Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

Well here we are at the fourth of July. It seems like just yesterday it was New Year’s Eve. I’m hearing from many of you that you’ve got your steel guitar in the trunk and you’re getting ready to go out and fire up that old amplifier to entertain the folks at rodeos, pool parties and clubs all over the USA and anywhere they know what the fourth of July represents.

I’m not sure all Americans know what it represents, but what it stands for, to most of us is loud live music, barbequing on the grill, ice cream and all of the inexpensive beer you can drink. You know, beer like Falstaff, Rolling Rock, Billy Beer, Bud Light and so on. It’s amazing when you’re out in the hot sun, even people that don’t drink at all can enjoy an extremely cold beer.

You’ve got your steel guitar all tweeked, new strings, cleaned up perfectly and within a half hour the strings will be getting rusty from the perspiration in your hand, your C6th is already dead from being in contact with your forearms. Oh what memories I have of playing the rodeos in such places as Sidney, Iowa, Chanute, Kansas, San Antonio or Fort Worth, Texas.

Stepping on that cold air-conditioned bus when it’s a hundred degrees outside is one of the better parts of being a road musician. Of course, when that air-conditioning goes out, you’ll see how hot all those big aluminum tubes can be.

We all do different things for a living. Some are fun and we just go along for the ride and other things you have to work hard at and endure the painful consequences when the air-conditioning goes out in the summer or the heat goes out in the winter. Of course, this could happen in your family sedan when you’re just taking a weekender. But life is fun whether you’re with your family or on a bus full of idiot musicians who’ll keep you laughing all the way to the gig and back.

I will be working here in Nashville at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society show the second Wednesday in July at 2:00 PM. This is a wonderful, laid back show and encompasses many different facets of guitars, guitar building, guitar players of the very highest quality and everything will have to do with any of these topics. It is held at the Sheritan Music City Hotel. If you’re time is open then, it will be a fun thing to attend.

Buddy Akers died. Buddy was a good friend of mine and of many other steel players in the United States and Canada. Buddy was an extremely serious steel guitarist and he applied himself to the point of making good money his entire life sitting behind a guitar. He was one of those great old pros who lived his life doing what he wanted to do most.

The George Jones piano player that was being coerced into signing a confidentiality agreement just came by my store to fill me in on what was really going on. His name is Kent Goodson and he is as nice a person as he is a great player. Kent pretty well wants everyone to know what the whole story is in him leaving George after 28 years.

Most country music fans (these are my words) have it in their mind that George Jones is some kind of a god which is about as far from true as anything could be. Many people in the business feel just the opposite is true.

Kent was nice enough when he came by to give us a copy of his side of the story which is posted on his website at www.kentgoodsonmusic.com

After I posted the news tidbit on the steel guitar forum, several people were misled by a forum member that knows very little about anything in Nashville and would have been much better off to keep her typing fingers in her pocket.

For all of you who want to know what happened, you have the link to get it straight from Kent. For more information, you can read the interview with his hometown newspaper in Missouri at www.semissourian.com

Vic Lawson that works here at Steel Guitar Nashville will be playing Eugene, Oregon four days this weekend at the Eugene Rodeo with Justin McBride, two time world champion bull rider and now country music star. If you get a chance to go by, tell Vic to turn his volume down and make you a special deal on your next purchase from Steel Guitar Nashville. If you get a chance to talk to Vic, he’ll be glad to answer any steel guitar questions.

Thank you very much for the response that you have been giving us on the purchase of your Tascam Guitar Trainer. It seems as though many of you that have purchased this item are learning a lot of steel guitar because of it. I get many emails a week asking for the fast inside track to learning to play steel guitar. It looks as though we finally found it with this wonderful little unit. If you’ve just been thinking about buying one but haven’t made the move yet, it may be a good time to do so.

Everyone that has bought one is singing its praises. Anything that teaches as fast and as easy as this little machine does deserves to be in your arsenal. We will give you a popular steel guitar CD and rhythm tracks to get you started with this great little Tascam unit. The CD is free with your purchase this week.

See the video here: YouTube

Order it here: Tascam

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

The friend to all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.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 fellow players,

As most of you know, the Sho-Bud company was bought by Fret Gretsch in January of ’85 and moved to Ridgeland, South Carolina with the main office being in Charlotte, North Carolina. Fred bought Sho-Bud because it was thrown in on the deal that he was making to Baldwin to reacquire the name of Gretsch.

He didn’t really want Sho-Bud, but somehow Fred ended up with the Kustom company that was in Chinook, Kansas. So Fred ended up with Kustom, Gretsch, Sho-Bud, MCI guitars and somehow, Bigsby. This is fine and a whole lot better than having these names die, but I’d sure like to see him do more with them.

The true originators of the Sho-Bud company and the boys that built so many of these guitars over many years were the sons of the immortal Shot Jackson, David and Harry Jackson. David and Harry are still both in great health and building the new, already legendary Jackson guitar.

There always seems to be a new steel guitar popping up on the market straight out of somebody’s garage or basement, but this Jackson guitar is not one of those. The legendary thinking that went into some of the greatest Sho-Bud guitars is still showing up in these beautiful Jackson guitars.

David and Harry both came into my shop a couple of days ago and like always, we had long talks about the future of steel guitar and the future of designs that are coming. These boys are continually thinking and experimenting as proven by some of the mechanisms that David has recently come up with, like the finger that bends in the middle and requires very little pedal pressure and eliminates the typical wear parts in most all pull designs.

David has many other ideas that he shared with me. I offered my opinion on some of them and told him what I thought the pros and cons would be and at times he would look at me with a sly smile and say something like, “Yes I’m aware of that and I’ve already thought of that.” Pretty amazing minds these boys have and I still have the feeling that David will never get the true glory and recognition that he deserves along with his brother Harry.

The Wright Brothers couldn’t have been any smarter than these two boys. During this visit we discussed the past forty five years of steel guitar development. We discussed patents, who patented what, variation details on the all pull mechanism, who did what and at what time and who the true inventors were.

Names like the Harlan Brothers of Indianapolis, the Kelly patent that David dug up in the archives of the Patent Office and David’s designs of the all pull changer that he came up with to improve upon the systems that were being built at the time.

I remember at a very young age seeing Gene Pooler show up with Johnny Lee Wells at a dance I was also playing in Oklahoma. This was about 1957. Gene showed me his new cable operated Standel Custom steel guitar built by the great Chuck Wright. The changer was beautiful. Multiple raise and lower, tuned with your finger on top, very smooth and tremendous quality in the guitar.

Gene wouldn’t touch the guitar except to play it unless he was wearing his white gloves. The thing that impressed me the most was the design. Nobody ever mentions or says anything about this guitar, but it was definitely a good one. Chuck Wright must have been a very busy, hard working, intelligent being. Chuck is the father the incomparable David Wright, great steel guitarist of this day.

Ben Rubright in Florida, is the proud owner of one of David Jackson’s great guitars. Fred Shannon in west Texas and Charles Tilley of east Texas are friends I would like to mention because of the wonderful things they have done for steel guitar. I also had a visit this week from Bob Vantine. I hadn’t met Bob before. I found him a very interesting steel guitar guy that is primarily a lead guitar player he says. Bob is in middle New York state and member of a very fine steel guitar club in that state.

There are incredible steel guitar players all over the United States here to say nothing of players on other major continents. We have many readers of this newsletter from all over the world and I love the replies I get from all of them. It seems to be a very large force that’s still growing in England and the rest of the world. I’ve heard a lot of these guys play and I’m very astounded at their abilities.

I’d like to mention Basil Enriques, Ken Byng, David Hartley and B.J. Cole. I think it’s wonderful that the world is covered with steel players of such high caliber.

Steel Guitar Nashville, being a store in the Nashville area and serving highly discriminating steel guitarists here and around the world, demands a high quality stock of guitars, working and collector type. We would love to have more non-pedal classic pro guitars of yesteryear and I’m sure we will have in the future, but we seem to sell these old Fenders, Rickenbackers, Gibsons, Nationals and Bigsbys as fast as we get them.

The best thing I can say is that if you’re searching for that elusive user or collector guitar, keep following our webpage changes and I’m sure what you want will turn up.

Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to 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,

Let’s talk about the life of certain components on a steel guitar. You know what I mean. Parts that need to be replaced more often than others do. Strings need to be replaced because they go dead, corrode or just plain break. Volume pots wear out and get noisy much quicker than any of us would like for them to do.

Now we come to a part that really doesn’t wear out and should last forever, but because of being abused, they don’t last very long. This is the nylon tuner on an all pull system guitar. The nylon should rarely ever be tweeked. I’ve seen guitars that were practically new, but the nylons have been turned, bent, stripped to the point of being worthless.

The bad thing here is most people don’t even know how to put a new one on. The nylon should last years and years and years. It should never wear out, but can possibly become damaged by players that don’t understand how they work or why. If there is a tiny washer installed between the nylon and the hole it goes through on the changer, it should be very hard to damage unless you’re trying to tune the guitar with a pair of pliers instead of a three sixteenths socket type wrench.

Then we have fretboards. For some strange reason, some people like to run tape down the edge of them and write down the chords at each fret. That’s like a piano player taking a magic marker and writing down the names of the notes on the keys. Pretty ridiculous. And then even worse, I have seen guitars that have the name of the chords at different frets written right on the finish of the guitar beside the neck. Tell me this doesn’t devalue the worth of the guitar.

I’ve had guys say that they have the rollers worn out on their guitars. I have covered this roller subject before. This is something that is very near and dear to my heart. Rollers do not wear out. It would take 150 years of continuous playing to get a roller to show any wear.

Yes, I have seen old Sho-Buds with the hole in the middle of the roller turning oval instead of being round. I thought that was wear in the beginning, however I have since realized that the guitars were resting on the rollers and strings in the case and this is what beat the holes oblong, not wear.

On many Sho-Bud steel guitars built in the seventies, eighties and nineties the zinc fingers or roller cam in the changer will wear quickly because of the lowering finger that activates the changer will actually saw into it when played. This is one of the bigger points of wear on the late Sho-Bud guitars. I can fix these permanently without too much trouble or money. So if you have an old Sho-Bud you can send it to me and we can take care of it for you.

Springs on a steel guitar – Emmons push pulls, LeGrandes or any steel guitar will technically last forever. They will only go bad if pulled, pushed, moved around and generally mistreated. I’ve had people many times over the years want to order new springs for their Emmons push pull lowering fingers. This is pretty ridiculous because the tension on these strings can be easily adjusted and the spring should never be in a situation where it is worn to the point that it needs to be replaced.

This may be a long letter, but read it again and think about it.

Interesting observations I have for you today. Remember Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan or O.J. Simpson? These are very famous people that seem to get away with murder for no other reason than that they are extremely famous.

Other people that have ended up having to pay for their dastardly deeds long after they should’ve paid up, are famous political leaders like Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, Khadafy and Hitler himself, people that used their fame to sustain their life because of people that should have helped end these lives sooner didn’t do it because they feared the fame and power that these people had.

We even have idiots in our own news at this time, like Representative Anthony Weiner, Blagojevich, Senator John Edwards and others. I’m not saying these last ones should be shot, however it’s obvious that they have made some very poor decisions after we made some very poor decisions and elected them to be leaders for us.

In our own little world of country music, there are true idiots of entertainers out there, along with some good talent and very wonderful people. Over the years I have been following the careers of a few that I just cannot understand the stupidity of.

There are still people out there that say these are some of the greatest singers that have ever been in country music, which in itself is a stupid thing to say, but they do have followers that still like to publicly state how wonderful they are and how incredible they must be to be so famous.

Many of these famous celebrity country music singers treat their bands, record companies and everybody around them so badly that they are operating on the fringe of the law and way beyond the fringe of decency. But of course, outside of reality, the fans will never know about it and if they do, they’d never believe that their idol, the singer, could ever do anything wrong.

This is a real shame to follow a true psychopathic idiot blindly just because he makes records you like. Most people don’t believe and realize that this singer that they like so much doesn’t even make his own records. That task is accomplished by hard work from record companies, producers, writers and most of all promoters.

And how about the musicians that back these guys up? Would you believe that most people on the street still actually believe that the guys on the records actually work full time for the star himself? Everybody else does the work and the star gets the credit.

Well just remember, Bernie Madoff was rich and very famous too, but I hardly think that he’s a brilliant anything to be looked up to.

There’s a little restaurant here in Hendersonville that I stop in to get my coffee every morning on the way to work. The owner manager of this little restaurant loves to hire the most beautiful young girls that he can hire to wait tables. While talking to one of these girls a few years ago, she confided in me that she was wanting to be a country music singer.

I said, “Well what makes you think you can make it when so many others can’t?”

She said, “Well, we have enough money behind us to get me famous.”

I said, “I’ve heard that a lot in this town and have known some that actually made it from Hendersonville.”

It wasn’t too long until I turned on the TV one day and there she was. The rest is history. I still don’t know if Taylor Swift is a really good singer or if it was just money and luck that made her famous and well known.

But have you ever noticed it’s the famous person that always wins an argument? Like the next door neighbor I had in Dallas that swore that Shot Jackson was the greatest steel guitar player in the world. I said, “Well do you think he’s better than Maurice Anderson or Tom Morrell?”

He said, “Why of course he is. Shot Jackson is in Nashville and Maurice Anderson just works in a music store downtown Dallas.” The guy looked at me and said, “Shot Jackson’s a lot more famous than anybody we have in Dallas. So he must be better.”

Which reminds me of a touch of sparing that a person and I had on the steel guitar forum last week. She not only doesn’t play steel guitar, but because she’s in a musical family, loves to argue with anything intelligent anyone says. She made the statement that blankety blank famous country music singer had to be great because of what he’s done with his singing career.

Anybody know who Amy Winehouse is? Ever think of those entertainers that died because of drugs? Do you think they were brilliant? A few of them were talented, but as far as making the right decisions in life, they obviously didn’t. But in the world of public opinion, the famous guy always seems to win out. If this wasn’t true, there are many Hollywood stars that would be behind bars today that aren’t.

By the way, did you hear that The Judds are breaking up forever, again?

Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to 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