The Steel Guitar Forum

I happened to be in Toronto, Canada, tonight at the Mike Nesmith / Micky Dolenz concert, and had the pleasure of hearing Pete Finney play great pedal steel and acoustic guitar with the band.
The show included songs from both The Monkees, and Mike Nesmith's First National Band (which originally featured the late great Red Rhodes on steel).
Pete did a super job, on what looked like a GFI S10 (unfortunately, I was way up in the nose bleed seats!).
The show was well paced, and the musicianship top notch.

Good to hear. Always wondered what became of Mike post Monkees...

Aside from the Mike and Micky (Monkees) tour, he's taking a new version of The First National Band on tour, which will also include Pete Finney, I believe.
Here's a link to FNB tour dates:
https://www.monkeeslivealmanac.com/blog ... cket-links
Lee

I just saw the show in Denver and really enjoyed it. Pete is great and we had a nice dinner before the show. The first First National Band record with Red Rhodes is one of two that made me buy a steel guitar, and got to meet Mike and tell him that. Pete played a couple of solos that out a big smile on Mike’s face!

Hey John,
As it was for you, Red Rhodes was one of the players that drew me to playing pedal steel.
I was fortunate enough to meet him briefly at an ACM event way back in 1992.
Having the FNB back in action is great news, especially knowing that the steel chair is in good hands with Pete!
Lee

I got to see Pete twice when he was with Patty Loveless. Great player.

I saw Nesmith twice when Red was with him. Great show.

Pete is one of my favorite players. Very tasteful.

I'm going to see Mike perform in September... I just purchased a Fender 2000 that belonged to Red Rhodes. It was his "experimental" steel he kept at home. Had to use "Goo Gone" to remove 50-year old black tape around the edges of the wood. It has three home made knee levers, made from old Fender pedals. Sounds like a dream. If I can just pull some of that Red mojo out of it, maybe I'd finally sound half-competent...

Pete is one of the greats!! Met him after he played a gig with Chris Scruggs.

Charley

Here is what the FN Band Tour will sound like. Pete Finney tearing it up. Anyone know what Pete uses to get that distortion?

https://www.facebook.com/Videoranch3D/v ... 359601096/

Here's Mike Nesmith's biggest hit..."Joanne", featuring Red Rhodes. The steel work in this is so doggone beautiful, but also so dirt-simple, that I'm amazed every time I hear it. Talk about "fitting the song perfectly", and "doing more with less". I don't think anyone ever did it better.

Don't know if anyone else feels that way, but here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5CiOTrRJBw

Great video John, would love to go, but its 3 days before the Byrds show and can't swing it.

Saw him with Chris Scruggs a few years ago and it was a great show, love the Nes!

Donnie that has been one of my favorite oldies for years. Thanks for posting. Red did a stellar job.

Donnie that has been one of my favorite oldies for years. Thanks for posting. Red did a stellar job.

I saw Mike Nesmith's First National Band Redux last night in Kent, Ohio. Wonderful show, and Pete Finney is brilliant, doing a beautiful job of stepping into the shoes of the great Red Rhodes. Nesmith tells some really funny stories. I think I may try that peanut butter thing ...it sure seemed to work for Red. ;-D Do yourself a favor and catch one of their shows.

Everything that’s been said here about Pete is spot on. Saw Nez & FNB last night and the big takeaway was Michael’s great love of Red and the pedal steel. Often waxing nostalgic of Red, he also praised Pete for filling some big shoes, and many smiles were traded between them. The PSG was specifically honored throughout the show and I was further inspired to play from the heart.

I came to the Santa Barbara concert on the strength of the comments here,
Pete Finney was stellar all night. It was an example of how a pedal steel can elevate a singer songwriter style band.
Kudos to Mike Nesmith for his respect of Red Rhodes. With all due respect, Pete was as good, if not better.
Pete’s sound was clear in the mix. He was playing a GFI(no model label) through a Nashville 400 with a silver cone. He also had a pedal board for delay, dobro tone and organ sounds, which he used sparingly but to great effect.
Mike Nesmith and the First National Band was a great night of pedal steel.
John

There's a new album out (2021) that has a lot of steel guitar, sounds mostly like non-pedal to me. I'm listening on Apple Music which doesn't seem to list personnel.

Does anyone know who the fabulous player(s) is? If I had to guess, I'd say Greg Leisz, but I'm not familiar enough with Pete Finney's playing.

Check this album out, it's flying under the radar, but it's very catchy, better than I expected for sure.

On the Magnetic South album it says OJ "Red"Rose.

There's only steel on one track of "Dolenz Sings Nesmith," which is called "Marie's Tune." That's me on multiple tracks of pedal-steel, anything that may sound like lap-steel on the album is Christian Nesmith on slide guitar. I recorded my parts in Nashville last year and sent them off to LA where they were doing the album (also mostly remotely from each other). I usually send multiple tracks of different approaches on remote sessions so the producers/artists have a choice. In this case they used a lot, sometimes multiple tracks at once; it's almost too much for my taste in places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiVbtqnS7m8

I'm out with both Dolenz and Nesmith on the long-delayed "Monkees Farewell Tour." We just finished a few weeks of shows on the West Coast, Arizona and Texas. We've got a little break and then start in Southeast before heading to Northeast, Midwest and then fly back for final show at Greek Theater in L.A. in mid November.
Fun tunes, great band! Here's a link to the live double-album Rhino put out from our similar shows in 2019:

https://www.rhino.com/aod/the-mike-and- ... he-monkees

It's possible Nez might want to do some First National Band shows next year; I hope so, but one step at a time! This is a long and pretty intense tour.

Hey man, thanks for this reply, both your playing and Christian's is really excellent. This album has stood up to repeated listening for me. Yeah, maybe it's a bit overproduced, but so were the Monkees!

Thanks for the kind words, Matt. And belated thanks for all the nice things people said a year or two back in this thread; there were a few similar threads going on at once and I neglected to respond to this one.

I must say that I think Michael Nesmith is really criminally overlooked as a great songwriter. The First National Band tours are all about his great country-rock songs from the '70s with Red Rhodes, and the current "Monkees" tours also really feature Nesmith tunes heavily, a lot of '60s pop-rock gems, and Nesmith also insists on doing some lesser known songs that featured pedal-steel (which is why I'm there). People may not realize that aside from all the great Neil Diamond, Carole King and Boyce/Hart songs that were written for the band in their heyday that Nez wrote a lot of the songs that Micky sang as well as most of the ones that he sang.

Edited: I moved the Lloyd Green content that was here to a separate thread:

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=374090

I just had to post this song of 'Some of Shelley's Blues' from a tour that had Chris Scruggs and Paul Leim with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flzcR7hPl6Q

'Listen to the band' on the new release that Michael released early this year is really great as well.

Pete you are a lucky man to play along with one of my favorite artists!! Enjoy the show, am trying to see if I can make it down to see you guys in Redbank, NJ at the Count Basie.