Boo: I played your steel parts in the movie

[DJ Sillito]

Hey Boo,
It was me who was casted as the steeler in the saloon scene in the movie. I just happened to catch word that casting was looking for a steel player for a movie and before I knew it I was up in Calgary shooting this scene.
I inquired if I should try to find a steel fairly close to the Era (1960-1970) but they hardly knew what a steel was let alone if it it had an "era". So I figured the basic style of the steel has stayed the same so I took my black Mullen D-10 (which I bought from another forumite Gaylon Mathews). I used my Nashville 400,goodrich pedal, and matchbox. What I used really doesn't matter since I'm sure we were not recorded live. We played to the soundtrack.

The band consisted of 4 others wo were all lawyers from Calgary, Alberta. There was Fiddle,guitar,upright bass, and drummer.

We played live covering the songs only as practice for everyone else. We then pretended to play while a soundtrack was rolling. I hope It was convincing enough. When they were filming, the soundtrack would turn on to start us then everything would go completly silent while we still acted out playing the song. It was hard to tell at times if we were on cue or not.

The fiddler had a heck of a time trying to "mime" his fiddle parts. It ain't easy to make strokes with the bow without touching the strings. I finally offered an idea. I used the black velcro straps I keep to hold my cables together and wrapped them around the strings with the fuzzy side up. It worked great and it muted the strings so he could put his bow right on top of the velro and play away (silently of course).They had to stop several times because they originally tried using plastic wrap ,which only reflected light.

Anyways it was interesting to do and I got to meet Ang Lee.
I have a few other interesting comments about the day but my post is getting a little long. It was a pleasure covering your steel parts Boo I'm sure it would have been better if you could have done it personally.



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Darren James Sillito
Mullen D-10, 8p5k
Nashville 400, PodXT