The Steel Guitar Forum

This wikipedia page says that David Lindley is a pedal steel guitarist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... guitarists

Although he is a delightful lap steel player, I've never heard of David playing pedal steel -- can anybody shed light?

Circa 1974 I saw Jackson Brown (with Linda Ronstadt opening) while David Lindley was still in the band. I have a very vague memory of a pedal steel on stage, but it was after all the Seventies, so maybe.

Or maybe not.

Lately I've been listening to the first America album where he features on a few tracks. His use of volume pedal on Rainy Day sure evokes PSG but it is all single note lines with no obvious pedals.

Funny, I've seen him playing a lap steel, but I've never seen or heard of him being associated with a pedal steel

On the credits of this Tom Jans album there's a Lindley mention of playing "slide"and no pedal steeler is mentioned, maybe forgotten or maybe it was indeed Lindley. As so often as it was the case on singer/songwriter albums back then, it starts with a steel prominently but than it tapers off at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGJeb3QyDC8

A motel room jam picture from the Running on Empty LP booklet:

Dave Hopping wrote:Circa 1974 I saw Jackson Brown (with Linda Ronstadt opening) while David Lindley was still in the band. I have a very vague memory of a pedal steel on stage, but it was after all the Seventies, so maybe.

Or maybe not.

I'm pretty certain that Lindley played lap steel with Jackson. The steel you saw on the stage was most likely either for Ed Black or Dan Dugmore, who were in Linda's road band.

I remember when that tour hit Austin and the Armadillo WHQ. I hung with my old homies Eddie B. and Kenny Edwards that night. Never got around to meeting Dugmore, I would have liked to.

That's definitely an MSA S12 in the pic from the album liner, doesn't mean he used the pedals, or that it was even his guitar.

Here's another pic from the same day/time, slightly different than the pic above. The caption says they were "probably recording 'Shaky Town' in room #124 at the Holiday Inn, Edwardsville, IL" but who knows. The steel on Shaky Town on the record sounds like classic David Lindley, no pedals.

Herb Steiner wrote:

Dave Hopping wrote:Circa 1974 I saw Jackson Brown (with Linda Ronstadt opening) while David Lindley was still in the band. I have a very vague memory of a pedal steel on stage, but it was after all the Seventies, so maybe.

Or maybe not.

I'm pretty certain that Lindley played lap steel with Jackson. The steel you saw on the stage was most likely either for Ed Black or Dan Dugmore, who were in Linda's road band.

I remember when that tour hit Austin and the Armadillo WHQ. I hung with my old homies Eddie B. and Kenny Edwards that night. Never got around to meeting Dugmore, I would have liked to.

Herb-
I was mistaken. What I saw was David Lindley playing(some of the time) a yellowed-out blackguard Telecaster that has the same colors as my ancient natural-with-black-endplates Mullen S-10. Deja vu in reverse, maybe? Linda didn't have a steel player that night. Bob Warford and Richard Bowden on guitar."Willin'" came out as nice as you please and Richard very gamely took a shot at Eddie Black's "Silver Threads" solo.

I have worked several shows with him and talked some steel guitar, neither he nor his bandmates ever said anything that indicated he played with pedals other than offstage. He had a specific sound and style in mind and pedals were not a necessary part of that.

I remember an article in some music magazine in the late seventies in which David said one instrument he love to try to play was pedal steel but it was such a convoluted difficult instrument he didn’t know if he’d ever bother.

I had a short conversation with him after a show a few years ago at the Claremont Folk Music Center and when I mentioned I had a U12 he told me his first "steel" was an MSA 12

The guitar in the above pictures looks like a MSA S12. Has bars for key head and that little Off Set behind the neck are 2 standards of old MSA Single neck guitars.

Here's the track associated with S12 in the photo, it sure sounds like he's using some of the pedals at least some of the time. Still he does all of that without them regularly.

https://youtu.be/VrvrCVl4wI0

I was on a horse...once. But it don't mean I'm a cowboy.

I got a chance to hang and talk with David after a show about 15 years ago. We talked steel, of course, and I mentioned that I was working on pedal steel. He said that he started down that road some years earlier and - paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact words - he more or less said that he felt he was going too deep down the rabbit hole of pedals and bailed out. I told him I could relate to that feeling - when I started playing pedals, nobody saw me for a couple of months, except I did my gigs.

Personally, I think David is one of the guys out there that really doesn't need no stinkin' pedals. I love 'em, but I can understand why someone with his level of expression without them wouldn't want to go down that road.

Shaky Town sounds like classic Lindley lap steel to me. Not that it couldn't be pedal steel, but it's the tonal quality that makes me think of his Rick. But on the other hand, this little section on The Load Out/Stay sounds a bit like pedals into something like a Dumble - https://youtu.be/rukvfk9a6rY?t=252 - but I have no doubt he could do this without pedals, so who knows.