The song in my head is Mandolin Wind, which is one of my favorite old Rod Stewarts, except it seems to be about a guy living out on the prairie where winter can kill you, and contains the line “Except of course my steel guitar.” Which…so what, right?
Well, when the song was popular in ’71 or ’72, the only “steel guitar” with which I was familiar was a pedal steel guitar, which instrument figured prominently in every single one of the country music songs – of the “cheatin’ songs” school of country music – which blighted an important part of my childhood until I grew sullen and hostile at the mere sound of the words country music…
…and so that is the instrument in the mental picture I form every time I hear Rod Stewart sing that line about the steel guitar.
Which in turn makes me stop whatever else I was doing and wonder what the hell a guy in a sod house would be doing with a pedal steel guitar. Aren’t they electric? They’re about as portable as an organ, but some of those people actually did have organs, so, I dunno, maybe it’s possible that steel guitars were big among people whose principal forms of winter entertainment were playing music and watching buffalo freeze to death…
Hey, sue me. I’m easily distractible.
Anyway, the instrument to which he probably referred was really this,
Which is also played with a slide and produces more or less the same effect as a pedal steel guitar except it’s not the instrument I loathe purely through association with Hank Williams and all his clones, and which I thought was called a Dobro guitar. Clearly there’s a Dobro and not a pedal steel guitar in Mandolin Wind. As well as a mandolin, of course. Both instruments are common in Bluegrass, which I rather like, and not in Cheatin’ Songs, which I despise.
There, now. I’m going to go do my chores while trying to think of some other song. Melanie, perhaps…
I agree, it had to be a Dobro, that’s a brand of steel resonator guitars. I always liked that song too,except the freezing part. I don’t like freezing.
These days when you think “dobro”, the very next thing to come into your mind should be Jerry Douglas, because he is the king of that instrument. He does bluegrass great, but he takes the instrument far beyond that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gukFvG8VbK4
Melanie, eh? Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIFknAdVvNM
And of course, there’s the blues . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SZIFHJIjEw
Oh, yeah . . .
jabrwok – Never do that again.
Yeah, sometimes when people use the term “steel guitar”, they are referring to anything played with the heavy, whole-hand slide (actually called a “steel”), usually over the top of the neck and often with the instrument laid out flat, either suspended or resting on the lap. Dobros, Weissenborns, metal bodied resonators, pedal steels, lap steels, and any number of home-appropriated, junkyard-dog guitars with a high-enough action and a suitably reckless player. 🙂
I haven’t yet tried that style of playing, but I’d like to, some day. The opportunity for expression and sonic abuse is nearly limitless (as I am discovering, and loving, in my own experiments with defretted guitars), and–to second Ben’s nod–as Jerry Douglas has shown us, the instrument can fit in nearly any style of music you’d care to play. (There’s a reason he’s called “Flux”.)
Here’s my contribution to the earworm fund: the Douglas-penned From Ankara to Izmir, with Russ Barenberg on guitar and Edgar Meyer on yes,-that-is-a-bass. (Still one of the best composing trios I’ve ever heard.)
jabrwok – Never do that again.
Don’t worry, that’s the only one of her songs I’m familiar with:-D.
Gad, that was an aggravating song…
> Don’t worry, that’s the only one of her songs I’m familiar with
It’s also the only song of hers that most people are familiar with. I suppose there are worse things to be remembered for. Without looking, the only other song of hers I can think of is ‘Lay Down’.
But, as long as we’re doin’ the musical thang, check out Ledward Kaapana.
So, ‘sonic abuse’ using a slide? How ’bout a nice Hawaiian Punch?
Check out Robert Randolph & the Family Band to see what can be done with a pedal steel guitar. I promise it ain’t “cheating ” songs.