Hello fans and fellow players,
I’m pretty shocked at the amount of comments I received concerning the great Red Rhodes, left coast steel guitarist. I didn’t realize he had so many dear friends. He was obviously a wonderful talent that everybody loved. I only wish our coasts were closer together so I could see more of the great talents and things that steel players are doing there.
I’ve threatened to move to Vegas a few times until I heard that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I sure didn’t want that happening to my playing. However, I will have to say that I spent many weeks there in the early seventies and really had a good time and made a few dollars.
I had to buy a car just to get around because everything at that time was pretty sprawled out. I remember driving that Cadillac back to Nashville and selling it for a small fortune, but unfortunately I had paid a big fortune for it.
The west coast sure isn’t a very good place to buy a steel guitar. But I feel sure there must be some deals somewhere. We’re finding several of the guitars we have all loved for years are drying up and are not as readily available as they once were. Rather than raise prices on some of these, we have just spent much more time looking for the great classics.
But like the lead guitar players, we are losing some of our great playing guitars to guys that just collect. Good things that are happening are the quality of the top brand guitars seems to have gotten better and better.
The Mullen guitars have gotten pretty astounding. They play extremely easy. After tearing owe down for inspection last week, we found that it had absolutely no wear in the changer mechanism. We will be stocking these great guitars as often as we can get them. This goes for any other high quality guitar that is available today.
It looks like the loss that we have had by losing Charlie Stepp will be felt more painfully than I ever thought possible. We’ve had several good used guitars in the store recently and are realizing that with very little modification, they are about as fine a steel guitar as money can buy.
The Fessenden guitar is nothing for a superior player to overlook as it’s tone quality is extremely good. As we always have, we will continue to stock the best guitars being built today for players worldwide.
I’m sure many of you are playing an extra job or playing because of New Year’s Eve. Some of the craziest jobs in my life were on New Year’s Eve. Often it seems like the outlying areas away from Nashville pay much better than they do in the big city.
I remember bandleaders renting a hall or a place like the skating rink in their little town and hiring musicians to work for the door. We’d always end up making $300-500 for the evening. It seemed like a good way to do it. The patrons would bring their own bottles and have all the fun they could swallow.
When in Nashville, if you’re already working for a club, they pay nothing extra over the regular salary which you’d be getting anyway. I also remember the road paying the same. The booking agencies would book the stars, the stars would pay us their standard fee and we’d end up with only memories of the good old days when the whole band played for the door and we could split it.
In this day and time, the Musician’s Union won’t even let us play for the door. If you don’t have a contract on the job, you’re not allowed to play it. If you play for the door, they don’t know what commission to charge you for doing it.
Anyway, Happy New Year and no matter where you’re playing, I wish you the best.
Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.
The friend of all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!
Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday
