The Steel Guitar Forum

I was just wondering, ?

What were your reasons for wanting to learn to play a PSG?

I think you know mine...

Hi David,
Way back when I played guitar, the steel looked easier ! It wasn't!
But hey I persevered, stuck at it, and have had a pretty good life from it!
Wouldn't have missed it all for the world !
Still playing, and it still ain't easy !

Loretta Lynn and Hal Rugg:
[url=ttp://steelguitarmadness.com/insanity/wilburn-brothers-show/]The Wilburn Brothers Show on Steel Guitar Insanity[/url]

When in High School I was country when country wasn't cool and loved steel guitar. Playing drums in school band and bass guitar in dance bands, it struck me I had to give it a try. Just newly married, I gave it a try and she has to this day supported me.
Terry

I always loved the sound the steel guitar made way back when, even before pedals were invented. Pop, western swing music and other styles were using steel guitar and the sound intrigued me.

I futzed around with 6 string standard tuned guitars all of my very young and intermediate years, but I was never passionate about it.

One day I brought home some Asleep at the Wheel, Pure Prairie League, Flying Burrito Brothers and Amazing Rhythm Aces LP's and I knew afterwards I just had to try to play the instrument some day. A couple years later I ran across a MSA Red Baron and my journey began.

Short answer, The sound of the thing.

IN ORDER TO EXPERIENCE THE ROAR, ACCLAIM AND ADULATION OF THE CROWD, OF COURSE!

I started playing slide guitar immediately upon hearing Duane Allman - I actually had a Coricidin bottle 3 years before I had an SG. Back somewhere in the mid-80's I just felt I had pushed it just as far as I was personally able, running tip-of-the-slide arpeggios across different frets and grinding down (cow) soup bones into egg-profiled slides and all. There are still a few Ravi Shankar licks that drift into my playing from that period... then I got busy with the house/career/wife thing, assorted head trips, and I didn't get that out of my system till 2001.

When I developed a scheme allowing me to get back to obsessive musicating, I stuck a slide on my finger, opened up Ted Greene's "Chord Chemistry" and said "uh-oh." I bought a bunch of steel records and (C6th) courses. I still mostly listen to players who play music, not an instrument (you know when you are - mo' Perlowin/Easley/Landreth/Trucks, less "Steel Guitar Rag"/George Thorogood).

I started on a 6-string Epiphone when I was 8, got a double-neck non-pedal Fender at 10, then played for about 6 more years. Gave it up though cuz I couldn't emulate the sounds I was hearing from Jimmy Day, Buddy, etc. (I lived in a small town and knew nothing about pedals and neither did my teachers.) When I was about 24 I heard Pure Prairie League on a jukebox playing Sister's Keeper. I was immediately hooked. Found a Maverick locally, bought some courses, then a Sho-Bud Pro II, and played in local bands for 10 years. I did quit for 25 years for various reasons but the urge kept bugging me so now I'm back. I think I love the challenge.

It all started somewhere between Hank Sr. and Asleep At The Wheel in the early 70s.

it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It seemed like a good way to spend a great deal of money and time and insure that my remaining years would be uninterrupted by any actual work.

After listening to Lloyd and Jay Dee on Sweetheart of the Rodeo by The Byrds and a bunch of Ralph Mooney and Tom Brumley on Buck Owens records, Norm Hamlet with Merle, and of course to meet girls.

I was playing a triple-8 Fender in one of Portland's top dance/radio country bands....

Our lead vocalist kept telling me to "make it sound like "SLOWLY"....."

Once my four-neck BIGSBY with six pedals arrived, I was able to do just that. However, Buddy Emmons came on the scene and to my amazement even tho' I had pedals, I couldn't sound like Buddy or Lloyd or any of the other greats, thus, I had to acquire my Emmons. Been at it ever since.

When I was 16 I bought My Bloody Valentines "Loveless" album for some reason. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztnutktJ ... re=related It's been my favorite album since. And it opened my eyes to what music could be, a great thing with no genre constrictions to hold it back. It brought me to a band on the same label that played the type of steel I wanted to play with the band The Mojave 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXB1XJoi ... re=related

It was the music I hear in my head, and the music I wanted to play and the most beautiful part of it was the pedal steel guitar. So I and to get one and learn how to play the stuff I wanted to play; simple, beautiful, and fulfilling. As a musician how could you want anything else?

Kind Woman.

Sometime in the late 60's I heard the most beautiful sound on a Jim Reeves record. I asked around and was told it was the steel guitar.
Then I attended a country music show in Norway where I heard Leif Dørme on a Fender 400 pedal steel. The most beautiful instrument I had ever laid eyes on!

I went to Nashville on vacation in Sept 1971 and heard about Lloyd Green. And the rest is history.

I still can't play worth a hoot, but I have built a few pedal steels and that is where my heart lies these days...

Justin Jacobson wrote:When I was 16 I bought My Bloody Valentines "Loveless" album

Great album, good to see not everyone here is an old codger

After hearing the "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" album. I had been playing 6 string electric guitar for years and that sound completely enthralled me and got into my soul. I bought my first steel in 1973 or 1974, geez, I can't remember now that I'm soooooo old, and been playing steel, ever since. It's a part of my life, etched in my brain and coursing through my veins.

I have to post an addendum to my previous post. Rather than do a lot of redundant typing, you can just read it here.

Walked into Grand Praire Music.in 1971.they built the Howard Pedal steel there.and sitting at a Howard 14 string was Julian tharpe.That just about did me in.gave up Playing guitar and went to steel I was 16 at the time. been at it ever since....EARL......

The Byrds: Sweetheart of the Rodeo

followed by,

Bob Dylan: Nashville Skyline

I thought I'd get more girls.

It was the late 70's and I was a 6-string rock- n-roll gunslinger. Gigs were slow so I landed a job with a country band playing 3-4 nights a week making good money. I knew little about the music but I could hold my own somehow. My respect, understanding and eventual love for the music grew enormously. Boy, was I lovin' it.

One night the singer said he had asked a pedal steel player to sit in. I knew what the instrument was but had never actually played with one. He set up right next to me on stage.

After the first set that was it. I pointed to his Sho-Bud and said, "I gotta git me one of dose! " A short time later I ran across a Super-Pro in a shop and the love affair took off runnin' . And what a journey it's been.

The band got together and decided that they wanted to add a PSG.
I was elected because I was the lead player and they knew my father played Steel Guitar. .
It was cold and a long ways home from Twin Falls Idaho.
So suddenly it occurred to me that I wanted to play the PSG.

Late 60's early 70's I was all in on the Country Rock thing, Byrds, Poco, Pure Prairie League, New Riders etc... which started with Buffalo Springfield for me. From that I backed up into traditional Country...

Evidently I'm still all in !

t