Guitar Jam

Six Strings Down - Steel Legend "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow Dies

By Joe Sass
"Sneaky" Pete Kleinow of The Flying Burrito Brothers fame passed away on Saturday at the age of 72. Over the past few years, he had been living at a nursing home in Petaluma California suffering from Alzheimers.  During an interview with the AP, his daughter Anita Klienow, said, "he was diagnosed about two years ago now and definitely didn't want to be left in a nursing home or anything like that. I think he made it in his head he didn't want to be there and found a way not to be."

Kleinow's steel guitar playing started when he picked up the instrument as a teen in South Bend Indiana. His love for the pedal steel came from listening to Grand Ole Opry broadcasts on the radio. A natural talent, he picked up the instrument quickly and began playing on live radio shows at the age of 16.  "It was a God-given talent," Anita said. "He fell in love with it and was immediately expert with it."

Pete's big break came when Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman left the Byrds in 1968 and invited him to join their new band, the Flying Burrito Brothers.

When Pete joined The Flying Burrito brothers, he helped define an era of country rock in the late 60's and early 70's. He was one of the first to take the pedal steel into a rock mode, using a fuzzbox pedal and backwards recording techniques. His influence on guitar players Jerry Garcia of the Dead and Buddy Cage of The New Riders helped to shape their sound.

Quickly, Pete found himself playing as a highly requested session musician for artists like John Lenon Jackson Browne, Frank Zappa, Little Feat, The Steve Miller Band. Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, and a laundry list of today's leading artists.

In 2000, Kleinow formed a group called Burrito Deluxe with Garth Hudson, former organist of The Band, Carlton Moody of the Moody Brothers on lead vocals and guitars, bassist Jeff "Stick" Davis of Amazing Rhythm Aces and drummer Rick Lonow. The group recorded two albums, Georgia Peach and 'The Whole Enchilada. Kleinow's last performance was at a 2005 Gram Parsons' tribute concert.

Kleinow leaves behind his wife Ernestine, daughters Anita and Tammy, and three sons, Martin, Aaron and Cosmo. Currently the family is working on plans for a memorial service to be held in Joshua Tree. No date has been set.

Steel Crazy: Getting Started on Steel Part Two: Pedal Steel

By Bill McCloskey
A Pedal Steel Guitar is a beast. It is big, it is heavy, it is complicated, and it is easily the most mechanical “portable” instrument in the world. It also can make sounds that no other instrument can make, which is why people get hooked, are addicted to the sound, and are willing to put in the years of work it takes to get comfortable behind this contraption.

So what is a Pedal Steel Guitar anyway? As we mentioned in our first column, the Pedal Steel was designed as an answer to the then current “Steel Guitar” problem. As the lap steel or as it is also known, the “Straight Steel” matured, additional strings were added opening up the opportunity to experiment with different Steel tunings. Different tunings led to multiple necks, eventually expanding to the “Quad” or four necked steel guitar.

Someone had the bright idea of adding a few pedals to the steel so that depressing a couple of levers, the steel could be re-tuned. Eventually someone discovered that by hitting the pedals while playing, a whole new sound, never heard before, could be made. The seminal recording that marks the beginning of pedal steel as a force and the beginning of the end for straight steel players is the song “Slowly” released in 1953 by country star Webb Pierce. Click here to hear the steel parts of Slowly That song drove Steel players crazy as they tried to figure out how it was done. It was done on a new invention: not just a steel anymore, a steel with pedals was now born and the world would never be the same.

In a nut shell, a Pedal Steel guitar is like a steel guitar but instead of the strings being fixed near the bridge, each string is attached to a crank, or changer, which is rotated via a mechanism of rods, pedals, and knee levers. That changer can tighten the string and thus raise the tone of the note a step or two, so that a C note is now a D just by pressing a lever, or the opposite: a string can grow slack and have the tone lowered.  By pressing different combinations of pedals and knee levers, completely different chords can be formed on the same strings at the same horizontal position of the bar on the strings. The Pedals and Knee Levers can be set up in different configurations and additional pedals and knee levers can be added and customized. Each Pedal or lever can raise one or more strings, lower one or more strings, or do both at the same time, raising some strings and lowering others. As a result chords can seem to melt into each other, a trick that no other instrument I’m aware of can pull off to the degree that a Pedal Steel can.

Traditionally the guitar can have one or two necks of usually 10 or 12 strings. The standard set up for most country steel guitarists is a 10 string neck tuned to an E9th chord and a minimum of 3 pedals. A second neck, which is more popular among jazzier, swing-style players, again with 10 strings, is usually tuned to a C6 chord. A third configuration, called the Universal Tuning, is a single 12 string neck which combines the E9th and C6th tunings in a single neck, although it drops the C6th tuning two steps to a Bb6 tuning to make this magic happen.

All these pedals, levers, necks, and strings keeps the Steel Guitarist pretty busy as you can imagine as every part of the body is engaged: feet, knees, hands, eyes, and, hopefully, ears.

The exact combination of strings, tunings, pedals, and knee levers, plus the strings that each raises or lowers is known as the instrument’s Copedent which stands for ChOrd PEDal arrangemENT (don’t ask me why). It is the mating call of all Pedal Steel Guitarists and is usually the first words out of their mouths when talking about a new Steel they might have purchased or are thinking of purchasing, or are thinking of selling: “What’s Your Copedent?”.

Other accessories in the arsenal of most  Pedal Steel guitarists include a volume pedal (in order to make those nice volume swells that are part and parcel of country pedal steel playing) and, of course,  an amp. Because of the dynamic range possible in a pedal steel, special Steel Guitar amps are employed and manufactured by companies such as Peavey, Fender, and other independent manufacturers. Other fun toys include reverb units and a slew of other effects.

All of this can make getting started in Pedal Steel expensive. Fortunately, Pedal Steel manufacturer, Carter, has come up with a solution: The Carter Starter. Priced at well under $1,000, the beginning steel player can get started with everything the need, including an amp for just north of $1,000.

And as long as you are interested in playing country music, there is a big old pile of instructional material and the Carter Starter can play about 90% of it. The late Jeff Newman has complete courses in Pedal Steel that will get you up and wailing in hours. Other well regarded teachers and materials include the late Winnie Winston’s book, and materials from Joe Wright, which  are my personal favorite. Joe also has the distinction of playing a great rock and roll pedal steel and provides one of the few courses available for those wanting to rock out.

As far as players go, Buddy Emmons is God to most Pedal Steel players and his name is spoken with reverence among all steel players, the way Clapton or Hendrix, or Steve Ray are among guitar players. Other great players include Herbie Wallace, the late Hal Rugg, and Paul Franklin who has played with Dire Straits. And of course we can’t mention rock and roll steel without mentioning the great pioneer Sneaky Pete, who was responsible for many people taking up steel in the first place after hearing him wail with country rock bands from the 70’s like the Flying Burrito Brothers. And much to the consternation of many in the Steel Guitar community, Jerry Garcia’s Pedal Steel playing on Crosby Stills and Nash’s “Teach Your Children Well” is probably the most instantly recognizable PSG licks, by a cross over audience,  in the history of the instrument.

The Pedal Steel Guitar does face its challenges: the cost and weight of the equipment can limit its appeal and the rock bands that drove demand in the 70’s are no longer around to excite a new generation. Even in the country music realm, steel guitar which so defined country music for an older generation, is goes missing as country acts become pop acts with a cowboy hat.

The sad fact is that hard core Pedal Steel players are an ever aging group. But there is hope on the horizon. Unknown until the late 90’s, a whole tradition of Black worship music whose main instrument was the straight and pedal steel has been making people leap to their feet since the 30’s in House of God churches around the country. Unknown outside of the church until it was recorded by a documentary film crew in Florida just a few years ago, this music, marketed as Sacred Steel, has excited a new generation of musicians with its driving rhythms and rock-style playing. Robert Randolph grew out of this tradition and is documented in his teens playing in the House of God church in Newark and, along with his band, has been able to cross over and popularize the Sacred Steel tradition within the pop mainstream. The Campbell Brothers present a closer tie to the original church tradition and are just drop jaw amazing. Pick up their latest album “Can You Feel It” if you want to have your world changed. This is music so exciting, that you won’t believe it has been closeted away under our noses for so many years.

For those wanting additional info on Pedal Steel Guitar, the best resource, bar none is the Steel Guitar Forum.

Next time: the last in our “Getting Started” article as we attack the lap or straight steel.

Steel Crazy: Getting Started on Steel: Part One: Resonators

By Bill McCloskey
Okay, let’s face it: learning to play Steel Guitar is no job for wimps. Other than the bagpipes, there is probably no more difficult instrument to get started on.  The steel guitarist newbie faces a plethora of decisions before playing their first note: what kind of instrument to get, how many strings, how many necks, what tuning, and where to find instructional materials.  How easy, by comparison, the standard guitarist has it: pick electric or acoustic, choose a price range, and then pull from literally a mountain of instructional materials – everything from Metal to Gypsy Jazz.

No, the steel guitarist travels a confusing and lonely road, grabbing tidbits of info here and there like water to a dying man.  Fortunately, by taking some well worn paths, your way is made easier (but, of course, what is the fun in that?)

Today’s column will be the first in a series on getting started on steel. We’ll start with one of the easiest paths to get going on and then slowly bring up the intensity level till we hit the mother of all learning curves: the lap steel. For while things like Pedal Steel are very complex instruments to learn and master, there is clarity to the path and a breadth to the instructional materials that at least makes the journey clear. Not so the lap steel.

If you’re tastes run towards the acoustic, and you like Bluegrass, your journey is pretty straight forward. Buy a Dobro™ or other resonator guitar (Dobro is a trademarked term, owned by Gibson,
so resonator guitar acts as a substitute name for Dobro-style instruments). While there are some variations as far as strings and tunings are concerned, the majority of resonator guitarists play the identical type of instrument:  6 strings, tuned (from bottom to top) GBDGBD. Notice that the bottom 3 strings and top 3 strings are the same, only an octave apart and that it is tuned to a major triad.

There are many very good inexpensive resonators on the market today starting at around $600 for a very playable, decent instrument and going up to about $3,500 and more for a custom, handmade instrument. Luthiers at the top end include Paul Beard, Tim Scheerhorn, and Carroll Benoit, although you can expect a wait for one of these beauties (last time I checked, Scheerhorn’s waiting list was 5 years long, although Beard and Benoit have a much more reasonable waiting time). I personally play a Beard “Mike Auldridge” (MA) model and it is everything you could hope for in a fine, beautiful sounding professional grade instrument.

Instructional materials are vast for the Resonator guitar, with web sites dedicated to enthusiasts of the instrument: the message board at jerrydouglas.com being a good one to start with.  Some of the better teaching materials out there are provided by Jimmy Heffernan , and Homespun Tapes which has instructional DVD’s by three greats of the instrument: Jerry Douglas, Cindy Cashdollar, and Rob Ickes.

Of course one of the tied and true methods of learning any instrument is the ancient art of ripping off licks, and to do that you need to listen to a lot of the best players. Fortunately, there are a number of great players to listen to and a vast discography. Historically there are three players that stand out as representing milestones in the instrument’s development. Each represents a different generation of playing and each represents a shift in playing style that influenced all the players who came after them: Josh Graves, Mike Auldridge, and Jerry Douglas.

Josh Graves played with the seminal Flatt and Scruggs band and was the first to incorporate Earl Scruggs’s 3 finger roll banjo style into fast lick Dobro Bluegrass playing. Mike Auldridge was the original Dobro player in Seldom Scene and he is credited with incorporating a more sophisticated sound which he enhanced by expanding the range of the instrument through the occasional use of 8 strings and alternate tunings. And while Mike can be credited with expanding interest in the Resonator Guitar, particularly among fellow musicians, Jerry Douglas brought mass appeal to the instrument through his innovative solo work, as well as his high profile projects with Alison Krauss band and the “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou” soundtrack, as well as thousands of studio sessions as a side man.

Besides the rip-off method, other forms of learning include Private Lessons and Workshops. If you live on the east coast you are truly blessed: the great Mike Auldridge gives private lessons from his Maryland based home as well as teaching workshops around the country. If you are near the Jersey area, Jimmy Heffernan provides not only private lessons, but one the best one-day Dobro workshops ever. Near New Haven, you can pick up some private lessons with master player, teacher and writer Stacy Philips.

Certainly listening to these masters of the instrument, you would never know that the Resonator Guitar can be a fairly limited instrument, chord wise, because for true masters, there are no limitations. For us mere mortals, however, it is important to realize that the standard Dobro tuning does have some serious drawbacks to it. The standard Dobro tuning provides you with a nice triad, but pulling a minor chord out of it can be challenging and in many keys, impossible to get a full 3 note minor triad. Resonator guitarists soon learn to work around these challenges by de-emphasizing the flatted third or hinting at chords and letting the mind (or the rest of the band) filling the missing pieces. Single note work, fast runs, and two note harmonized scales thus play a big part in the Resonator Guitarist’s bag of tricks.  And while the use of slants (tilting the bar or “steel” to pick up notes that are on adjacent strings but not on the same fret marker) is a worthy technique to master, many of the modern players, like Douglas, forgo them for speed.

A key part of the modern Resonator sound comes from heavy use of pull-offs and hammer-ons, one of the first techniques (along with string muting) that a Resonator Guitarist needs to master. It should be pointed out that other forms of steel such as lap steel and pedal steel do not emphasis the same techniques that resonator guitar does and trying to master multiple styles of steel playing at the same time can be a hamper your progress. An acoustic instrument relies on the force of the fingers (and in Resonator Guitar playing, particularly the Thumb) to create dynamics and tension, while electronic instruments such as the Pedal Steel rely on mechanical and electronic  means such as a volume pedal or volume control to adjust dynamic levels and create interest. While some players such as Mike Auldridge have mastered both Pedal Steel and Dobro, other greats like Jerry Douglas gave up playing Pedal Steel because it was negatively affecting their bread and butter techniques.

Another key technique to be mastered, no matter what style of steel playing you take up, is string muting, to prevent unwanted strings from vibrating and to make sure that the note you are playing has a nice clean sound. The technique of String Muting is consistent across all forms of steel playing and separates the good players from the rest of the pack. We will go into damping and muting strings in a future column, but just know for now that there are different methods and proper technique can utilize either hand.

Resonator Guitars can be a great place to start on your steel guitar journey. It is hard to make a bad sound on them, since they are tuned to a major triad, they are portable, and for the most part easy to play. It is exactly how I started to play. The great thing about Resonator guitar, especially if you go to a lot of jam sessions, is that you will most likely be the only resonator guitarist in the room, you will always get a solo, and you will never have to lend your instrument out to the drunk guy who wants to play Stairway to Heaven. If that is not heaven, I don’t know what is.

And you are not stuck playing Bluegrass if that is not your thing. A listen to the Jerry Douglas discography will illustrate just how wide the musical spectrum can be. I play a lot of Irish and American String Band music on the Dobro and it works well with early jazz tunes as well, not to mention country. It also works well accompanying a singer songwriter: if you don’t believe me take a listen to the Jerry Douglas – Peter Rowan duet album Yonder.

Music doesn’t get much better than that.

Next time: we’ll tackle getting up started with Pedal Steel.

Steel Crazy: Introducing Steel Guitar

By Bill McCloskey
Yes, ask anyone, I’m Steel Crazy after all these years: welcome to the first article in my new column dedicated to love of the Steel Guitar - Steel Crazy.

We are going to start by first defining exactly what we mean by Steel Guitar, and believe me it is not an easy task. The definition is even now debated by aficionados of the instrument, mainly because it is so many different things to so many different types of people, music, and cultures.  Steel Guitar takes many different forms: acoustic, electric, with pedals, without pedals, 6 string, 8 string, 10 string, 12 string and more. Single necks, Double necks, Triples, Quads. Rock, Hawaiian, Country, Jazz, Western Swing, Sacred Steel and Devotional Music, Blues, and even Avant-garde.

In fact, I would say that if you are looking for an instrument to make your own – if you are looking for a place to truly develop a unique voice, one that has never been heard before, there is no better place to start than the Steel Guitar.

The first thing to understand is that Steel Guitar is not defined by the building material of the instrument – even National Steels aren’t made of Steel – but by the piece of metal you hold in your hand – the “steel” – that you use to fret the strings.

History holds that back in 1885, 11 year old Hawaiian Joseph Kekuku picked up a railroad tie on his way to school and used it to drag across the strings of his guitar, creating the first “steel guitar”. This story may or may not be true, considering that the Oahu Railway didn’t start running in Hawaii until 1889, but nevertheless it is the only story we have.

But certainly, THAT SOUND, the sliding sound of metal against metal with it’s eerie ability to mimic the human voice began there in Hawaii and from there transformed everything known as “popular” music from that time down until day. From Johnny Winter to Jerry Douglas to Buddy Emmons, to Jerry Garcia to B.B King – nearly every aspect of what we call popular music (including the invention of the electric guitar) had its roots back on that day in Hawaii, even though there may or may not have been  actual railroad tracks there. Thinking of it that way, Hawaii is Eden and Joseph Kekuku is our Adam.

The other thing that differentiates Steel Guitar from, say, the Bottleneck Guitar of the old (and new) blues players is that Steel Guitar is played flat – on a horizontal plane – either in your lap or on a stand, or as part of a larger console. So, from a definition standpoint, those are the only 2 things that all steel guitars have in common: you play it flat and you play it with a “steel” or bar in your hand, on raised strings. The strings are never fretted with your fingers.

From there things get wild and wooly pretty fast. I’ll be devoting individual columns about all the major transformations of the Steel Guitar in future columns, but for this introductory examination, we’ll condense things pretty radically:

The first mass-marketed and popular Steel Guitar was the National Steel Tricone guitar invented by John Dopyera. Together with his brother, the Dopyera Brothers had a lasting impact on the future of music. Not only did they invent the guitar that helped popularize and imbue the Hawaiian sound into Tin Pan Alley, Jazz, and Blues, they also invented a hybrid instrument, the Dobro (from DOpyera BROthers) which became a signature sound of Bluegrass. Key to these instruments was the “resonator” an attempt to make an acoustic amplification system so that the guitar could be heard above an orchestra before there were PA systems.

This eventually led to an electric version of the Steel Guitar, manufactured by a number of companies including Rickenbacker, National, Gibson, and Fender. Starting out as 6 strings, and pushed door-to-door and through outlets like Sears, these instruments were geared to capitalizing on the Hawaiian music craze of the time but soon got co-opted into Western Swing, Hillbilly Boogie Music, and Country and once that happened all hell broke loose. These are the instruments which are commonly called “Lap Steel” guitars and will be a major focus of this column.

6 Strings soon became 8 strings. With 8 strings, multiple tunings were experimented with. Some tunings were considered secrets of the trade with at least one famous musician de-tuning his guitar during breaks so that no one could steel his invention. Multiple tunings lead to multiple necks – first a double neck, then a triple neck and finally a Quad – a four necked 32 string guitar.

Eventually something had to give and in the 50’s a new variation came on the market. One in which a single neck could be employed but, through a series of pedals (and eventually knee-levers) that could be depressed, the guitar could be given different tunings without re-tuning, and eliminating the need for multiple necks.

Eventually someone realized that you could create a new sound by playing a chord and THEN pressing the pedals while holding the notes, so that two chords could seem to be pulled through each other, in a way that had never been heard before. This became the signature sound of the Pedal Steel Guitar, and launched a movement away from Steel Guitars without pedals to Steel Guitars with pedals. Eventually the Pedal Steel Guitar settled on 2 standard tunings and 2 necks to play them on, and the non-pedal guitar began it’s slow decline in popularity

But, for many people, the individuality that came from those unique tunings and ways of playing that proliferated for so long with Lap Steel musicians was lost once the more mechanical sounding Pedal Steel took it’s place in the modern recording industry.

Today there is a renaissance in these older lap steel styles, and people like David Lindley have popularized the instruments once again. Traditional Steel Guitar manufacturers such as MSA have now been pushing the envelope with exciting and newly designed lap steel models which have re-invigorated the market. It is this type of music we will be spending a lot of time with over the next months and years. And while we will touch on the innovators playing Dobro, Weissenborn, and Pedal Steel Guitars, Lap Steel is where my passion lies, and I hope your passion will soon lie as well. You might find yourself, like me, Steel Crazy after all these years.

As a final note, if you are a Steel guitar player, manufacturer, or producer and would like to have your album and product reviewed contact me through the Guitar Jam Daily site.