Sliding Steel Symphonies: The Necessary Return for Steel Pedal Guitar
With Faye Webster’s Underdressed at The Symphony Tour coming around the corner to MTELUS, chatting about favorite songs abounds when her music is mentioned. Right Side of My Neck, I Know You, Kingston, Better Distractions, and She Won’t Go Away are arguably her biggest, catchiest tunes with some of her best performances. Her tear-aching voice and poignant lyrics are unparalleled in today’s indie scene, with the addition of a secret sauce: steel pedal guitar. A staple to classic Country music, this 10-20 string, unwieldy piece of musical prowess gives her songs that Georgia twang that, I believe, sets her apart from the rest. While I admit that many may be turned off from the instrument because of its roots in Country-Western, but to that I say: get over it! If you listen to ALL music then actually listen to some REAL country for god’s sake! Aside from my gripe – recommendations will be provided for further indoctrination into the country-sphere – steel guitar is formative to Western pop music. From Rock to Gospel, Hawaiian to alternative; steel guitar deserves its flowers. Though I will cover the steel guitar’s various iterations, I will primarily send my love to the steel pedal guitar of the mid-twentieth century, the guitar most familiar to Western ears. And while I won’t get into specifics on the playing of such an instrument, please trust me when I say it comes with a certain level of theory and virtuosity.
Since the advent of recorded music in the late 1800s, the steel guitar has existed thanks to Hawaiian music. With Portuguese vaqueros introducing the guitar to the Islands in the late 1800s, and with the introduction of steel strings, Hawaiians pioneered a distinct playing style: open-tuning of the strings, placed on the lap, with a thick metal rod to hold over the neck. Joseph Kekuku, a Hawaiian guitar native, would lead Hawaiian music’s popularity in the States through vaudeville and motion pictures. It was at this same time that Country music got its popular origins thanks to artists like Jimmy Rogers. It would be the emergence of these genres that saw a fusion of Hawaiian-style guitar in early Country music with artists like Hoot Gibson and the aforementioned Rogers in the late 20s. However, once again, the advancements in recording technology facilitated a new sound, this time electrification; the advent of the modern pedal steel guitar. In the 1930s, spawning from another genre fusion, Country steel guitar godfathers, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys would cement the instrument into Country legend with their unique style of Western Swing music. Drawing from Jazz, Blues, Swing, and Western, the Texas Playboys gave Country a danceable, popular sound in large part because of the steel guitar’s driving harmonies on tracks like Steel Guitar Rag. From the 1950s and ’60s onward, the instrument found its heyday in the “Nashville Sound”, a highly polished, poppy Country genre, that produced Steel legends like Pete Drake, Lloyd Green, and Buddy Emmons. Yet, while steel was widely perceived as a Country-centric instrument, its persistence throughout popular music found itself in various genres across America. From Swans’ droning post-rock soundscapes to the alternative, shoegaze stylings of Japancakes, through the ballads of Linda Ronstadt, and the plain, tongue-in-cheek country foray of Ween’s Twelve Golden Country Greats, steel pedal is that special sauce that applies to all sorts of American music.
If there was a word I could give the sound of a steel pedal it’d be ‘free’; the pedal’s legato and open-tuning just sound right to the ears. Coupled with the instrument’s signature sliding can add a bittersweet, dramatic texture to tracks lacking in flavor and need of melancholy. At the same time, the instrument also provides twang and lightheartedness to other happier, classic honky tonk tunes. It’s all those things together that can make steel pedal guitar so emotional for me. I’ll admit I’ve cried many a time to a love-sick country song or instrumental ballad with the melancholic moaning of steel pedal. Picture a partly cloudy summer afternoon in southwest Ohio, cruising over to a Drive-In movie following a breakup, when the chorus to “Kingston” comes on with Webster’s heartbreaking vocals, accented by the moan of a steel pedal guitar (true story!). I promise you, the right steel pedal track can unleash the waterworks if you’re feeling blue.
I do concede that steel pedal is inescapably Country, if not very expensive and unwieldy; the genre can be unrelatable and tacky at times, nonetheless, it is still a unique, storied, and formative instrument to American music. It can transcend genre, appeal to different emotions, and map the musical history of the U.S. very few instruments can claim. Even with the instrument’s country history, it’s a sound people like and resonate with: If steel pedal is on so many of Faye Webster’s most beloved songs, I can’t see why more people couldn’t love it as much as I do. With that, I implore anyone going to see Faye soon (and myself, god willing I find the money for those tickets) to listen for that lovely steel twang.
P.S. I highly suggest watching Ken Burn’s documentary on Country Music (if you have the time). Additionally, here’s the playlist with aforementioned Steel greats and further indoctrination into country music:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/33OQ5rJr1yKiYCpFHtTwgH?si=nFNHMsYaRxyAcG7jFfroBQ&pi=u-iznY25CXQzyj
By “Big” Shea McDonnell
