David,
Thanks for the link. Here's the text of the article for anyone who doesn't want to register with the AJC: (side note - not sure I like someone referring to my husband as a giant scoop of bubble-gum ice cream!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><HR><SMALL>Country gentleman's steel guitar hits all notes
By NICK MARINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/09/04
The loose network of bands, producers, record label brass, talent buyers, publicity mavens and other assorted scene-makers who constitute the Atlanta music community enjoy passing the time by sharing, in hipster whispers, the news about who's hot.
Lately, the name on their lips has been Tommy Dodd.
BILLY SMITH II/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Pedal steel guitarist Tommy Dodd has been heating up the scene at 10 High.
Dodd is 55 years old with white hair, a pink face and an ample midsection. He has played the pedal-steel guitar for 42 years, having learned the instrument as a boy in Alaska, and he has recently begun a regular gig Tuesday nights at the Virginia-Highland basement nightclub 10 High, a kind of home base for the industry crowd.
It is there that Dodd, along with a crack band of local ringers, leads the audience through an event called KaraOkeeDokee, a country karaoke night. The evening is a spinoff of 10 High's successful Metal-Some Mondays, which allow all comers to sing hard-rock songs in front of a live band. For KaraOkeeDokee, Dodd's band, the Best Westerns, plays traditional country by the genre's one-named heavyweights — Hank, Merle, Patsy, Loretta, Garth — and the patrons howl along.
"You know what's surprising about that," Dodd said one recent Tuesday afternoon, "is those kids — and I call them kids 'cause I'm the senior citizen down there — those guys and girls come down there and sing songs that are older than they are."
Another surprising thing is Dodd's pedigree, which is what has the clubgoers in a minor tizzy. Dodd is almost certainly the only musician in town who has played a Super Bowl (the 1994 halftime show at the Georgia Dome, with Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Tanya Tucker and the Judds), a watermelon festival (in the late 1970s, opening for Jerry Lee Lewis) and a 1973 Dove Awards ceremony featuring JD Sumner and the Stamps Quartet, with backup vocals by Elvis Presley.
"Look at the goose bumps," he said, holding out his arm. "They're still on me."
Dodd's arm, just then, was protruding from a fluorescent pink T-shirt, which made him look like a giant scoop of bubble-gum ice cream. He was standing in the basement of his 4,800-square-foot residence in Kennesaw, just down the hall from his home studio, where he recorded his most recent album, "In the Steel of the Night." (Dodd is a big believer in puns. At one point he presented a guest with a coffee mug depicting a pedal-steel and the words "Steelin Time.")
Dodd sat down at his instrument and began a brief tutorial. The pedal-steel guitar is, he said, "basically a mechanical nightmare." You almost need to have an engineering degree to play one, which is fortunate for Dodd, because he does.
His particular guitar has two necks with 10 strings each, which he plays with both hands; eight pedals at the bottom, which he plays with his feet; and eight levers residing in the instrument's undercarriage, which he plays with his knees.
Dodd and his wife — well, it was really his wife, he admitted when pressed — came up with a bumper sticker that says, "Pedal-steel players: the only people who can play with both hands, both feet, both knees and chew gum at the same time."
The pedal-steel is known for having a weepy sound, though Dodd tries to get more colors and tones from his instrument than the typical steel player. When he's not playing his Tuesday night gig, he likes to play the blues at Darwin's in Marietta.
He also occasionally sits in with the zydeco/funk band Zydefunk, and he has a band called Timeless Highway that can play pretty much anything. (In October, Timeless Highway will open for country veteran Ray Price at the Georgia Mountain Fair in Hiawassee.)
Dodd also does some work as a commercial real estate sales agent, though he says he doesn't work as hard at it as he could.
By this time, Dodd decided that he needed to head down to the club, so he hopped in his brown van and made the long drive into town. Upon arrival he and the rest of his band tried to learn three new songs — George Strait's "One Night at a Time," Sammy Kershaw's "She Don't Know She's Beautiful" and Travis Tritt's "Country Club" — well enough to add them to the 80-some already in their repertoire.
The patrons began to file in around 9 o'clock, and soon commenced the karaoke. After a woman in a tank top delivered a particularly memorable version of Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" while holding a glass of red wine, a bearded man calling himself Gordo the Bull took the stage.
He writes songs and plays a little pedal-steel himself, it turns out, and is a major fan of Dodd's. On this night, he sang an impassioned version of the erotic Charlie Rich song "Behind Closed Doors."
During the 10:30 p.m. set break, Dodd, a teetotaler, was nursing his sweet tea by the bar when Gordo the Bull approached.
"I Googled you," he said. "I found a picture of you with Buddy Emmons," the legendary pedal-steel player.
Dodd confirmed that Emmons was indeed a friend.
"He's awesome," Gordo said with volcanic enthusiasm. "But you're awesome."</SMALL><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
