What a shock, eh? We all know country radio sucks, because they don’t play country music. Duh.

One in five country music fans never tune in to country radio stations, according to a research study released Wednesday afternoon at Country Radio Seminar, a four-day national gathering of music makers, players and radio industry executives in downtown Nashville.

Instead, self-described country music fans get their music from websites, their own collections stored on iPods or listening to other types of radio stations, the annual report on industry trends found.

When I want to listen to country music I get it from my own collection, certainly not from the radio. Unless it’s an internet station, like Shufflemainia.

Read the rest of the story on The Tennessean.

The cat who could play a steel guitar.

It was a dark and stormy night and I was on a long road trip with Faron, and RIchard and I were the last ones still up, drinking one more beer (apiece) and discussing life in general.

“Can you think of a dead steel guitar player?” one of us asked. “I mean a famous one, a well-known one, who worked with big artists and was on some hit records?”

Another swallow of beer, and the other one of us said, “Hmm, no.”

We considered that for a few moments as the dark Texas landscape whizzed by at 70mph. Oh, wait, the bus was going 70mph. Neither one of us could think of a dead steel guitar player.

Pete Drake died not too long after that, in 1988, and AFAWK he was the first one to go to the big recording studio in the sky. Jimmy Day went in 1999 and Jimmy Crawford in 2005. You can look up other dead musicians here.

Some not so well known steel guitar players, guys that I hung around with in Nashville and traded licks with, died some time after that late-night bus conversation.

Chuck Bartlett was a fine player, from Ohio, who worked with John Conlee and Kitty Wells and who played every club in Nashville at one time or another, night after night, when he wasn’t on the road. He had a beautiful Sho~Bud that I sat in on many times. I followed him on the Red Sovine gig. Cancer got him.

I met Wayne Kincaid at a club on Lower Broad in 1972 when I bought my first steel guitar at the Sho~Bud store. I’d hang out in Merchant’s and watch him play, and on the breaks I’d bug him, asking what this or that knee lever did or something. He was an old West Virginia coal miner, and a crotchety bastard whom everybody didn’t get along with, but we were great friends. He minded my drink for me one time at Gabe’s when I had to go knock some smart-ass out the door. He was at Gabe’s for many years, and toward the end the cancer was really getting to him and he’d call me at the last minute some nights to sub for him when the pain was too bad. I went to his funeral, in Fairview, where Billy Walker presided over the proceedings from the pulpit and LaDonna Capps sang, and I inherited his gig at Gabe’s.

There’s been a bunch of other pickers pass on since I’ve been in town. Guys I’ve worked with, roomed on the road with, learned music from, drank with, loaned money to… If you have a musician friend, cherish him or her. At 2AM after the gig when you’re packing up your axe you never can be sure that you’ll ever pick together again.

When you work with the same bunch of musicians for a while, or even the same kind of musicians, you develop nicknames or introductions for oft-played songs. I worked with Faron Young for a long time, and when he said “Here’s Cal’s favorite song” I knew we were going to do “Country Girl”. Didn’t matter if I hated that song, which I didn’t, but it was our cue to kick it off. Just part of the show.

I worked with a bass player who, when he said “Here’s my favorite George Jones song” I knew to kick off “She Thinks I Still Care”. Which goes by a lot of other nicknames, like “She Stinks But I Still Care”, “She Thinks I Steal Cars” and “She Thinks I’m Still Queer” to name a few.

“The Bottle Let Me Down” and “Swingin’ Doors” are often confused, which wouldn’t be a big deal if they weren’t in such disparate keys, “Bottle” usually being in “D” and “Doors” usually being in “G”. So we developed a mnemonic to help us remember their respective keys, and we ever after called “The Bottle Let Me Down” “D Bottle Let Me Down”. “Swingin’ Doors” has also been known as “Closin’ Time”.

So the chick singer wants to do “Crazy”? Holler “Nuts” across the bandstand and we all know we have to play “Crazy” yet again.

I do an instrumental rendition of Gene Watson’s version of “No One Will Ever Know” and I call it “No One Will Ever Suspect”. Which isn’t far from the truth most of the time. And “Steel Guitar Rag” is “The Rag’.

One band I worked with did “When Two Worlds Collide” and we called it “Clyde”. Roger MIller, who wrote it, called it the same thing, or so we later heard.

“The Other Woman’’ is “The Udder Woman” or “the Other Mother”, “Last Date” is “Lost Date”, “Statue of A Fool” is “Statutory Fool” and “From the Window Up Above” is “From the Window of A Bus”.

There’s also some yet un-written songs, like “I Miss You More Every Day, But My Aim’s Getting Better”.

But our favorite song is “Here’s our favorite song, and we hope it’s one of yours”, Kenny Price’s “The Shortest Song in the World”, the break song.

My old pal Lynn Owsley, former Minitman, stopped by the Wild Country Jamboree Fri night to visit a little. Stop by his web site and visit him.

Apparently Kellie Pickler is a Nashville recording artist, and a star of some stature. I don’t keep up on these things, so how would I know? But she seems to have done an unusual thing – she recorded a country album, in Nashville. I happened to notice something about steel guitar during the course of my Internet researches, so I naturally clicked on the link and found all this out by reading the resulting interview, an excerpt from which follows:

“There’s steel guitar all over this album. What do you think that brings out in the music that you’re making?
Steel guitar is one of my absolute favorite instruments. There’s something about the sound. It’s almost like it’s crying at times. You can feel the heartache or you can feel the fun that it’s having, I guess you could say. In songs like “Stop Cheating on Me,” it’s funny and really lighthearted — the steel guitar in that song is a smartass, you know? The steel guitar in “Mother’s Day” is crying, is emotional, is letting go.”

I got hold of the CD and gave it a listen, and it ain’t bad, pretty country, with some fine steel guitar. By whom, I couldn’t tell, so if you know, let me know.

Here’s the whole enchilada.

Leann’s latest creation at Sharp Covers Nashville. Click photo for larger image.

The tail pipe fell off my Camaro on the way home from a gig one night and I wired it back up with a string from my Pack A Seat. But apparently there are other, more sinister, uses for strings. Who woulda thunk?

TOWNSVILLE’S Stuart Prison has been in lockdown in a search for three steel guitar strings officials fear may be made into garrottes.

Authorities had been made aware the guitar strings were missing several days ago but only locked down the prison for the first time yesterday, prison guards told The Courier-Mail.

“Officials suddenly realised that steel wire in the hands of dangerous men can become a deadly and silent weapon,” one source said.

“Assassins used to make their garrottes out of two handles and a loop of steel wire.

“It is easy to work out why hardened criminals should not be running around inside jail with that sort of weapon.”

It is understood the strings were taken from a guitar used in taxpayer-funded music lessons for inmates at the high-security north Queensland jail.
Source

“It started as what Dennis Beaver calls “a carport thing” in 2004 — a tiny gathering of pedal steel guitar enthusiasts comparing notes on an instrument that Beaver sums up as “the mood-enhancing instrument of all country recordings.”

Read all about it.