Word: instrumentality
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...YEARS, the band I've been leading breaks up. But by a stroke of luck, a friend has recently bequeathed me an old ZB Custom pedal steel, and I figure, what better time to tackle my old nemesis. It turns out my gift guitar was abused as a young instrument, and I send it to Nashville to be worked on by veteran steel repairman Mike Cass, a classic tinkerer in the Bud Isaacs mode, who has a few extra metal rods custom-made for me for what seems like a ridiculously low price. Mike gives me detailed explanations regarding...
...different clusters of strings and using various combinations of pedals and levers, one can play a virtually unlimited number of chord variations. My guitar has one neck, in the E ninth tuning that is the standard for country-style playing. Some of the more advanced players use double-necked instruments with one neck tuned to E ninth and the other to C sixth, for jazz and swing; a 12-string "universal" hybrid also exists. But I'm keen on the bubbly pentatonic sounds of straight country, and another neck right now would just be a cruel joke...
...find it vaguely creepy too. Keeping the genre fresh and alive is going to take more than an embalmer's devotion, and suddenly Jerry Garcia seems a lot more relevant than some might give him credit for. It is about music first, after all, not just the instrument...
...everybody knows your name. Make that every Buddy - it seems that the biggest guns in the business frequent the site, including the legendary Buddy Emmons, who is frequently referred to in postings simply as The Greatest Pedal Steel Player Who Ever Lived. A query about the history of the instrument gets me a personal e-mail from one of its elder statesmen, Maurice Anderson. It's the pedal steel equivalent of a guitar chat group where Jeff Beck or George Benson would weigh in occasionally...
...Throughout the convention, as in the online forums, one gets the sense of lore carefully being passed along. The instrument's pioneers, after all, are still with us for the most part, but judging from the convention it doesn't appear to be a magnet for youth: At 45, I'm in the younger half of my 10-man seminar, and I see maybe two people all weekend who are clearly under 30. Perhaps I'm not the only one who got put off by it the first time around...