The Steel Guitar Forum

How did you get started on the PSG? I am a guitar player and upon first hearing "Deliverin" by Poco when it came out, I was hooked on "the sound". I never could afford one and I was trying to master guitar, so it had to wait till the kids were grown and flown and I had some extra money to purchase one which was probably around forty years. Now that I have one, I have decided it isn't an instrument, it's the devils contraption! I am to old now to fool myself into believing I will master this contraption. Does anyone ever master an instrument? I am still learning to play guitar after fifty years. Sometimes it kills me to see twenty year olds who smoke me, but still, I am no slouch and I keep on plugging away. For anyone interested here is a link to some of my original material. To bad I couldn't incorporate some of my favorite instruments into it.
J.D.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMgevE ... xvNqYNJ8PQ

Jamey Johnson’s “That Lonesome Song” album got me started. There are master players of the instrument, however they would tell you they are still learning.

I'm way before your time. Little Roy Wiggins steel guitar work on Eddy Arnold records got me interested in steel. I got into 6 string guitar and bass in the 60's. I finally got into Pedal Steel in late 69.

I have been playing guitar since 1964 and before that I was playing drums and bugle in marching bands. I knew I wanted to be a musician since I was about 4. My father got a 78 jukebox from a bar owner who was changing over to 45s and needed his large fishing boats diesel motor worked on. My father fixed his motor and the jukebox was part of the deal. My father put it on our enclosed front porch and I would stand in front of that thing for hours on end singing along with whatever was on it. Steam Heat, Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney, This Old House, Bing Crosby, Mr. Gallagher and Mr.Shean, Carmens Boogie by the Crewcuts, 16 tons Tennessee Ernie, were some I remember.

Joined a country group playing bass about 14 years ago knowing very little about the genre. We never had a steel player but through the tunes I was sent to learn the Pedal steel started worming it's way into my head and heart.

I thought it was something I might take up once my kids were grown but then about 5 years ago my brother stepped in...
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... highlight=
... And dropped a PSG rig into my lap.

Been distracted by alot of bass gigging (been playing bass for 30 years) the last few years but I've pared that back, am taking steel lessons and have finally started to progress a bit on this "devil's contraption".

Seeing Jerry Byrd in the house band on Bobby Lord’s WSM-TV show, Josh Graves on the Flatt+Scruggs syndicated show, hearing Buddy Emmons - with Ernest Tubb and on the WHO KNOWS WHERE THE TIME GOES record by Judy Collins - Sneaky Pete with Burrito Bros and Jackson Browne(plus David Lindley on lap steel!), and Bobby Black with COMMANDER CODY. Those are the major ones, but there are so many more because I listened a lot before even starting to play steel/dobro. And Lloyd Green on….everything!

I guess I was always familiar with the sound of the instrument in the background of music. I grew up cutting my teeth on the heavier shades of rock/metal, self taught on guitar leaning towards the "shred" side of things.
I started dipping my toes into country by way of Hank III and I started becoming aware of steel guitar but it was still very much a background thing.
The first and, due to the ongoing unpleasantness, only time I've seen steel played live was seeing Kristof Hahn's unorthodox textural lap steel playing with experimental rock band Swans when they were touring The Glowing Man album.
It was Lloyd Green's famous intro to The Byrds "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and his playing on "Hickory Wind" that made me aware of PSG. Other influences shortly after this were Sneaky Pete on "Christine's Tune", Jerry Garcia on "Dire Wolf", and Buddy Cage in New Riders of the Purple Sage. Discovering the Bakersfield sound players Tom Brumley, Norm Hamlet, and Ralph Mooney further started the itch towards pedal steel, I think I played "Together Again" on repeat like 10 times when I first heard it. Modern influences include Daniel Lanois' playing on the second half of Brian Eno's Apollo album as well as his solo instrumental records, Eric Heywood's work on the first couple Son Volt albums, and pretty much anything Greg Leisz has ever put to wax.
Somehow by the grace of God I was able to secure the funds to acquire a steel a little over a year ago and its been off to the races since.

Boredom got me started. After covid started and the jams stopped I was running out of new stuff to play.

My dad played PSG so we always had one in the house but I never really learned anything about them until March of this year.

(This'll be good for a laugh, anyway... )

These two songs are from a record that came out in 1953, and the (non-pedal) sound really hooked me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVHBlKr0Rc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk-WtLrZWLw

And then when I heard the pedal sound in this record, I knew that I'd have to try a pedal steel. Interestingly enough, this record featured the very first Sho~Bud guitar ever built:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEaUl9M90wg[u][/u]

.

poco rusty young T.C furlong, don kates,
B.E. CURLY CHALKER . paul franklin. hal rugg
many many more since 1978....

The Country Side of Harmonica Same got me started. I found them during COVID and I knew I had to play steel. Picked it up last October and love it!

For me I was riding in the back seat of our 63 Coupe De Ville when Cal Smith came on the radio, singing, "Hello Mrs. Johnson, you self righteous bitty". I think there were a couple versions of this song, one with John Hughey and one with Pete Drake, and I can't recall which one this was, but it was nothing too wild or hairy, it just grabbed me and gave me the goosebumps, and I told Dad, "Thats what I want to play".

I few months later I had a Fender 400 which I could make NO sense of, and quickly moved to a Maverick and then a Pro lll and then another custom order'd in 77, which I still have. I was hooked. Now several guitars later and a few years under my belt, (which I can't see half the time) and I'm broke.

I saw Don Woodbury playing with Don Head in 1980. It was the first time I saw a pedal steel player live. It fascinated me so much. I had to try one.

Arthritis. Started playing pedal steel cuz all those things with frets hurt to play.

James Hand. He said, "well, you need to play somethin"

Josh Graves and Jerry Byrd

Listening to North Wind, which I don't believe I ever heard before, and watching that record go round and round was like a ghost coming out of the machine. Most of my life my favorites were prog rock and jazz fusion, so most of this is new to me. I was used to hearing steel in contexts more like this. If you take the time, you may laugh at me all you like, I am used to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQSkYUFou54

When I heard my first live pedal steel guitar…a Fender 400 if memory serves Christmas 1974…I sat behind it and played a version of steel guitar rag…I remember saying “I’ve got to have one of these”…🤔😉👍. Unfortunately, I probably still play Steel zGuitar Rag about the same…Ha 😳

Jerry Dragon wrote:If you take the time, you may laugh at me all you like, I am used to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQSkYUFou54

I ain’t laughin’! Traditional steel is great but I use it in many contexts so Floyd is something I appreciate as well.

Two things:

1) Working in the tin shop temporarily (I was a wood shop guy) at Bobby's Custom Campers in Manitou Springs, Colorado, circa 1972, and getting bombarded with early '70s country music from the cowboy who wired up the campers' radio (which was constantly tuned to KPIK, Colorado Springs). This tune had an indelible effect on me (much like Dale R, apparently):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6voAw66Bxko

(Featuring the great John Hughey, of course.)

2) Walking into Suneson Music Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota about five years later, intending to pick up a set of strings for my Ovation Balladeer, and walking out the door with a brand new black plastic-cladded MSA Red Baron, the Winnie Winston book, and signed up for lessons with the great Cal Hand.

Sometime around 1973 I had just started to drift back and forth between listening to rock and country. One day I was working with my stepdad on a construction site and one of the workers had his truck radio turned up and I heard a steel kick off a Conway tune and it just grabbed me and I wondered for several years just what instrument made that sound but it just faded away over time.

I was playing bass in a country band in 1979 and a steel player came in one night and asked to sit in and it hit me that that was what I had heard. A week or so later I bought an MSA sidekick and I've been playing professionally since then.

In the 70’s I listened mainly to country-rock and I especially liked Poco’s sound although I didn’t know nothing about pedal-steel. 1976 I was totally hooked on psg as I bought the album Fools Gold by Fogelbergs backing group. I learnt to get used to finger picks by playing the banjo for a year then I jumped on psg.

My Dad had his own guitar store / teaching studio, and at the end of every teaching night, he would sit down and unwind on his '77 MSA Classic.

In 1984, as I was staring at him playing, he asked, "Hey, do you want to learn to play this thing?" Skaggs was all over the radio, so Bruce Bouton had a great influence on me too. It's been a wonderful path.

Dad gave me his '77, and of course, I have my own '21 MSA Legend XL.


David Spires

I bought the “Suite Steel” album on a whim. Buddy E playing “Wichita Lineman” totally knocked me out. A friend came over and I was playing the record, he knew of a guy on my street selling a Maverick. I bought it and joined a band the same day. Kismet.

Very similar path as yours, Mr. Dragon. Deliverin’ was one of the first albums I ever bought, and I was an instant Rusty Young Poconut. I promised myself back then I would learn how to play pedal steel someday. Reaching age 60, 47 years later, I finally bought one.