The Steel Guitar Forum

My opinion only. Did steel guitar get too far away from the steel guitar sound. Too jazzy?

Good steel always wins converts,but it's not really a familiar sound to most people, and where you mostly found steel locally was in the honky-tonks. Now that honky-tonks are as rare as Packard mechanics,there's little opportunity to happen upon steel and be converted.

Hip Hop Country is the new way to go. Nobody wants to listen to your Grandfather's Steel Guitar.

Click here

I don't know that it has lost favor. I think it's just the music is not very exciting and so goes the instruments associated with it.

It's out there, but there's so much music around, it's hard to find the good stuff unless you know where to look for it or you just stumble over it.

When I turn my radio on I never listen to a country station. I try to find old rock or just old music. I guess I really just try to find music. I would rather hear talk over what the so called country is today and has been for a long time. Texas puts out some good sounding music and you can find it on the internet and RFD TV.

It started somewhere in the eighties with artists showing no morals anymore and than expontially expoding till today. No more Carpenters, no more Association today.
Here's a recent track by Gretchen Peters with Dan Dugmore.
You gotta dig deeper nowadays and you may find something good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Punabc8yEWk

The music that featured it changed and the players didn’t change with it. Band leaders and producers drop the musicians not the public.

Good music being made every day with steel guitar. Just don't expect it on your local radio.

Tracy Sheehan wrote:My opinion only. Did steel guitar get too far away from the steel guitar sound. Too jazzy?

Too jazzy? Some of the biggest exposure pedal steel has gotten recently is from Greg Leisz on jazz albums with Bill Frisell. Personally I'd much rather listen to Morrell playing swing standards or Mike Neer playing Monk than hear another 20 versions of Together Again.

If players want to perpetuate what they believe the pedal steel is all about, I suggest they get off their butts and form their own bands. No whining about how much it costs and all the headaches and having to be the cat-herding axxhole where the buck stops - every bandleader goes through that. At least you won’t have to worry about getting fired.

It’s not the instrument...it’s the musician!

I read the topic and thought that the "public" doesn't know the difference between a steel guitar and a trombone.

They don't care and nor should we expect them to.

h

Popular music has always changed from generation to generation, (Not always for the better)
Instruments have come in and out of style for hundreds of years. Heck... 100 years ago there were basically no "electric" guitars at all. The steel guitar is relatively new compared to the piano or organ. Big Bands were very popular, and brass instruments were cool... but not so much any more. How about accordians, tenor banjos, harpsichords, xylophones, vibes, bongos, etc. Yes there are a few players still out there but they are not selling a lot of records...

I love the steel guitar, but it is a very rare bird now. Not extinct, but not seen often in the wild.

Most of the Hawaiian entertainers don't even use steel guitars anymore. They used to use at least 4 people in a group. Then it came down to money and guess who was the first to go. Most of the entertainment now in Hawaii is a rhythm player, bass or uke and a singer. Bummer!!

Fred Treece wrote:If players want to perpetuate what they believe the pedal steel is all about, I suggest they get off their butts and form their own bands. No whining about how much it costs and all the headaches and having to be the cat-herding axxhole where the buck stops - every bandleader goes through that. At least you won’t have to worry about getting fired.

Or get on youtube and start teaching and putting music out there. There are hundreds of popular 6 string youtube personalities. Very few steel players.

Dustin Rhodes wrote:

Fred Treece wrote:If players want to perpetuate what they believe the pedal steel is all about, I suggest they get off their butts and form their own bands. No whining about how much it costs and all the headaches and having to be the cat-herding axxhole where the buck stops - every bandleader goes through that. At least you won’t have to worry about getting fired.

Or get on youtube and start teaching and putting music out there. There are hundreds of popular 6 string youtube personalities. Very few steel players.

👍
There are actually a good number of teaching videos out there. But I think a band makes a bigger statement, especially in the context of a local music scene.

There are only two reasons to learn to play music - for your own enjoyment or for the enjoyment of others. Sometimes we can’t have both, but that is usually the goal.

Fred Treece wrote:

Dustin Rhodes wrote:

Fred Treece wrote:If players want to perpetuate what they believe the pedal steel is all about, I suggest they get off their butts and form their own bands. No whining about how much it costs and all the headaches and having to be the cat-herding axxhole where the buck stops - every bandleader goes through that. At least you won’t have to worry about getting fired.

Or get on youtube and start teaching and putting music out there. There are hundreds of popular 6 string youtube personalities. Very few steel players.

👍
There are actually a good number of teaching videos out there. But I think a band makes a bigger statement, especially in the context of a local music scene.

I think there is some easy ground to gain by reaching people in countries who have no history with country, western swing, or hawaiian music.

Agreeing with you again on the possible global impact of a video. But chances are good that the band in the video will not be traveling to Sri Lanka any time soon. So having a YouTube up for local advertisement serves a dual purpose.

I don't think the public has much to do with prevalence of steel guitar, that decision is made primarily by record producers and performers.

E9 pedal steel hit its peak in the mid 70s... country music, rock bands, TV commercials, you name it. it was everywhere. as the 70s wore on you begin hearing attempts to make the steel sound less like a steel with effects. this was partially brought on by the players who were looking for a wider palette, but I think producers played a larger part in trying to get away from the traditional steel sound. you also had performers, like Conway Twitty for example, who had used the steel so heavily suddenly complaining about it. he and many other artists dropped it completely.

there are some exceptions but it's hard to find a record after 1980 or so where the steel is as prominent and pure as it had been for all those years before. even with so-called "new traditional" artists who used plenty of steel, it just didn't have the prominence or punch that it once had. of course, quality has only gone down in the subsequent decades and nowadays you've got keyboardists using a banjo patch to make country records.

luckily we've still got all those classic recordings with all that steel guitar, and lots of people discovering or rediscovering that sound. there will always be a place for steel guitar when those songs are performed, and there will always be room for the steel to expand into any kind of music the players want to make... producers be damned.

Howard Parker wrote:I read the topic and thought that the "public" doesn't know the difference between a steel guitar and a trombone.

They don't care and nor should we expect them to.

h

That certainly goes a long way in explaining the world we live in.

I believe we should expect the public to care about the difference, and musicians play a role in exposing that difference. After all, musicians are also music fans - we ARE the “public”. Certain record producers have obviously accepted a degree of public ignorance and use their contracted artists to perpetuate it. I suppose that’s their right. But if Shakespeare were alive today, his famous quote about lawyers might have been aimed at record producers instead.

I believe the “public” expects musicians to be a little less fearfull of popular musical conventions. If record sales butter your bread, fine. And if those record sales are full of music that reflects what you believe in with your heart and soul, great. If not, please record something that does.

Hick-hop is the lineal descendant of Maynard G. Krebs reading beatnik stream-of-consciousness with bongos for accompaniment.Soul-patch mandatory. [/img]

lmao, Dave

Steel guitar got popular in the C&W world through its jazzy role in Western Swing bands. Maybe it's losing popularity (if it is) because it's not jazzy enough.

I remember this kind of topic in the '70's...Is steel dead? I kinda' think like they taught me in the Marine Corps..improvise, adapt, overcome! You wanna make an impact on what's happening now..make some playing that fits what's happening. Yeah, what was played in the previous decades was incredible, BUT, it is not what's happening now. Play with what's going on, or wait until it turns around again, or stick with the traditional and appeal to the older generation(lovers of the sound/style) or quit worrying about what is going on and develop something entirely new. Just play what you want to..I did not follow the trend in the '70's, and went entirely and deeply into southern rock, although that did include some great country...Haggard, Nelson, etc. I survived and still got to play what I wanted to on my own terms. Hopefully, ya'll can do the same without the bitter taste of 'I couldn't do it my way'. Just play the way you want.....unless you desperately want to be 'of the time'...or you really, really need the money..I did mid '70's, and referred to the period as being a 'studio whore'. I had a family to feed and care for.

Wow! Thanks Jeff P., very direct and inspiring!

Dustin Rhodes wrote:

Tracy Sheehan wrote:My opinion only. Did steel guitar get too far away from the steel guitar sound. Too jazzy?

Too jazzy? Some of the biggest exposure pedal steel has gotten recently is from Greg Leisz on jazz albums with Bill Frisell. Personally I'd much rather listen to Morrell playing swing standards or Mike Neer playing Monk than hear another 20 versions of Together Again.

I have to agree here. The pioneer of the electric steel guitar was Bob Dunn... So, the steel guitar began as a jazz instrument! I don't think it will ever be too jazzy, as that is the way it began. I feel that the steel guitar's roll in Classic Country really came about later on, with Don Helms and Jerry Byrd. But, it really fits ALL music well, and is more versatile than a fretted guitar. We don't have to be prisoners to what the radio wants us to hear!