Pedal Steel Music

November 14, 2013

Many of you have emailed expressing how much you like my road stories, so this week I’d like to talk about a job that I had that was really a road story, however we flew commercial airlines most of the time and chartered private aircraft the rest of the time.

I was doing a session one day with some of Nashville’s finest musicians when the keyboard player asked me if I’d be interested in working with Lynn Anderson. I expressed that I would be very interested if the money was right.

He said that he was sure that it would be, that he was the band leader and he would consider me on the job. I would be replacing Paul Franklin and Russ Hicks. This sounded like a heck of a deal to me.

The deal was we’d have to fly everywhere and we would all meet at the airport at the appointed time, get in line with all our equipment, clothes bags, etc. and be ready to load when the airline said to.

Things were different back then. Airplanes were not as solid and they were a lot more forgiving about overages on baggage. However, I know Lynn had to pay extra at the time.

It was a pretty good way to travel since many of our trips were a long distance from Nashville. I remember one morning about six months later when Nashville was flooded real badly. Opryland was under about 3 feet of water and I had to be at the airport at 10 AM for departure.

I had to go past Opryland on the interstate which was closed due to the flooding, but being afraid I’d miss the plane, I drove my new 260Z through the water which was quite a long haul. After I had gotten well into the water I realized that one of the problems with driving through floods is knowing where the road is under you.

I was worried about the car stalling out which it didn’t, but I remember hearing the fan blades scooping up water in the engine compartment. When I got out of the flooded portion of the interstate, I drove as rapidly as I could and made it to the airport in time to find out the flight had been delayed an hour. This was typical of our airline travel.

At times we would charter private aircraft from a company at Nashville International Airport. This was superior in some ways and inconvenient in others.

After I learned her arrangements on hit records she had, the main one being “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, I realized I didn’t need to carry a heavy double neck guitar. I went down to Sho-Bud one afternoon and asked them what they had in a light single neck guitar. Harry Jackson looked at me sarcastically and said, “How about a Maverick with no knee levers?” and then laughed.

I said, “That sounds like a great idea.” I knew I could do my parts on her show with a single neck guitar with just 3 pedals on it and I liked the tone of the guitar a lot better than the double neck I had been playing.

So this cut my total baggage down to 45 pounds instead of 105 pounds. We started making the booker furnish amplifiers so this cut me down another 65 pounds which made it a lot handier running from terminal to terminal during flight transfers around the U.S. and Canada.We flew so much that I got to know most of the stewardesses by their first name after a year or so, which was handy for more than one reason. I worked for about 7 years with Lynn and must say I enjoyed it very much.

The reason I left was because I was getting a lot of recording sessions that were getting in the way of this wonderful job with her so I had hard choices to make.

Lynn treated us about as good as we could possibly be treated. I remember playing Vegas for a week plus a few days and instead of putting us in a hotel or motel, she rented a house for a month, furnished us with a rental car and bought several of our meals.

These are things you don’t really expect a star to do.

Several of us had never been to California before so during one of her engagements in this beautiful state, rather than flying to the actual cities we were playing in, we flew to Los Angeles and rented two station wagons, took the scenic highway up the coast and then over to Sacramento and Fresno.

Although I was kind of grouchy at first having to travel in a couple rental cars, I soon realized the reason she wanted us to travel by car. California is a beautiful state like I’d never really seen.

Another advantage of playing with Lynn was the fact that she primarily only booked IBM conventions and big rodeos. I didn’t like the dust or the heat or cold playing on the back of a flatbed truck, but the pay was still good and we usually worked with several other great internationally known bands.

I largest crowd I ever worked for was the New York State Fair where there were over 80,000 people in the audience. Bob Hope was on the show and we rehearsed a routine with him. I enjoyed seeing and talking to him until he asked me if I played golf. I admitted that I did not and that was the end of the conversation.

I enjoyed working with the New York Symphony Orchestra that was backing us up with full written arrangements which we always carried with us and I paid little attention to it.

It seems like every job we did was more interesting in some way than the one before it.

The great steel playing friend of mine that had become a good friend of mine while working in Nashville with Tommy Cash, I’m sure he is known to most of you. His name is Darryl Davidson. I was very distressed to hear of his death in New Mexico. He was a wonderful C6th player. I learned much of his knowledge studying from the greats, Tom Morrell, Billy Braddy and Maurice Anderson.

Darryl was a wonderful player and I’ll miss not being able to hear him again.

Remember, if you need volume control pots, hats, t-shirts, the world’s finest strings or any other accessories to order online from the website or give us a call at 615 822-5555. As always we appreciate your business and your friendship.

The North Tennessee Steel Guitar Club Christmas Party is the day after our workshop so you can attend both events on the same weekend while your shops. I’ll be there and looking forward to seeing you.

Bobbe Seymour

www.steelguitar.net
info@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
Open 9AM – 2Pm Second and Third Saturday of each Month
Closed Sunday

I’ve had a lot of time lately to think about musicians that work for major and minor acts. My memory is very good when it comes to things that happened many years ago. It’s finding my things that I put away this morning that I seem to have trouble with.

I remember for instance, working with a very famous drummer named Paul McGee that had spent many years with the Hank Thompson band. When he left Hank he went to Colorado Springs and put his own band in the Navajo Hogan Club on Tejon Street.

I was working with Paul at the club and George Jones was booked in. This was before he was well known, so he did show up. I guess he needed the $100 he was getting paid. He had many dates around Colorado and asked me if I would like to play steel guitar with him.

I told him yes, since he was paying more than the club did, which I believe was $25 a night. That’s about the same as $100 a day now. Since I got to go home and sleep in my own bed every night, this was quite a deal for me.

He asked me to move to Nashville and keep working with him, but after I saw how he acted after he got drunk, I thought better of it. However, he was very nice to me. After I did move to Nashville, I worked with several acts that included some package shows with George and his new band called The Jones Boys.

I will have to say I did like his material and he was very nice about giving me my head when it came to what I wanted to play behind him. Fills and instrumental turnarounds were about anything I wanted to play.

I think he got worse over the years because I know The Jones Boys had their problems, but seems he adjusted in how to take care of them. Some of the things that went on between George and the band are pretty funny looking at it from the outside.

I was working with the late Ferlin Husky when we did some package shows through Canada in the winter of 69-70. It was a cold, snowy, hard winter and Ferlin wanted us to travel in a medium length poorly insulated and heated Winnebago camper. I wouldn’t do it and borrowed a friend’s Cadillac limousine to do the tour.

Freddy Haas and Jim Vest, steel player with David Houston, decided they liked the limousine better than their buses, so I didn’t have any trouble finding company to travel with me. I remember pulling up behind the Winnebago in a little town in Canada when it was blowing snow and the wind was about 40 mph. Ferlin ran out of his Winnebago and back to us and I rolled the window down about 4 inches.

I said, “What do you want Ferlin?”

He said “It sure is cold in that camper”, hinting that he would like to ride in the limo with us. I informed him that we didn’t have room. I kind of felt bad as he trudged back to the Winnebago. However he could’ve rented a bus liked the other acts on tour with us had.

The limo turned out to be a lot of fun since it gave me a lot of freedom on the road and made dear, lifelong friends out of Jim Vest and myself. Jim reminded me of this story when I saw him a few days ago.

Jim has lost a lot of weight and is doing much better. His steel guitar playing is as fine as ever. Jim is doing a lot of songwriting and demo sessions around town.

As the workshop date gets closer and closer I’m getting more and more excited because I know I’m going to get to see some of you. Make sure you call the store and get your reservation nailed down. All of you that will be attending the workshop will be given a set of Cobra Coil strings, your choice of steel guitar CD and a t-shirt of your choice. I want to make this as good a value as possible to you.

We picked November 30th for the workshop so people coming to town for North Tennessee Steel Guitar Association Christmas Party happening the next day would be able to attend two events the same weekend on consecutive days.

I’m happy to be back doing the newsletters again even though I’m not doing much else.

Bobbe Seymour

www.steelguitar.net
info@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
Open 9AM – 2Pm Second and Third Saturday of each Month
Closed Sunday

October 31, 2013

This is Bobbe Seymour with the newsletter. It’s Halloween tonight so be on the lookout for the little ones and drive with extra care.

I’ve gotten some emails telling me that most of the readers of my writing like war stories of when I was on the road. If there weren’t exciting things going on around me, I would create funny things on my own.

I’ve read a few of these emails asking about the time when I worked with Stonewall Jackson when I first came to Nashville. It was one of my early days most fun times. In case some of you newer players aren’t familiar with the name Stonewall Jackson, he was a big Grand Ole Opry star from the early 60s. He was a recording artist for Columbia Records and booked many live shows around the United States.

Stonewall has had many memorable country hits. One of his big hits was “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo”. “Don’t Be Angry” was another big hit and who could forget “Waterloo”? Stonewall has long been a touring road artist with many TV appearances and hit records to his credit.

One of the things that I loved most about the band was that it was just a four piece country group. Steel, lead, bass and drums. My fellow musicians were pretty good players. I replaced Ron Elliott in this group.

One of the first trips we made out of town was in Stonewall’s new bus, a 48 passenger Flexible. The professional driver that they had hired was a truck driver that had only driven semi tractors and trailers. As we were leaving town I noticed he was having a lot of trouble shifting gears.

I had never driven bus but I figured I could drive at least that good. We were playing in northern Wisconsin and the route took us through the middle of Chicago. I immediately went to sleep upon leaving Nashville, cringing every time the bus driver tried to change gears.

By the time we got to Chicago, it was the following morning. Morning traffic was starting to build up. Luckily the driver stood up after pulling off of the road and asked who else could drive the bus because he was tired. I immediately said, “I can.”

I slid in the driver’s seat, stepped on the clutch, easily put it in first gear, took off and had no trouble shifting the rest of the trip which was about four hours. Morning traffic in Chicago was bumper to bumper but moving fast and here I was the first time in my life driving a bus in the middle of it.

It was good training for me as a driver of one of these monstrosities. I would’ve driven a lot more but the bus driver was afraid I was going to get his job and I was not getting paid extra for it. This is a typical Nashville way of doing business. If you can do five jobs, you only get paid for one.

I still have some pictures somewhere of us working this show. I remember we dressed in typical black dress pants and white shirts. I believe Don Williams was also on the show. I remember being impressed with how quiet his band played, but how full and nice it was. The audience loved him tremendously. It was a good audience because they liked us too.

There was another group in the show but I can’t remember who it was. Probably somebody that didn’t use steel, like Elvis or somebody.

The guitar player who worked with us had been with Stonewall for two years and was a fine player. His name was Reggie Allie. Reggie played a Micro-Frets guitar. I was impressed that it had a roller nut. I was playing a Sho-Bud and I believe it was a Custom Baldwin model.

Anyway, these were good days and I would probably still be there if I hadn’t burned up Stonewall’s other bus which was a 4104 General Motors. I just couldn’t get it to go fast enough. It didn’t want to go over 88 mph.

News Flash: In case you hadn’t heard, Dolly Parton was in a car wreck last week in Nashville. She was riding as a passenger in a friend’s SUV. I don’t know what kind of shape she’s in but knowing Dolly, her shape is pretty good. I wish her a speedy recovery.

I would like to report that I have seen a lot of steel guitar with alternative rock bands on television lately. The late night shows like Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman and Jay Leno are booking a lot of bands with steel guitar. All I can say is, the future looks good. I think we should continually remember those who are helping us, even though it may be from the sidelines.

Bobby Lee is one of those people that has become a legend in the steel guitar world. His steel guitar forum on the internet is priceless to many players. It’s given us a means of communication to bring the community closer together.

While I’m thinking about it, we need to buy some more previously owned guitars. We prefer late models of Sho-Bud, Fessenden, Derby, GFI, Emmons and any guitars that tune with nylon tuners. If you have such a guitar for sale, please give us a call. A check will be sent out upon delivery of the guitar to our store.

I thank Bob Hempker, a friend of many years and an alumni of the Loretta Lynn show for 23 years, for doing a wonderful job filling in for me while I was unable to do these newsletters. Bob is a great player and has many war stories of his own which he’d better not tell.

Don’t wait for the last minute to register for the workshop on November 30th. Secure your place now. www.steelguitar.net/workshop.html. Call 615 481-0144 and get on the roster.

www.steelguitar.net
info@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
Open 9AM – 2Pm Second and Third Saturday of each Month
Closed Sunday