Hello fellow players,
North Tennessee Steel Guitar Club news. During Nashville areas steel guitar get together Tuesday night, I finally got there for the first time in several months. I was very happy to see Stu Basore, Ron Elliott and his wife Leslie of Sho-Bud fame. Russ Hicks and many of the great players of the era and the area were in attendance. I sure missed John Hughey, Hal Rugg, Jimmy Crawford and so many of the past greats that have been in attendance for so many years.
I missed the great Christmas show and even missed the last show they put on before Christmas. I’m feeling a little better now and am hoping to catch up with meeting old friends. You’d think these guys would be playing less and less as the years go on. However this does not seem to be happening. Once you’ve learned a lot of steel guitar it seems to be very hard to forget. Just remember it’s not your hands that do the playing, it truly is your mind.
The playing is in your mind and your hands once trained and that link is established between your hands and your mind, there is no stopping your hands unless the link is broken. The link can be broken only physically. I have learned this the hard way. This applies to other things and not just steel guitar. Once you learn to be a great painter, you will remain so and your hands make very little difference as they have been trained to obey your mind.
How many times have you heard that you should learn your scales? Master your scales by playing them over and over. More and more this seems to be apparently true. It’s the mind that makes those wiggly things on the end of your arm work. Playing two note scales, or harmony scales does as much for you as anything you can possibly sit down and play. And now as we all know, you can subconsciously make your fingers play and work the way you do typing on a typewriter. Things just happen if you do them over and over all day.
When you sit down to play and you ask yourself, “Oh no. What am I going to play?” Answer yourself by playing two note scales. The better you can play scales, the better you can play everything else. This is the foundation of intuitively playing great licks. Playing a two note scale is about as easy as playing a one note scale because you are playing the root note and adding the harmony note to it.
One of the nicest guys I ever worked for was the great Billy Walker. I remember traveling with Billy on the road and was very comfortable traveling in his Oldsmobile Toronado ten door airport limo. This car was about double the length of a regular car and had five doors on each side. This car was pretty peppy with a lot of room inside.
Naturally we had no trouble getting in or out and no matter where we sat in the limo, we could get directly out and of course we all bunched in one end or the other because we had room to do so and liked to stay together to hear everybody’s jokes.
I liked to drive pretty fast myself. I wasn’t really a hot-rodder but I was pretty bad about spinning the front wheels when I would take off on loose gravel. This didn’t make Billy very happy but we all loved it.
Billy was driving one evening and we were around Bryan, Texas. Being front wheel drive, it threw some dust that got in my window and rocks that hit the side of the car. The tire blew out after about half a mile. We all started kidding Billy about being a hot-rodder as we put the spare on. After a little while down the road, the spare started going flat.
Everybody said let Seymour drive, he never has a flat. Billy said, “Oh no. We have too far to go to have him tear it up.”
But I insisted on driving and Billy finally said ok. I got behind the wheel and Billy got in my position about half way back in the passenger compartment. I put it in low and put the gas pedal to the floor. The front wheels started spinning profusely and throwing rocks all up the side of the car. Billy screamed, “No! You’re gonna tear it up and we’re gonna have another flat tire.”
We all chimed in and said, no that’s good for it. I remember saying, “It’ll keep the rubber exercised. It’ll never go flat as long as you do that.” We then stopped and had the tires repaired.
We finally got to Boca Raton and I asked Billy if he wanted to drive for a little while. I told him I was very tired as I had just driven several hundred miles. At the next rest stop I got out from behind the wheel. Billy slid in behind the steering wheel. I got in right behind him. As Billy took off very easily, I jokingly said to him, “These tires are going to fall off the car if you don’t treat them a little rougher.”
He laughed and told me that I was crazy and to shut up and go to sleep. About that time I heard a huge bam and the tire blew totally out and started flopping all around the fender. I heard Billy yell a big expletive. I said, “See, you shouldn’t drive so easy.” I told him I was tired and I’m not changing this one. Figure out how to change it yourself.
With a hidden snicker, I went to bed in one of the middle seats. Billy and the bass player ended up changing the spare. Billy never was an aggressive driver and the reason we didn’t want him to drive was because he wasn’t fast enough.
We still have the best deal on Nashville 112 amplifiers of anybody in the world. These amplifiers seem to have more than proven themselves to be the best steel guitar amplifier that money can buy. This raised my curiosity as to how they were with lead guitar. Upon checking with Nashville’s very best and famous guitar players, these amps are still at the top of the pile with guitar players also. We still have them at the old before Christmas sale price. Get one while they’re at the lowest price ever.
Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html We can save you a lot of money.
Your buddy,
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
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Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday
