Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

Today’s newsletter comes from Van Coffey.

For those of you who don’t know me, I started playing steel when I was fourteen years old so I’m going on four decades of steel playing. I’m currently playing steel for George Jones.

I came to Nashville in 1991 with Collin Raye and played with Collin for a number of years. Before that I worked the Nevada and California circuit for many years. I was raised in a family band.

I always played all pull steels until recently. Now I’m playing a push pull and learning it’s a whole different animal. The tuning is so different on it. It’s backwards from an all pull system which carries a bit of a learning curve with it. But there’s nothing like the sound of a push pull so it’s worth the headache to get the tone that comes with the push pull sound.

After playing everything from MSA, Sho-Bud and for many years Sierra guitars, I now play a ’68 Emmons. I played my Sierra on the first couple of shows with George and then the leg lock broke and I had to take my Emmons out on the road while waiting for a replacement part.

The entire band liked the sound of the Emmons so much better than the Sierra they said I had to leave the Sierra home and keep the Emmons on the road. It’s been that way ever since. I’m glad they did because it’s made me more comfortable with the Emmons.

Due to the Emmons, I’ve been reminded of why I got into steel guitar. It was for that great tone. Now I’m happy and everyone else seems to be happy with it too.

I started out a guitar player. I figured out that if you can do something on a guitar, you can also do it on a steel plus a whole lot more. Bottom line, a steel goes way beyond what a guitar can do.

I learned from playing in three piece groups that there’s a whole lot of space you’ve got to fill up. So I learned to play lead guitar, rhythm parts, slide guitar parts with distortion as well as steel parts. If you’re playing guitar in a small group and looking for a way to fill out the sound, steel is much more versatile than just a guitar.

Today’s country doesn’t really have a lot of steel in it, which I hear plenty of places the steel should be put in. I don’t know why and I don’t want to point any fingers, but producers and artists today just don’t seem to have the ear for steel.

Everything country seems to be going more to a rock sound, but steel guitar can be played in rock n roll. Proof of that is Paul Franklin in Dire Straits. Bruce Bouton just played on an English pop album and I heard the cuts and it sounds really good. The subtle little tasty fells he did made the songs come alive.

If you’re a young guitar player in a rock band, let me encourage you to explore what’s possible with a steel. There are really no limits to what we can do with any style of music. Look at Robert Randolph if you need inspiration. Even Jerry Garcia used steel guitar with The Grateful Dead.

I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing the next Rock N Roll steel guitar guru. I’m excited to see where the instrument is going to go in the next twenty years.

The one thing I love the most about the instrument is when I’m sitting at home and I still hear new ways to do different licks even after 39 years of playing. You’ll never get bored because the possibilities are endless.

For instance, my 17 year old son plays rock guitar and one of his favorite bands is a progressive metal band called Dream Theater. One their last album they had a ballad and as a joke to show him that steel guitar would fit with that type of music, I learned the chords and played some fills in the song where there were spaces and naturally he rolled his eyes at me, but had to admit that it would work and that it sounded good.

So don’t think of steel guitar as just a country instrument. Open your mind to all kinds of music and see where steel guitar takes you. Then see where you can take steel guitar.

Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html

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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

Hello fellow players,

This is Vic Lawson with today’s newsletter.

Since we have players at all levels on the list, I’d like to direct the first part of this newsletter to the less advanced players and explain how we communicate key signatures with hand signals when we’re on a stage and the noise level is so high we can’t all hear the key called out, especially if you’re half deaf like most of us from years of playing.

Actually what started me back using the circle of fifths was a bass player. So I had to go back and refresh my memory on it. For example, he would start turning his hand up and just show four fingers to represent the key, which in this case was the key of E. He said I’m going to start using this to tell you what key we’re in because nobody could hear on the loud stage. He was closest to the singer so he could hear the key the singer was in when no one else could hear.

Let me break this down for you. This goes back to the importance of knowing your circle of fourths and fifths. If you ever saw it on a church hymnal on the top where it shows the key signature where it has for example four sharps (#).

Our hand signals consist of a fist for the key of C because there are no sharps or flats. We use fingers up for sharps and fingers down for flats. One finger up is G, two fingers up is D, three fingers up is A, four fingers up is E, five fingers up is B and six fingers up is F#.

For the flat keys, one finger down is F, two fingers down is Bb, three fingers down is Eb, four fingers down is Ab, five fingers down is Db and six fingers down is Gb.

At first I related this to bass guitar because it was not as overwhelming. If you’re on the third string, third fret, C note it’s very easy to get to the fifth note of the key by going to the fourth string, third fret which is the G note which helps you remember that one finger up is the key of G. To get to the fifth of the G, take that pattern and move up two frets and the name of the note will equal the number of sharps in the scale and the numbers of fingers being held up. The fifth fret gives you D and A (two and three fingers up), the seventh fret gives you E and B (four and five fingers up) and finally the ninth fret gives you F# (six fingers down).

To remember the flat keys, start at the fourth string, eighth fret, C note. Move down one string to the F which is one finger down. Repeat the same pattern a whole step down and that covers the circle of fourths. The eights fret gives you C to F (zero and one finger down), the sixth fret gives you Bb and Eb (two and three fingers down), the fourth fret gives you Ab and Db (four and five fingers down) and finally the second fret, fourth string gives you Gb (six fingers down).

If you’re going to relate this to a six string guitar, just think about it in terms of strings five and six. And with steel just think about the same frets except pedals down and up positions.

A lot of you may not see the relevance in this to steel guitar, but any musically knowledge should in some way help your playing sooner or later. Remember, you’re not just a steel player, but a musician as well.

If enough of you are interested in this, we may do a YouTube video. Just reply to the newsletter and let us know. In fact, send us your questions and ideas you’d like to see us address in the newsletter and we’ll try to cover the topics we get the most requests for.

I was doing a session the other day and noticed that when I played harmonics or chimes they were dying out more than usual. I was thinking my technique was off or something. I didn’t know what was going on to be honest with you. I made it through the session and then went to a night time gig and during sound check I was trying to remedy the problem and discovered that some of the lubricant out of a changer had seeped up under the string when it was upside down in the case. I took a cloth and wiped that off and that fixed the problem. I have never had that happen ever. So if you ever have this kind of problem that’s something to check.

Tonight I’m playing a six to ten on Broadway and the bass player is a steel player as well, Eddie Lange. It can be a little uncomfortable knowing a pedal steel player is behind you. Even though we’re friends, I still feel that in some way he’s critiquing or being critical of my playing even though that’s probably not the case. At least I’ll know the bass line will be correct. A lot of steel players are bass players and play bass better than bass only players. A good bass player can lead the band to the next chord. If you’ve got a good ear, you’ll hear where the next chord is going from the bass player and the melody of the song.

I’d only been playing Broadway about a year and was playing at Robert’s on a Tuesday night. We were in between songs and me and the guitar player were checking our tuning. The guitar player leans over to me and says, “It sucks to be you.” At first I thought he was talking about tuning a steel.

So I asked him, “What are you talking about?”

He replied, “Tommy White, John Hughey and their wives just walked in the back door and they’re setting in the balcony.”

Naturally, I was a nervous wreck because here were two of the best players in town listening to my lame playing. I was on pins and needles that I’d make a mistake and telling myself the whole time, don’t mess up.

So the next tune is a ballad and the guitar player teasingly says, “Hey, play something like John Hughey would play!” He was having way too much fun at my expense. I never made eye contact with either one of them and I told the guitar player to let me know when they leave. After forty-five minutes of sweating, he said, “Ok, they’ve gone.”

After thinking about it for awhile I realized we can only play what we can play and everyone is at a different level, so just have fun with it.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html
www.steelguitar.net
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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

Hello fans and fellow players,

This is Vic Lawson with today’s newsletter.

I’d like to talk about the reality of playing in Nashville. You’ve got to live here and experience it to be able to separate the fact from the fiction. Just like watching someone eat a steak dinner is a different experience from actually eating a steak dinner, if you’ve never done it, you don’t really know what it tastes like.

I moved to Nashville in 2001. I’ve been playing steel since 1975. After trying my hand in Branson in the early eighties and playing with Texas bands in the nineties, I moved to Nashville from Oklahoma in 2001. I was a contractor and came home from work one day and told my wife I’d quit. She asked me, “What are we going to do?”

I told her I’d like to move to Nashville and spend the last half of my life doing something I enjoy. Luckily she was very supportive.

Fortunately through the years prior to my move I knew a lot of session players and that was about all I knew, I didn’t know any road players at the time. Through the help of one of my friends I had a road job within three months with an artist named Brad Martin on Curb Records.

At the time I thought it was pretty easy, then reality set in and I found out you can’t really make a total living by just playing the road unless you’re extremely lucky, but George Strait’s steel player is not likely to give up his job.

So I was introduced to Broadway. Like a lot of newcomers or somebody not familiar with Broadway, I had my doubts and reservations. For those not familiar with Nashville, Broadway is the major thoroughfare through downtown Nashville, specially referring to the first five blocks on the east side. This is where all the honky tonks are along with the Ryman.

I started playing four hour shifts doing live music from 2:00 PM until 2:00 AM and soon found that there were great players and not so great players. You have these ideas Nashville is full of great players and that’s all there is. Like anyplace else, there’s a mixture.

At that time, I discovered a lot of road musicians do play on Lower Broad to supplement their income. I may get a call at 5:00 in the evening to play a six o’clock job. It’s very fast paced when you’re just filling in and you have to be well versed.

Regardless of what the myths are about Broadway, in reality it’s about the only place to play regularly. John Hughey once told me he loved playing down there and he’d never quit. He enjoyed seeing new players and young players and the enthusiasm they brought. He in no way saw it as beneath him to play down there.

If you come to Nashville and go down to lower Broadway you may see Doug Jernigan playing there. Bruce Bouton subbed for me the other day. You never know who you’ll see. Granted the money isn’t great, but the experience is worth more than the money you get on the gig.

As a new player you have to go down there and network so the established players get to know you because road jobs are usually filled by referrals or recommendations and never get advertised otherwise.

Most of the players down there have already made it. We’re down there because we’re musicians and we want to play. It was kind of humorous when an lady tourist was leaving and putting money in the tip jar and told us, “Good luck. You guys sound really good. If you just hang in there, you’ll make it.”

She didn’t realize if she listened to country radio at all, she’d already heard the guitar player, James Mitchell who is an “A” Team session player, playing guitar on Jamie Johnson’s song “In Color” and Easton Corbin’s song “A Little More Country Than That”. The drummer was Cotton Payne who plays drums for Bill Anderson on the Opry.

All I did was smile and say, “Thank you, ma’am.”

This is not typical, but this is how hectic it can be. One night I had a gig at Legend’s from 6 – 10 PM. I also had a 10 PM – 2 AM slot down the street and to top it off, I had two Opry slots with Joe Diffie.

I had taken one of my Emmons guitars to the Ryman, left it in the dressing room, then went and played my job at Legend’s until Opry time, then took a 20 minute break and ran down the back alley to the Ryman, quickly played my two song with Diffie, then ran back down the alley to Legend’s and finished my gig.

I finished at 10:15, packed my gear and rushed down the street to the next job. Then I had to take another break, run back to the Ryman, play my next two songs with Diffie, pack up my gear and take it back to the truck, then hurry to finish my gig. That was a crazy night, but we live for nights like that.

This is exactly why every steel player should have two complete rigs.

Granted I’m not at all among the greatest of players, but I’m still professional and I’ve learned to play for the song and I stay fairly busy by doing that and playing lower Broad is definitely a part of making a living as a musician in Nashville.

Also if you just enjoy playing and want to play with other pros as well, lower Broad is the only place to do it around here. Obviously as with any profession, the more you do it the better you get. So on your next visit to Nashville, don’t forget to visit lower Broad. That’s where you’re going to find the most music in one place. I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html

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