Pedal Steel Music

Hello fans and fellow players,

I had a lot of response back on my tips concerning the pack-a-seat. Some people were saying as simple as they are I can just make my own. If you can, that’s wonderful. But why bother? It will cost you more to make one than it will to buy one and what will you have to brag about afterwards?

The units don’t contribute to tone unless you have the greatest idea in the world to make one totally different and since there are over a hundred parts in each pack-a-seat, why go through the trouble to reinvent the wheel? If you think you’re going to save money, unless you can get all the parts for free, you can’t. If your labor means anything to you, you’ll save even less.

There are a lot of different styles of pack-a-seat and an lot of different ways to go. My favorite is the simplest one that money can buy. Simplicity translates to lightness and as you know lightness is good when it comes to steel guitar. I often wonder why people will spend $2000 – $4000 on a steel guitar, then drag out a raggy looking home-made, wobbly pack-a-seat that looks like poop.

Remember, your pack-a-seat and volume pedal are extremely important parts of your total playing outfit. Modern day pack-a-seats have a tendency to last many years and are very easy to repair if some kind of accident should befall it.

Now when it comes to your steel guitar, does it wiggle back and forth, right or left? If so, make sure the end casting is very tight. It’s amazing as just tightening these up can eliminate 95% of most cabinet drop. For those of you who don’t know what cabinet drop is, it is the bending of the body of the guitar when you step on the pedals to change chords.

This used to be an important thing to everybody, but most people today just ignore it and go on, but anything around six or seven cents of drop in your tuner is really too much because all the strings do not drop evenly. Naturally some guitars are worse than others.

These funny things that can go on with steel guitars are also things that go on with other instruments. It makes me remember antics the founder and designer of Sho-Bud guitars, Shot Jackson and the things he did to us players at the Opry. Things like hooking our amplifier up to back curtain of the Opry stage so when it up at the beginning of an artist’s show, your amplifier would go up with it.

He would also hook your guitar up to the side curtain that goes across the stage, so about the time you hit the theme song, you’d have to jump up and chase your guitar across the stage. He also loved to take new fretboards, put them on your guitar but not in the right place. Putting them on about half a fret off was always enough to end your playing in tune. This was a wonderful guy that would do about anything to you, but most of all he’d also do a lot of good things for you.

Being the father of the great Sho-Bud Company and of two of the greatest sons and the head of the great Jackson family, he had the respect of everyone in Nashville and naturally worldwide. He died in the early nineties of overwork. Every time I hear his name and think of him, I get a big smile on my face.

He is one of the big reasons that I love old Sho-Bud guitars, even though it was his sons Harry and David that built most of these great guitars. Harry and David are now building the Jackson steel guitar.

For those who wanted to know how to tune in to Mike Gross’ show, he is a deejay on KSEY-FM and you can replay his programs via podcasts at www.swinginwest.com Please send him a note and let him know that Bobbe Seymour appreciates him too.

I think many of you will be familiar with the name Brian Franklin. He is the astounding guitar player who works for Kenny Rogers. I’ve known Brian for many years here in Nashville and have admired him for his inborn talent and wonderful personality.

I know many of you in the world wonder what kind of people some of these players are in Nashville. Well let me tell you, most of them are as nice as people can get and Brian Franklin is even nicer than that. His father builds the Franklin Steel Guitar and his brother is a very popular studio musician in Nashville.

If you ever get a chance to see Kenny Rogers and wonder who the little young kid is playing guitar, it’s Brian. Try to go backstage and talk to him. A more helpful, nicer person you’ll never find. A lead guitar playing rascal. Tell him I sent you.

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

Hello fellow players,

To all my wonderful readers, I thank you for all the comments I have gotten recently on my steel guitar subjects. It’s pretty hard coming up with new and fresh ideas to write about, but with your ideas that I get from emails back to me of things you want to hear and know about, you are helping to make my job easier.

I have a few things this week I want to mention. One of the things is the history of the pack-a-seat which is very unique to steel guitar. However, there are even some members of the Nashville Symphony that don’t even play steel guitar that have pack-a-seats. For instance, the harpist in this organization plays on a pack-a-seat.

I remember back when the early seventies after meeting Duane Marrs, him telling me he was going to invent a custom fold-up seat just to use to play steel guitar with. I told him the only way I’d be interested in even seeing one would be if he would build in some space to carry volume pedals, picks, strings, cords etc.

I said, “We have enough things to carry around anyway so I don’t know how feasible it would be to have to carry our own chair.”

Then one day Smiley Roberts shows up with a new chair that he and Duane built to my specs called a pack-a-seat. I congratulated them but still hung on to my belief that I was already carrying enough stuff and didn’t need any more to carry around.

About five years later, a girlfriend bought me one as a Christmas present. I took it to my job at the Opry, then took it to the club I was working and on the way back home that evening, I was totally sold on the idea.

Soon after, I opened my steel guitar store. I just could not keep enough of them in stock. The perfect height, strong and not wiggly and it held two volume pedals and all my accessories. It made my regular steel guitar case enough lighter that it was worth making an extra trip to the car every night after the job.

I congratulated Duane on the fine job he was doing building these things and when I found out I was about the last guy in Nashville to get one, I kind of felt stupid for not getting one in the beginning. Definitely it helped my playing because every time I sat down to play, I was in the same wonderful position to the steel guitar and felt the same amount of comfort every time I worked.

Over the years I have sold hundreds and hundreds of these units. In the beginning the price was $25 to $50 for just a plain one with no back, but that was when I could buy a brand new Sho-Bud double neck for $750 too.

Now days the pack-a-seat is just as important a piece of equipment to the steel player as his amps or guitar are. I have sold many of them to players only to have them come back a week later and buy another one. It seems as though the wives liked to kidnap them and use them as seats for their sewing machines, keeping thread, bobbins and needles in the little compartment. It’s quite the deal for the serious seamstress.

Now days things have gotten modern to the point of optional features such as extra wide compartments, extra compartments on the side, seat backs that can be very handy for those steel players that have any kind of a back problem like myself.

Personally I like the built in power strip because as we all know, there are many things we have to plug in and about all we can do is go to work early in a club to try to and beat some of the other instruments to the power plugs. By the way, naturally we still stock all kinds of steel guitar pack-a-seats.

Update on close restaurants when you’re visiting me in the Hendersonville area. As you may remember, I blasted the Blue Goose restaurant last time we talked about restaurants. This restaurant is now gone. It seems as though many other people agreed with me and quit going there.

We have a meat and three restaurant named Fast Freddy’s that is doing very well after about four months of being in operation. It’s a meat and three that serves a pretty decent breakfast also. My favorite in the whole town of Hendersonville, out of at least fifty restaurants, is the Chop House. Very inexpensive lunches and extremely high quality food.

Do any of you remember the steel guitar player Lou Houston? Lou was the first steel guitarist to work with Conway Twitty. Actually I think he knew Conway before he even got the job, which he worked about three years before getting off the road and passing the job on to John Hughey.

Lou has also left us, however he was a pretty unique player along the lines of Sneaky Pete from the California boys. I think he did a wonderful job with Conway. And don’t forget Buddy Emmons birthday was Friday. We all need a birthday and the more we have, the better. I mention Buddy because he is a legend in steel guitar that knows no equal. On this everyone seems to agree.

Don’t forget we have free shipping in the continental United States on all guitars from now until the end of February.

See our monthly specials at … www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html.

The friend to 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

Hello fans and fellow players,

I’d like to start this newsletter off by thanking all our disc jockey friends that play the kind of music we love. Country music can be pretty well found anywhere, but western swing is pretty hard to dig up. Steel players everywhere have a friend in deejay Mike Gross in the northeast United States that has a country western internet music show that everyone can enjoy.

Mike is an extremely steel guitar conscious guy that MCs steel guitar shows wherever he gets close enough to one to do so. I really like to pick on Mike because he has a real hard New England accent and I’m very used to hearing southwestern accents in the western swing field. Mike does a wonderful job and I would highly advise that you listen to his show.

While watching RFD out of Branson, Missouri, a young steel guitar playing friend of mine took a nice solo on a song called Diggy Diggy Low. His name is Tyler Hall and he is a freakishly wonderful young player. Tyler has a wonderful career ahead of him and I’m wishing him well, however I’m not sure he’s going to be needing my well wishing the way he plays.

A few minutes later I called my store from my easy chair at home and heard steel guitar in the background, so I asked my secretary who was playing. She said, “Oh, it’s that Tyler Hall again.”

I thought to myself, boy I just can’t get away from this guy, but after hearing a little more, I decided I didn’t want to get away from him. He’s a wonderful player and even nicer person. It’s nice to see Tyler and Eddie Dunlap hanging around together. It reminds me of Jimmy Day and Buddy Emmons and their friendship fifty five years ago.

It seems to be easier to learn steel guitar if you have someone there to compete with at every turn because every time one of you learns something, the other one can learn it as well.

It’s pretty nice having this store as I catch myself learning from others and having them learn from me. I remember back when steel guitar was first becoming a popular instrument. Players didn’t do this. They hoarded their knowledge which hurt everybody.

I remember I could always ask the great pros any questions and have them answered immediately. It was the fellow amateurs that were very tight with their limited knowledge that had the attitude “I’m not going to help anybody.” I can see today that the future of steel guitar could be very bleak if we don’t do a better job of playing and sharing knowledge about it.

I’ve heard several bandleaders say, “I don’t need one of those whiny effects machines in my band. If I don’t hire one, it leaves me more room to hire a musical instrument.” This really irks me because these guys don’t realize a good steel player can play parts, instrumentals, great fills and intros and also great rhythm if asked to do so. Also remember, steel guitar has no limitations, the player does.

When somebody tells me they don’t want a steel guitar in their band, what they are really saying is they don’t want somebody that can’t play steel guitar in their band and unfortunately most of them don’t even know what a steel guitar is supposed to sound like. They don’t realize what an asset steel guitar can be in the hands of a talented player.

So if you’re having trouble getting a job, there might be a very good chance that some below average player has muddied the water up ahead of you. If you’re a good player, keep learning more. If you’re not, work harder. You can’t blame steel guitar for not working.

Sometimes it’s a band leader that doesn’t realize how good the steel player is because he’s never even heard a good player. That’s when they make remarks like “I don’t want one of these whiny things in my band.”

If he had a player like Curly Chalker blow him off the bandstand one night with big chords and playing any song that was ever written and then turn around and play a fast single string solo that’s fast enough to show the lead player up badly, there would be no excuse not to hire a steel player.

As most of you realize, there are many bands today that are on television that have steel players with very questionable talent. These guys are not doing much to forward the name of steel guitar. The best thing we can do as players is get to where we play much better and root them out of their cushy jobs. This can be done with good personality and great playing.

We cannot expect to work and make good money and be that famous guy like we all look up to if we don’t buckle down and learn what the three Ts are. Taste, tone and timbre. Remember the three Ts, play the right thing at the right time, don’t pump your volume pedal and make everybody proud of you.

Even though a lot of this week’s newsletter has been aimed at the professional players, it applies to everyone that plays in a band and takes money for what he or she is doing. Being nice to everyone in the band including the band leader and club owner is as important as what you play.

Even though you may have to grit your teeth real hard to do it at times, every one of you are important to me as is your job and overall career behind steel guitar. Count on me for anything I can do for you.

We have free shipping within the continental United States on any guitar you buy between now and the end of February.

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