Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

Several subjects I want to touch on today. First off, I’m writing this on June 21st. Ever heard of Solstice? We’re having it today. The longest day of year, the first day of summer and the day I celebrate my birthday. I was actually born on December 21st, but that date is always cold, gloomy and snowy along with being the shortest day of the year.

So I changed my birthday several years ago and enjoy June 21st much better than December 21st. I guess I could call it my birthday and a half. My parents could never figure it out. I remember telling my father how disappointed I was having my real birthday so close to Christmas. He acted really hurt as if the whole thing was planned anyway.

He always said the pregnancy was planned, but nothing was really planned in my life after that, so I ended up doing all the planning ever since myself. The day I was born there was a screaming blizzard coming out of Canada across Lake Erie and the only steel guitar player at my birth was my Uncle Doug.

My mother had a log book of who showed up at the hospital with a gift and as important as that day was to me, it sure was a miserable day, but being the shortest day of the year, it didn’t really last too long. It was a year before the Japanese flew to Pearl Harbor and another six months after that before the battle of Midway where we turned the war around by sinking four of their carriers.

My father was in the middle of it and was assigned as a musician on the battleship Indiana where he spent a good part of the war.

Now let’s get up to current events like George Jones or his wife Nancy firing their steel player of 28 years, Tommy Killen. Tommy is a wonderful person and as good a player as a road band could ever want. Nancy and George wanted the entire band to sign a confidentiality agreement and not let out any band secrets.

Two of the band members wouldn’t sign, so they were promptly released from their duties. The piano player, Kent Goodson, a very wonderful player with a great personality along with being a wonderful singer was one of my employees when I was band leader for Stan Hitchcock at Twitty City in 1984. When he left us, he went to work with George. I’m sure he did a lot to be as good an employee for George as he was for Stan and I.

I have to question this decision. However, steel guitarist and great friend Van Coffee was hired to replace Tommy and I’m sure he will do a good job, as his playing will fit George very well. Also Van is an excellent bus driver. The funny this is, he wasn’t even looking for a steel guitar job when this one popped up. That’s the way it works in Nashville. You gotta be here to get a job and it seems like most of the time, it’s kind of luck when you do.

Somebody mentioned hearing me and loving what I did on the early Mickey Newberry albums. We recording these at Cinderella Studios in Madison. We did almost everything on the first take, no track stacking, punching in, over dubbing or anything other than the song comes by and you just play it.

This does not include the tracks that Weldon Myrick and I did where we stacked several tracks of fuzz tone to simulate violin parts which Weldon being the senior player, worked out for me to follow. Weldon and Mickey were very great to work with and his great projects circled the world upon completion of the albums.

Mickey worked very, very hard to come up with the great songs he wrote, like Heaven Help The Child, She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye, I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In and many other great songs that we turned into hits. Mickey was a wonderful friend I will always miss.

His writing made me think about steel guitar players that are wanting to be better players. This is something you have to work very hard at to do well, work continuously and think about all the time. But then that’s the secret to doing anything you do. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

I remember when I’d go to Mickey’s house he was always writing down weird funny things that I was saying. I was always trying to be funny and just generally being a wise guy. He never had that notebook far from his hands and when I’d ask him what he was doing, he’d say, “Those are good thoughts you’re saying and I can possibly use them in something coming up.”

I said, “Do you do this often?”

He said, “I always have a loose leaf notebook close at hand, even watching commercials on television. I take my ideas wherever I can get them.”

I said, “Well I guess that’s where American Trilogy came from.”

He said, “I actually wrote that song because you told me I’d never get away with it. I just wanted to show you that I could and would. It was the idea of putting these songs together where I won. The songs of course were already written and everybody knew them well.”

I kept thinking he’d never get away with it, but when Elvis recorded it, it sold a half a million and I realized Mickey knew more about writing songs than I did.

So if you want to be a great steel guitar player, work hard, think out of the box and never stop learning. That’s why I’ve created so many teaching videos and studio tracks for you to learn from and practice playing along with. Take advantage of these tools.

If you’re a good steel player and play commercial, you’ll be successful if you work hard.

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,

I remember getting a phone call from a symphony conductor with the last name of Coleman from Atlanta, Georgia asking me to drive down to Atlanta to play steel guitar with the symphony to backup Mr. Charlie Rich. I gave him my price and he said, “Sure. That won’t be any trouble.”

I figured by the time I drove the 225 miles to Atlanta in my little Opal GT, I should clear a healthy profit before I returned to Nashville. We were playing a place called Stone Mountain, Georgia which was a gorgeous setting, but at the end of our four hour rehearsal, we were about to go on break before the show when the conductor came out and said, “Everything’s cancelled. Everybody go home.”

This of course was a devastating shock to me. He said, “Go ahead and sign the card Bobbe and we’ll pay you through the Musician’s Union in Nashville.”

The check came through on time, but I was still disappointed that this show could be cancelled because of a star’s drinking problem. There were about 32 people in the symphony that the promoter had to pay and I know there were thousands of dollars that had to be returned to the ticket holders that were waiting to see the show.

These stars just don’t realize or even seem to care when these shows are cancelled. After George Jones’ marriage to Tammy, he was extremely bad about not showing up on important sold out jobs. I remember when I worked for George in the late fifties, he loved to drink and at times he wouldn’t show up and if he did, the people might have been happier if he hadn’t.

After I left George, I went to work for Ferlin Husky. I also liked Ferlin very much, however he was another hardcore drinker. In late 1969, we worked a job in Akron, Ohio at one of the major theaters downtown. At the end of the show or rather what was supposed to be the end of the show, George and Ferlin decided they were going to do a duet together.

That duet drug into another duet or five, then suddenly it turned into a singers jam session where everybody that had been on the show, that means all the stars came out on the stage and sung every song any of them knew. Everybody in the band was totally worn out and wanting to go back to the motel and sleep since we had been on the bus all day long.

Ferlin, George, David Houston and the Stoneman family and others were wanting to stand and sing on the stage even though the audience was leaving in droves. Too much of a good thing is just too much.

I stumbled out, got on the nearest bus and laid down and went to sleep. Then the next day about one in the afternoon, I stumbled out of the bunk in the bus, made it to the restroom in the bus, came out, walked to the front of the bus before I realized I was not on our bus, but was instead on the bus the Stoneman family was using. So as I was waking up I laughed and said, “Well, I sure don’t mind riding with y’all to the next job.” World famous Ronnie Stoneman replied, “We’re not going to your next job. We’re going to Nashville.”

I replied, “Oh no. I’m supposed to play with Ferlin and George in Wichita, Kansas tomorrow night.” Of course, I got home, jumped in my car and drove from Nashville to Wichita faster than the law wanted to allow and walked in about a half an hour before we were supposed to play.

Of course, my steel guitar wasn’t setup or even in the state of Kansas, but I played a guitar I borrowed from one of the other acts and struggled through Wings Of A Dove and Ferlin’s act without anyone really noticing. When our show was over, I struggled back out, dead tired, and slept for three hours in my car, then followed the bus on to the next job in Chicago, then drove home to Nashville.

After searching all the busses that had been on the tour from Akron, I found my steel guitar and amp. But the most miserable thing on this tour was trying to sleep in a 1967 Corvette. I still have the emergency brake handle marks on my left side! But I did get paid, I got my guitar back and I made all the shows. Show biz. You gotta love it.

We still have George around, but I sure miss David Houston and Ferlin Husky. I’m still trying to avoid Ronnie Stoneman because not knowing what bus I was on when I got up out of the bunk, I didn’t have any pants on when I went to the front of the bus. Ronnie still believes that I left them off on purpose.

Ronnie is a great banjo player and the ironing board lady from Hee Haw and she has a great sense of humor and a great family. I loved to watch them on stage and they loved to watch me on the bus! Was I embarrassed? Yes. Deeply.

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,

This newsletter may seem like a sales pitch but it is absolutely not. I’m just going to give you some straight facts the way they are. Many people say they will not buy push pull Emmons even thought they know that the tone is superior to anything and the playability can be very good if adjusted correctly. Dependability can be excellent if the stops are set perfectly. Once these guitars are setup, they have a tendency to stay put better than about any guitar that I know of.

I do not sell these guitars new, but I sell several other brands new. I am telling you this about this great little guitar after spending nearly fifty years playing it professionally under some severe conditions. I have owned serial number 1554D since the early seventies. It has been in eight countries, been on over 3000 recording sessions and been responsible for my entire professional career in steel guitar.

I feel I am qualified to make a lot of the statements that I am about to make. When a person buys one of these guitars used, he may be biting off more than he can chew if he doesn’t buy it from a player or company that will stand behind it totally. Like I say, adjusted correctly it will stay that way for many years.

They are much harder to make big changes to underneath, but done correctly by a professional technician, they will continue to perform very well. All the people that I have ever seen that have complained about the guitars are people that really don’t even know how to tune one, much less set one up underneath.

If you buy one off eBay, you’re really drifting into dangerous waters unless you are a serious technician yourself. If you buy one setup perfectly from a reputable source, you can be happier than you’ll ever be with anything. I have played many guitars in addition to my Emmons over the past fifty years. Several I have really liked, but to me serial number 1554D p-p is a priceless commodity in my professional playing career.

So the underlying current of what I’m saying here is the more complicated the setup on the guitar and the more perfect you want it, the more you have reason to purchase it from me or someone with the talent to do complicated setups on these great guitars. As I have said, this guitar can be the greatest friend you could ever have in steel guitar or a bad enemy if you don’t have it setup and working correctly.

If this guitar is working perfectly, it can do wonderful things for your playing career that no other guitar can really do. There are going to be several of you out there that may want to argue with me about this, but believe me nothing could sound better, play any better and do anything more for your reputation that this guitar will.

I can name many, many professional steel guitarists that have played the Emmons p-p for a good part of their careers, then tried other guitars and then gone back to the Emmons push pull guitars to spend the rest of their career with it, but you have to have it setup and working correctly. This is why you buy from a fanatical dealer or player. You may have noticed that the prices of the little Emmons push pull guitars are now surpassing the Emmons LeGrande guitars.

The LeGrande is also a wonderful steel guitar for tone and playability, but the hardcore old pros are preferring the p-p. I wish I had fifteen of them on my floor to sell right now, but unfortunately I only have two. There are many other guitars that I love and have in stock and actually may be better for the non-professional player that doesn’t want to learn servicing of the p-p.

There’s no one guitar that is perfect for everyone, but if you know what you want or if you want a push pull guitar, I’ll do my best to see that you are taken care of in your purchase.

I can’t help but remember John Hughey coming in my store shortly before he passed wanting me to help him find either his old Emmons p-p or another one in equal condition. Then I think about many great players that have come to me looking for these wonderful guitars.

There is one substitute for the guitar that sounds very, very good, possibly equal or better, but it’s made in Bosnia by a great craftsman, Dusan Papac. His guitar is exactly like as high a quality push pull as can be. The only major difference is a difference that you cannot see with your eyes and does not affect the guitars tone or anything else. It is a metric guitar. All screws, leg threads, legs and all machine work on the guitar is done to metric specs. As easy as metric nuts, bolts and screws are to obtain today, it should make no difference. Personally, I’d play one in a second.

Purchasing a steel guitar is not the simplest thing in the world but I try to make it as simple as possible for you. It can sure make your life extremely happy or if you buy the wrong guitar from the wrong person, it can make your life miserable.

Did you hear about the steel player who bragged that he could play thirty second notes? The rest of the band didn’t believe him so he proved it by playing one.

I want to announce that we have an exciting new product that will very positively make a better player out of you. It’s very inexpensive and made by Tascam. See all about it in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkje1we7G2g

And read all about it here: http://www.steelguitar.net/tascam.html

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