The Steel Guitar Forum

Nice to see the steel guitar positioned scant feet away from the star and also nice to hear the steel in the context of her new music.

Kudos to Kacey - and Brett Resnick on steel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0z7GH78oGo - clip from the show. Keeping steel current.

the steel is more visible on this song, doesn't look like Brett to me though
https://youtu.be/4yxYvEYemBI

I saw this and saw that they had the steel in a prominent place on stage behind Kacey with a spotlight on it (but not the steel player).

Looks like her guitar was also in a prominent place. I don't get this latest clothes optional trend much as I enjoy the fairer sex. 😮👀

The fig leaf is sooo 6000 BC, with the modern, stylish acoustic guitar covering Eve's naughty bits...

It’s all about camera angles and marketing.

It’s not me. Kacey Got rid of the Nashville band, and hired LA players. Don’t know the new guys name off the top of my head.

Welcome to the music Bidnizz! Truthfully this new steel guitarist did a fine job but I hate to see honorable loyal people cast aside for whatever reasons. The good news for Brett is all his time in that seat is being rewarded with multiple gigs by several well known artists so your hard work has been noticed and is paying off…Kudos!

I contrast this SNL performance with her breakout one on Letterman. She had just released Pageant Material.
I was woke from a sound sleep by the wonderfully harmonized intro to her tune High Time. I have a flat screen TV mounted on my bedroom wall (for better or worse). I was blown away and so was my subconscious apparently.
Yeh, she's become kinda glamour and glitz and I am also disappointed she ditched her original band/boyfriend producer. I guess this is the biz.
Nonetheless her lyrics are always captivating and her voice wonderful and her beauty, wow! I liked the cut-off flannel shirt and jean shorts look, (2nd appearance) an ode to a colder climate Daisy Duke.
To comment on modern mixes, It seems we now locate the lead instruments way back via judicious reverb and delay and the "important" stuff, like the vocal is much drier. This always seems a little unnatural to me. I think of the live gigs whereby all instrumentation and vocals are sonically affected in the same manner by the size of the room and reflections. On occasion, dependent on the room, this can be sonically perfect to my ears.
Nonetheless the steel was very tasteful and his choice of effects is current.

Sorry to hear Brett. She seems to be rough on her band members and steel players. By my count you were her 3rd steel player, Adam Ollendorff being the fist that knew of. Maybe it's for the better, seems like there is a definite karma problem there. She seems to be on the same path as Shania Twain with her lack of respect for the musicians who helped make her.

interesting turn of events as her new album is deemed ineligible for a country grammy
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... ineligible

scott murray wrote:interesting turn of events as her new album is deemed ineligible for a country grammy
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... ineligible

"Country, my a$$!"

When it isn't even considered "new country", that says something about the direction she's headed.

The Pedal Steel Player is multi-instrumentalist Drew Taubenfeld:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6iTXNNl ... r7KODndISg

He's also played with Dwight Yoakam very recently.

Don R Brown wrote:

scott murray wrote:interesting turn of events as her new album is deemed ineligible for a country grammy
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... ineligible

"Country, my a$$!"

When it isn't even considered "new country", that says something about the direction she's headed.

Respectfully, must she always make country music?

Anthony Campbell wrote:

Don R Brown wrote:

scott murray wrote:interesting turn of events as her new album is deemed ineligible for a country grammy
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... ineligible

"Country, my a$$!"

When it isn't even considered "new country", that says something about the direction she's headed.

Respectfully, must she always make country music?

it's all very laughable to me. feels like some kind of petty revenge

you've got guys like Bon Jovi and Hootie calling themselves country nowadays and they don't have a problem with that but Kacey is an established country star who goes in a new direction and she's suddenly ineligible? what a joke

I like what she's doing, but it doesn't sound like country music to me. Of course, I'd say that about a lot of what is classified as "country music" in recent years. I totally agree that she should feel free to make any type of music she wants to, and has obviously had great success doing just that. But others will perceive what an artist creates in the ways that make sense to them. It's sorta weird - back when, executives cheered when country artists crossed over out of the strict genre-labeling.

This is what Universal Nashville (Cindy Mabe, President) is arguing qualifies the album for inclusion (italics mine):

Universal Music Group Nashville has launched every major label album Kacey Musgraves has put out. Kacey has always forged her own path. She has stayed true to herself and has never taken a different stance on how she framed this album from the last ones. Sonically, it’s got more country instrumentation than Golden Hour which won Country Album of the Year in 2019. To compare Golden Hour to star-crossed, both albums were produced by Ian Fitchuk, Daniel Tashian and Kacey Musgraves. Both albums were mixed by Shawn Everett. On Golden Hour, Ian, Daniel and Kacey wrote 7 of the 13 songs and on star-crossed they wrote 11 of the 15. Both albums complete each other with Golden Hour telling the story of falling in love and star-crossed telling the conclusion of the breakup. There is no departure in sound from these two projects. This album was consistently classified as country throughout it’s metadata and overall labeling across the DSP accounts and partners. star-crossed appeared on every major country playlist of every DSP. It’s being played on SXM The Highway, CMT and was covered by every country media outlet at release. This decision from the country committee to not accept star-crossed into the country albums category is very inconsistent and calls into question the other agendas that were part of this decision.

It sounds to me like, "We executives and marketeers decide what is country music." As if the instrumentation, the way it's marketed, metadata and labeling, what outlets play it, and so on, defines what kind of music it is. And as if there is any such thing as "country instrumentation" - e.g., "pedal steel is a country instrument.", I say snickering to myself. But the Grammys committee's avowed purpose is more on music than marketing. So I'm not particularly surprised that, at some point, someone said, "Hey, this doesn't sound like country music to us."

... you've got guys like Bon Jovi and Hootie calling themselves country nowadays

Not saying that's consistent, for sure. And this goes way back. I mean, Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" is a great pop tune, but back then it won the '78 Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Just because it was Crystal Gayle. Made by someone from Detroit, New York, or LA, it would have been just called popular music.

Personally, I think it's moving forward for country artists to really move out of the strict marketeer-oriented genre labeling. But unfortunately, a lot of the music biz these days is about cultural labeling and targeted marketing, not music.