an adventure into Self-loathing.

Stuart Legg · Post by **Stuart Legg** » 29 Mar 2023 12:33 pm

Steel Players
About Steel Guitarists and their Music
The Steel Guitar Forum to a great number of steel players is an adventure into Self-loathing.
The urge to participate in a topic only to once again interject yourself into situations and times in which you are made to feel somehow inadequate, or desperately needing to prove otherwise.
I think from a self-loathing musician you could learn a lot about how to avoid getting your musical butt kicked in gig situations. Give me a person who can fake it till they can make it. They are reasonably priced, a lot of them and available.

Dave Grafe · Post by **Dave Grafe** » 29 Mar 2023 12:46 pm

Having played many instruments in my life I can say with authority that very few instruments are more prone to turn a marvelous ride into a complete collapse when in the presence of other steel guitarists. I'm getting better all the time but I'll never live long enough to be as good as I think I ought to be by now.

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 30 Mar 2023 2:53 pm

Dave Grafe wrote: I'm getting better all the time but I'll never live long enough to be as good as I think I ought to be by now.

Dave, it's not just you. That is perhaps the most spot-on description of my pedal steel self-critique I have ever heard!

David Ball · Post by **David Ball** » 30 Mar 2023 3:05 pm

I've always played a lot of different instruments, some I've played well and others not so well. But I've not tended to be self conscious playing any of them except for pedal steel. If there's someone in the room who I know to be a steeler, I fall to pieces...Guess there's gotta be some place where that happens.

Dave

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 31 Mar 2023 6:41 pm

From the Winnie Winston book, discussing pedal steel players:

"...They think their own mistakes are heard by everyone in the crowd, which they imagine as full of other steel players who are anything but impressed with their playing."

chuck lemasters · Post by **chuck lemasters** » 1 Apr 2023 6:55 am

Dave Grafe…..yes!

Dave Magram · Post by **Dave Magram** » 1 Apr 2023 7:27 pm

Stuart Legg wrote:Steel Players
About Steel Guitarists and their Music
The Steel Guitar Forum to a great number of steel players is an adventure into Self-loathing.
The urge to participate in a topic only to once again interject yourself into situations and times in which you are made to feel somehow inadequate, or desperately needing to prove otherwise.
I think from a self-loathing musician you could learn a lot about how to avoid getting your musical butt kicked in gig situations. Give me a person who can fake it till they can make it. They are reasonably priced, a lot of them and available.

Stuart,

What an odd bit of fanciful mind-reading.
I realize you are probably just web-baiting with your post about "self-loathing".

If you were really interested in the their motivation to play pedal steel, why don't you run a poll, asking why folks on the SGF play pedal steel?
Seriously.
I'm curious as to what they would say.

I very much doubt that any will say that they play pedal steel because they hate themselves.

On the other hand, I expect many would say they play because they love the sound of the instrument, and they enjoy meeting personal challenges on one of the most difficult instruments there is to play well, living for the day when someone says, "Hey, you know you played a couple of notes in that solo that reminded me just a tiny bit of Buddy Emmons."

I expect some would say because the pedal steel is only about 70 years old, and already players like Emmons, Jernigan, Franklin, Greg Leisz, Sneaky Pete, etc. have taken the instrument to genres far outside of country music.

Stuart, I gather from some of (your dad) Bo Legg's posts that you have studied and transcribed several steel guitar solos, even though you are unable to play pedal steel yourself due to an accident some years ago.

Why don't you share some of what you have done to advance the learning of this Rube Goldberg contraption that sounds like angels singing--in the right hands?

Sincerely,

- Dave

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 2 Apr 2023 5:56 am

Well said, Dave!

I'll admit to some feelings of inadequacy at times. I'm not as far along as I sometimes feels I should be at 80 (after fifty years playing steel).

When I bought my first steel I was already a working pro on guitar so it was very much a 'second instrument that might come in handy for studio jobs'. I very soon found out how hard it was going to be.

But self-loathing?? By no means! Now I'm involuntarily retired on medical grounds, the steel guitar has become my abiding passion. My new 12-string shouldn't be too long now and I'm still mulling over some changes. It almost fills my day! No, I stumble at times but sometimes I find something new (yesterday it was the combination of lowering the 9th and adding-and-releasing the C pedal: strings 9-4) and I delight in the journey.

Nobody does - nor should they - regard me as a steel player of any stature but I know I have good ears. I know when it's sounding good - by any standard. Then, it's as much fun as it's possible to have at this point in my life.

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 3 Apr 2023 2:40 pm

Too bad Hunter S. Thompson isn't still around...

Darrell Criswell · Post by **Darrell Criswell** » 5 Apr 2023 6:23 am

It is funny to me how steel players talk about how bad their playing is when the one steel intro that most non musicians tell me they love is Toy Caldwell's intro to Searching for a rainbow, which steel players think is horrendous.

an adventure into Self-loathing.

an adventure into Self-loathing.

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