Pedal Steel Music

This is Bob Hempker. I remember when I was a kid taking steel lessons and the Wilburn Brothers came to town with a show. Sonny Burnette was playing steel for them at the time. I watched from the audience and I tried to figure out what kind of guitar he was playing.

It sort of looked like a Bigsby and I knew right off it wasn’t a Fender. It had a cluster of hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs on the front. I’d never seen any guitar like this before and it’s tone was magical. I was in awe.

After the show, the singers and musicians were up onstage signing autographs like they used to do. I went up to Sonny, introduced myself and asked him about his guitar. He said it was Sho-Bud and told me that Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons had gone together to build it.

Sonny said that it stayed in tune better than his Bigsby because the necks were solid wood and weren’t near as sensitive to temperature change.

Not long after that, we started hearing about Sho-Buds. They were building only custom guitars at that time and they had a waiting list as long as your arm. People would drive a couple of hundred miles just to see and hear one that they’d heard about.

In the late sixties, they started building the Fingertip Universal. They built that for a couple of years and then Baldwin started distributing Sho-Buds and they built the double neck six pedal guitar with a cast frame around it. It had a cross-over switch that would switch the pedals over to the other neck so the same six pedals would work both necks.

After a few years of building that guitar, they went back to building the original Permanent setup custom guitars. Then they started building the Pro I, Pro II and Pro III. By this time Sho-Bud was very much a prominent name in steel guitar.

Sho-Buds have always had a special place in my heart. I remember the store so well and the people that worked in the store on Broadway. They had the factory over on Second Avenue. I just have a ton of memories.

I love Sho-Buds for their warm tone. Sho-Buds have a character and personality about them. They have an aura that can’t be denied. We have a classic Super Pro and a classic Pro III on the floor and I know they’re going to make their future owners very happy. If you’ve never owned a Sho-Bud, you should. Every pedal steel guitar player should own at least one Sho-Bud in their lifetime.

Mike Daly’s CD “Rock of Ages” keeps getting more kudos, this time from writer Kent Burnside who reviewed Mike’s CD for the magazine “The Nashville Musician”. We thank the Nashville Musicians Union and Kent Burnside for allowing us to reprint the article for you.

Mike Daly Rock Of Ages

At some point in your life you heard “Layla” and probably thought, “That’s cool, but what it really needs is a pedal steel. And a reggae groove.”

No? You didn’t think that? Okay, neither did I. But Mike Daly did. And that’s just one of ten rock classics to receive a steel guitar makeover in this new collection.

Daly is a longtime sideman to artists such as Travis Tritt, Patty Loveless, and Hank Williams, Jr. Throughout Rock Of Ages he also plays guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, and percussion. Steve Holland is on drums, while bass duties are shared by Dow Tomlin and Doug Kahan. All are members of Local 257.

Jeff Beck’s “Freeway Jam” maintains the loping shuffle of the original, even incorporating a few of Beck’s trademark licks. Ricky Chancey solos first on blues harp, followed by Daly. His solo is nicely capped by some pick-and-thumbnail harmonics, making his steel sound remarkably Telecaster-like.

Beatles songs provide some of the high points of this set. Daly’s acoustic guitar and steel double the well-known segues into the dreamlike verse of “Sun King.” The overdubbed layers of pedal steel create a hauntingly beautiful chorus, and Kahan really captures the McCartney bass tone and vibe. “Let It Be” features Daly on Weissenborn guitar; it’s an inspired combination of thumping fingerstyle and slide, Muhlenberg County meets County Lancashire.

The Allman Brothers Band’s “Hot ‘Lanta” features excellent solos from Chancey and Jimmy Hall (on tenor sax) before Daly enters, pulling out all the stops; his virtuosic playing here calls to mind Buddy Emmons’s legendary Redneck Jazz Explosion. Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” keeps the monster riffs of the original, but sets it to a hoedown two-beat. Only in Nashville.

It’s a tribute to Daly’s musical ingenuity that he can breathe new life into that 1970s senior prom staple, “Colour My World.” The arpeggiated opening is performed on clean-toned steel, with the verse melody heavily overdriven for a smooth vocal quality. Intonation on the layered melody lines is flawless, no small feat for a slide instrument.

All in all a highly imaginative and fresh take on some well-loved music.

– Kent Burnside

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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

Today’s newsletter is from Ron “Snake” Reynolds. Snake is one of the most successful behind-the-scenes people who make the Nashville music business work so you’re going to get a very unique perspective. We’re going to let Snake take it over here to explain who he is and what he does.

My name is Ron Reynolds but everybody calls me “Snake”. I got that nickname in 1980 from an engineer friend of mine named Ken Laxton who was engineering a project on myself as an artist. I played guitar in Rock n Roll bands from 1963 until about 1980 and I was so thin and limber I looked like a snake going across the stage. Let’s face it, “Snake” is much sexier than Ron.

So any of my album credits before 1980 are listed as Ronnie Reynolds, that is when they gave album credits. Back in those days, they sometimes didn’t give musicians and engineers credit.

In 1965, I signed an artist development deal and writer’s contract with Fred Carter Jr’s label Nugget Records. Fred was a well-known Nashville guitar player who also played on a lot of the early Simon and Garfunkel hits. It was Fred playing the gut string guitar on “The Boxer” which was one of their biggest hits.

Nugget Records had their own recording studio. After signing the deal and hanging around the studio so long doing my projects, I fell in love with the recording end of the business and was given the opportunity to engineer full-time for Fred.

In my early years at Nugget, I had the privilege of working with some of the greatest songwriters of the time like Harlan Howard and Bobby Bare. I also recorded some of the big country music artists of the time as well as rocker J.J. Cale.

In 1972 I got a job offer from Columbia Recording Studios to become a staff engineer and immediately jumped at the chance. In the first year or two at Columbia, I started working with legendary record producer Billy Sherrill and artists like George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Charlie Rich, Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Rodriguez and many more.

I remained with Columbia Records as a full time recording engineer until 1982 when they closed their recording studios. In that time period, I recorded almost every country music star in the business and some pop artists as well such as Dave Loggins Please Come To Boston and Elvis Costello.

I also recorded a ton of jingles, television specials, a couple of movies like “Take This Job and Shove It”, one of the great movies of all time LOL. I also worked with Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, David Allan Coe and lots more.

When Columbia closed in 1982 I became a free-lance engineer where I continued to work with Billy Sherrill until he retired. I also worked with legendary record producers Randy Scruggs, Nelson Larkin, Ray Baker and many others.

Some of my favorite projects were done in this time period. For instance, Tanya Tucker’s album that Jerry Crutchfield produced which contained the hit single “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane”, Ray Baker’s production of Merle Haggard’s album “That’s The Way Love Goes” which won a Grammy.

Also Randy Scruggs’ productions of many of the early Sawyer Brown hits and the Grammy winning “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” volumes two and three and Nelson Larkin’s productions on Earl Thomas Conley.

During the period from 1980 to 1990, Earl had more number one singles a row, 18 in total, than any other artist in any genre of music. Earl was also the first artist of any genre of music to have four consecutive number one singles off of a single album.

Also during the eighties and nineties, I had the privilege to do three albums on Ray Charles, who was the most soulful, truly musical genius that I’ve ever worked with.

I can’t list everyone here, but I should mention Shania Twain’s “The Woman In Me” album which has sold over 16 million copies world-wide. I should also mention Toby Keith. I engineered his first several albums as well as co-wrote four songs with him. I did several cuts on Keith Urban’s first album “The Ranch”. I worked with Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and so on.

So you can see I’ve had an extremely exciting career, and still doing it.

Some of the most fun has been working with some of the greatest producers, musicians, singers and songwriters in the world. I’ve recorded over 600 Billboard Top 40 chart records including 60 number ones, 9 Grammy winners and been Engineer of the Year twice. How lucky can one man be?

One of the questions I’m always asked is about how the music business has changed. Obviously, the technology has changed. But the technology is just a tool. Songs are still pretty much written the same. All the melodies and chord structures have been written because there are only so many notes and there is only so much musical range that a singer can sing in. A singer can only sing two octaves if they’re lucky.

The biggest change is in the number of major recording labels which has decreased, the number of records released which has decreased, the number of major recording artists which has decreased, and therefore the number of songs needed and the number of musicians needed and the amount of studio time needed has severely diminished.

Most singers today write their own material or at least part of it whereas twenty years ago, most artists did not write their own material. So the need for songs from independent writers was tremendous then. Also, twenty or thirty years ago, each artist recorded two albums a year, sometimes three if they did a Christmas album.

During Nashville’s peak time of the eighties and nineties, there were almost 200 commercial studios in Nashville and most of them were booked three or four sessions a day. So the studio musician could barely keep up with the amount of sessions.

Also the speed of the business today is much slower than it was twenty years ago. Now it takes two years to get a record out once it’s recorded whereas twenty or thirty years ago, I would cut a record at 10 AM in the morning on George Jones and Billy Sherrill would say, “That song is the single. Mix that.”

I would mix it on the 2 PM session. They would send it down and have a dub cut on the mastering lathe, send it over to WSIX radio station and that night, I would hear what I had cut that morning played on the radio while driving home.

Also, songwriter’s demos back then were mostly just guitar/vocals or piano/vocals and would be brought to the session at the last minute whereas now, songwriter’s demos have to sound like a finished record. It was a much more fast paced, exciting time in the business.

I still enjoy the process, especially working with the musicians and songwriters and helping new artists achieve their goals which is why I started my new website at www.snakereynoldsproductions.com

As difficult as it was, the way you used to break into the music business in Nashville was to go around to the different record labels and drop off recordings of things that you had recorded and hope that the A&R people would listen to your project.

Now, since the openings are fewer at the major labels, you’re better off as, an aspiring artist, to play the local venues such as the Bluebird Café and do showcases on yourself as well as approach publishers who have now become what the A&R people at record labels used to be in hopes of getting a publisher to develop you as a writer/artist.

With modern technology, you can actually put out a record on yourself and sell it on the internet and at your shows, sometimes with great success. You have to work hard at it. It takes a lot of dedication but it’s being done by more and more people.

Independent labels are popping up daily because the internet has leveled the playing field to give all artists a chance that has been, until now, limited to a select few.

With the inception of ProTools and home studios, the cost of recording a project has come down and has made the recording of a project much more affordable to a larger range of people.

The bottom line is still talent. To give yourself the best chance of success, study the history of the profession, perfect your talent, seek of advice of professionals who have a track record you admire and surround yourself with the best people you can find.

You have to believe in yourself. The great car manufacturer Henry Ford once said, “No matter if you think you can, or if you think you can’t, either way you’re right.” The main thing is, don’t give up.

P.S. If you have any questions you’d like to ask Snake, reply to this newsletter and if we get enough questions, we’ll have him back again.

This will be our last Monday newsletter. Henceforth, there will only be a newsletter on Thursday until Bobbe is able to come back and write the newsletters again.

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sales@steelguitar.net
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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

February 28, 2013

This is Bob Hempker and today I’d like to pass along a couple of replies I’ve had about previous newsletters. The first one concerns backing a singer. Here it is:

Bob, You could have not said that any better. I was just telling a student yesterday that it is all about playing pretty and that no one in the audience cares if you are a hot lick steel player or not, but if you play careful behind the singer you will be noticed every time. Can’t believe I got this letter this morning on the same subject and I also told him that it was more fun playing behind Ray Price and Darrell McCall and Johnny Bush and Willie. Yes, It is nice to show that you can play when the time comes, but just sit back and follow the song and singer and you will win every time. He called me this morning and told me that he practiced all night with the Ray Price Tracks that I had given him and that appreciated the yesterday lesson more than he could tell me. I just told him, next week you can SHOW ME what he had learned. I have always enjoyed teaching and seeing what others pick up from you and I also sent you a couple of my students to get hooked up with your newsletters. Please keep them coming. Your news letters are better than any guitar magazine that I could purchase! Thanks and keep them coming!
J. Bates

The next one comes from Jay Noel and to me, it contains an important message.

The comments from Vic Cox the other day got me to thinking. I spent 22 years playing lap steel wanting to play pedal steel and not wanting to invest in the cost of a pedal steel. A good friend of mine, who has won several Texas Country Opry awards(there used to be several Oprys in DFW Texas, Mesquite Opry and Johnnie High type shows for example), well he had a used steel that he couldn’t seem to learn to play and just flat-out gave it to me, on the condition that I would play steel for him if he ever went professional. (He didn’t) I did end up playing in a band called “The Rough Ryders” in the late ’80s and early 90’s but the band broke up and for awhile I quit playing. A couple of years ago I started playing again, and took the advice of an old friend, Junior Knight, got myself a new pro model steel.

I can’t put into words how much it has meant to me just playing and enjoying it, but it occurred to me how much better I might be today if I had invested in a pro model steel 35 years ago. My advice is simple. If you love steel guitar, and even think that you might like playing a pro model,– make the investment. First of all you will find with a little practice you can emulate many of the steel licks you’ve heard and have a lot of fun playing them. Second of all even if you decide you no longer like the steel guitar, most steels, especially name brand pro models hold their value well. And a good repair shop can make a used pro model play just as good as a new one, and the investment will be a bit less. Or you might decide to invest in a brand new steel like I finally did, but please take my advice and don’t waste years wishing you could. Just go ahead and do it. Oh, and by the way, if you miss playing the lap steel you can always play it on a couple of tunes, and you will be surprised how well you can play it after playing a pedal steel for awhile.

Jay Noel
Fort Worth, TX

First of all I’d like to thank Jay Noel for submitting some superb sound advice. Frequently people bring instruments in here that they have bought off Ebay or at an auction somewhere or something at a bargain price. The instrument will many times need more fixing, adjusting, pedals or knee levers added to it and no telling what.

They end up with more money invested in a second rate instrument than they would have if they had just gone ahead and spent a few extra bucks and got a top quality instrument to begin with.

I personally am not a fan of student model guitars. We even sell them here but I try to tell people they’re better off spending a few extra hundred dollars and get a professional quality instrument. Once they get good enough to play with other people and bands and play in public, the better quality instrument will be up to the job instead of being a frustration.

Another point to consider is that by chance you keep your guitar awhile and you want to trade it up on a nicer instrument or you just decide you don’t want to play anymore, you will be more prone to recoup most of the money you’ve got in your instrument, whereas the student model is hard to sell, people really don’t want to take them on trade and they’re next to impossible to add knee levers or pedals to upgrade them.

Again, thanks Jay for your input. Guys and gals, this is great advice!

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