAMM Show.) It will cover "pre-Hawaiian" instruments (India, Asia, etc.) and run up to the present day, covering not only Hawaiian, but blues, country and rock. Andy Volk is creating a video presentation. Lots of photos and ephemera too.

Ben, the site says the opening event is already sold out. Waaaah!!! Got any secret way to get tickets? I LOVE Sonny Landreth, but Lindley and the whole concept are fabulous, too, and I'd love to attend. This must have been a lot of work, tell us more, please.

The exhibit runs through March and there are other concerts scattered through the run: Cindy Cashdollar (Feb.), Bob Brozman (Jan.) and Freddie Roulette/Henry Kaiser (forgot...March?). There are links to these somewhere on the MofMM site.

HELLO BEN & TO YOUR FINE BW,

Thanks for the information on this great exibit. It's a bit too far for me to attend, but there should be good coverage on, "THE FORUM".

BTW: "SLIDE GUITAR" may be the best term for this
show, but it conjures up a picture of someone
using a pinky slide on a standard guitar.??

Roger in the P.N.W.

No one word can summarize all that's included: centuries and continents of "sliding" instruments represented. (Joseph Kekuku and Christopher Columbus kind of hold the same status in their respective fields of endeavor...)

For those who may not have seen it yet, I'm going to bump this thread every so often through its run until March 31 next year.

Still some great performances in conjunction with this show remaining: Martin Simpson, Bob Brozman, Cindy Cashdollar, Freddie Roulette & Henry Kaiser.

I saw it on Sunday. The exhibit was well done, and I enjoyed it. I saw that Jim Palenscar loaned a couple of his steels.

Here's another bump. Saw this exhibit over the holiday weekend and it was just great. Wonderful array of rare instruments on loan from Ben, among many others, and a fine short documentary done by Andy Volk with clips featuring the pantheon of steel guitar heroes. The exhibit is mixed in with the museum's regular presentation on the history of the making and marketing of musical instruments in America (the museum is run by NAMM, after all) which in itself is really interesting. I fell particularly hard for an upright Steinway "Victory" piano, 3,000 of which were made in WWII when Steinway was otherwise making caskets and glider planes for the war effort. It has the coolest moderne-style cabinet finished in gloss olive drab, built tough enough to be dropped in by parachute for use by troops in remote areas all over Europe and the Pacific. (I want one!) In all, five bucks very well spent.

This exhibit was really interesting, I highly recommend it! Ben, you have a lot more cool instruments than you ever let on to! Thanks for your key part in putting this show together.

I bought the exhibit CD, The Magic & Mystery of Slide Guitar, great disc. Styles all over the map, but worth having.

I'm filling in on steel at McCabe's in Oceanside tomorrow, Dec. 5, so if you've got a whole day free, go to the museum, and then hop over to the club to enjoy old school country with the California Rangers. Show is from 4:30-9. It's on Oceanside Blvd, just before the train tracks and the ocean, on the north side. More details in a separate post.