Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

I’m sure we all have items in the world of steel guitar that trigger our happiness, things that we love that trip our trigger. Things like a great amplifier with good tone that isn’t very heavy. Things like a new steel guitar or possibly an old steel guitar that’s collectible and hard to find, like an old Bigsby or old Sho-Bud Permanent steel guitar or old tube type Standel or possibly a Fender Bassman amp from the late fifties. There are many things that make us say “Wow. I wish I had one!”

Watching a television program called Chasing Classic Cars got me thinking about how much time I’ve spent chasing classic steel guitars and watching the car auctions on the motoring channels on T.V. has made me apply my thoughts to steel guitar.

I’m always looking for something weird and old. I love old Sho-Bud pack-a-seats, MSA volume pedals, Bigsby volume pedals. Sure I have a lot of things that don’t work and that I don’t need, but I get a real cool smile on my face when I think about the main closet in my house full of Sho-Bud amps, Sho-Bud volume pedals, Fender non-pedal guitars, Gibson lapsteels and strange effects like a little junior organ effect or Fuzz Tones that lend their abilities to steel guitar.

There’s nothing like a Boss-Tone and a nice little echo unit to make you sound better no matter what kind of music you play. These are little things that trigger my happiness buttons. Before I moved to Nashville back in the fifties, the thought of a Sho-Bud Permanent steel guitar built by Shot Jackson and his two sons was a turn-on that kept me from being a straight A student in school. Just thinking about Sho-Bud steel guitars occupied most of my conscious moments.

But now that I look back on that part of my life I was so absorbed with steel guitar that nothing else really mattered anyway. So I got my pleasures out of life by leading my life the way I really felt it. I always had the great tunes of Webb Pierce, Ray Price, Faron Young, Jimmy Dickens, Carl Smith and many others whirling through my mind like a musical freight train.

If I had it to do again, would I do it the same way? Yes, I probably would. I could’ve been an engineer with the right education, possibly a great football player. I know I could’ve been a good machinist and several other things. My mom and dad wanted me to be a banker. Thank God I didn’t listen to them.

I can’t imagine anything that I could’ve done in my life that I would’ve enjoyed anymore than just being a steel guitar player. Fun and financially rewarding up to a point and one of the greatest things about me making this choice was getting to meet so many people all over the world and if you haven’t been one of them yet, let’s make it a point to fix that in the near future.

If you’re as crazy about steel guitar as I am, I want to shake your hand. Come by the store here and show me what you think is your greatest lick that you’ve learned on such and such a song. I’ll do the same for you and I’ll guarantee you we’ll both walk away smarter. Come by and I’ll show you everything I know. It won’t take but a minute!

Think about what trips your trigger and I’ll see if I can furnish it to you.

Don’t forget to check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html

Your buddy,

Bobbe

www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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,

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
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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,

The year end is over which leaves us a whole new year to contemplate and plan for. There are many players throughout the world and we have a big spring and summer season coming.

We’ve had quite a bit of snow in Nashville as most people have in the eastern part of the United States. It’s pretty enjoyable for me, but a lot of people took it seriously. Those that wanted to see it real badly had their chance. To those who really didn’t care for it, it was still pretty good because it was still fairly warm along with it and it didn’t last but a couple weeks. Now we have a couple 65 degree days before we take another plunge.

Interesting seeing the big country music boys tour busses spinning their tires. Bands like The Oak Ridge Boys who have their offices next door to Steel Guitar Nashville, have their monstrous instrument trailers connected to their busses which makes it even harder to navigate in the snow.

Of course it’s nice to see them around town here where they seem to have full control of the roads, but when they are going into the Rockies in Colorado or the Smokies in North Carolina, Virginia and north, I’m sure it could be a very interesting trip before they get back.

But country music has got to be played everywhere because it is enjoyed everywhere. Thank goodness that the days of riding in a Cadillac Fleetwood with the bass in the passenger compartment with us and my little Sho-Bud permanent in the trunk being over. Of course, it sure was warm in that Cadillac cuddled in there with the rest of the boys with their three inch feather down stuffed quilted coats.

Of course, a couple guys would bring their dogs. We all hated having to get out of the car for anything. I remember pulling into a gas station one time and I asked Little Jimmy Dickens if he wanted to get out and pee with the rest of the guys. He said, “Don’t worry. I just did about three miles back.”

I said, “We didn’t stop three miles back.”

He said, “Neither did I.”

This was on our Canadian tour in the sixties. I always wore my winter Air Force gear when traveling in the winter.

I have an awful lot of thank you’s to put out from the past year. Disc jockeys around the world that have played so many of my CDs should be at or near the top of the list. Like most people here in Nashville, when we put a CD out, we never know where the hotspots for each of us are going to be.

For me, the hotspots turned out to be New Zealand, Holland, Switzerland, Austria and France. It’s very nice to be appreciated in places you can’t even spell. Of course, I’m still having trouble spelling Tennessee. Being appreciated by people that actually don’t even know what steel guitar is can have a special gratification of its own.

We get visitors to the guitar shop from all over the world, but seldom from the charming little country of New Zealand. Here with us right now from New Zealand is Jason Ward. Jason plays steel guitar in church and is probably the only steel guitar player in New Zealand who plays in church.

His comments about the state of steel guitar in New Zealand are “Steel is not big in New Zealand. There are some players but most are into rock and roll instead of country.” The most famous steel guitarist in New Zealand is an American named Jim Molberg.

Jason has two Gospel steel guitar CDs “Whispering Hope” and “Sweet Anointing”. He recorded them both to be very easy listening so people can sleep to them. He is a believer in simple melodies and soft, smooth sound.

Jason happened to be passing through and decided to stop and see what we had to offer. He is on his way to south Texas with a friend who lives there and will be traveling to Arizona for a few days, then on to L.A. to hop a plane back to New Zealand. Anytime you happen to be passing through Nashville, consider stopping by because we love visitors.

We would like to give special recognition to Jim Molberg as he has many great friends here in the United States. Jim is a great player and can play about anything that there is in steel guitar. So between these two players, New Zealand is very rich in steel guitar, if not in quantity, definitely in quality.

New Zealander Ann Pascoe is very sensitive to steel guitar and being one of the foremost disc jockeys and program directors in her country, I personally appreciate her being a steel guitar lover and she makes me a disc jockey lover. All us steel players should appreciate what these worldwide disc jockeys are doing for us. No matter where they are, they are expanding our world.

Because of not doing much pushing of products through the Christmas season out of respect for what the season is actually really meant to be, Steel Guitar Nashville will be giving excessively great deals throughout the first part of the new year. In case you haven’t noticed, we have some great deals on new and previously owned steel guitars. Let’s make it a great 2011 for everybody.

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

www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

Steel Guitar Nashville

123 Mid Town Court

Hendersonville, TN. 37075

(615) 822-5555

Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday

Closed Saturday and Sunday