AJ Ghent’s uniquely inspired Singing Guitar has its roots in the Sacred Steel musical style and African-American gospel traditions that developed out of a group of Pentecostal churches across the South. Ghent comes from a long line of innovative players, including his father, Aubrey Ghent Sr., and grandfather, Henry Nelson. His great uncle Willie Eason is credited as the founder of the Sacred Steel rhythmic guitar style.Ghent invited John Bohlinger and the PG team to his soundcheck before his show at Nashville’s City Winery to talk through his rig and play some inspiring music on his lap and pedal steels.
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Guitars
Ghent keeps it simple on this current solo tour. His number one is this 6-string Asher custom model lap steel built to 25" scale. The neck-through-body is African okoume wood, from the Congo, similar to mahogany but lighter. The top is quilted maple and the fretboard is rosewood. There’s a Lindy Fralin Pure PAF in the bridge, and a Fralin hum-free P90 in the neck position, hidden under a humbucker cover. There’s also a LR Baggs acoustic Tune-o-matic-style bridge, with acoustic pickups under the saddles. A Bartolini acoustic magnetic blend circuit combines with a chicken head control knob to blend the acoustic with the other pickups. Ghent uses Rocky Mountain Slides Company slides, and Dunlop finger and thumb picks. The coveted Asher is strung with Asher Electro Hawaiian Lap Steel Strings.
This 6-string Jackson Maverick HD pedal steel guitar features two foot pedals and four knee levers. It’s based on the classic Sho-Bud Maverick. Ghent runs it straight into a Goodrich volume pedal then into his amp, sans effects. The Jackson is strung with either D’Addarios or Asher Electro Hawaiian strings, depending on what is handy.
Pedalboard
Ghent’s tone is really about the guitar and the amp, but he does have a modest pedalboard that includes an Eventide H90 and a Boss RC-5 Loop Station. He uses Lava Cable to connect the dots.
Amps
AJ runs his lap steel through his pedals then onto his AJ Ghent 12" Signature Edition Guitar Amplifier by Quilter Labs. The signature combo is stacked with a Celestion Copperback speaker.
For his pedal steel, Ghent plugs directly into his Milkman The Amp 100, which feeds a Quilter Labs BlockDock 15 1x15 extension cabinet.
Shop AJ Ghent's Rig
2-Quilter Labs Overdrive 202 Guitar Head
Quilter AJ Ghent 12" Signature Edition Guitar Amplifier
Quilter Labs BlockDock 12CB 1 x 12" Extension Cabinet
Boss RC-5 Loop Station Compact
Eventide H90 Harmonizer Multi-Effects Pedal
Quilter Labs BlockDock 15 1 x 15" Extension Cabinet
Celestion Copperback 12-inch 250-watt Guitar Amp Replacement Speaker
Aloha
The pedal steel’s history began before country music existed, far from the centers of hillbilly and honky tonk. It originated, pre-pedals, in the Hawaiian Islands. The 6-string guitar was introduced there by visiting European sailors in the latter part of the 19th century. The Hawaiians developed a playing style based on straight major chord tuning called “slack-key” because the strings were slackened relative to standard tuning.
Legend has it the guitar was first laid flat by a young Joseph Kekuku on the island of Oahu in 1874. As a boy, his shop teacher helped him fashion a cylindrical steel bar and metal fingerpicks. Kekuku developed a method of playing this new instrument—called “steel guitar” after the bar used to play it. He then taught it to his classmates, who carried the style to other islands. The method soon became popular all over Hawaii.
On a Hawaiian guitar, the player alters pitch by lightly pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings and sliding it around (rather than pushing strings down to the fretboard with fingers, as on the Spanish guitar). Some of these early acoustic instruments were built with a raised nut to hold the strings off the fretboard—usually about 1/2" above it—but sometimes a standard acoustic was converted to a Hawaiian guitar by raising the strings with an arched metal extender positioned over the nut. Either way, a Hawaiian guitar’s strings never touch the fretboard, and any frets or markers are purely for reference. The guitar is typically plucked using a thumbpick and metal or plastic fingerpicks. A few players—mostly rock musicians—use a conventional flatpick or bare fingers.
Developed by Hermann Weissenborn in the 1920s, the acoustic hollowneck guitar that bears his name is a close descendant of the Hawaiian guitar. Though almost forgotten for several decades, the Weissenborn has returned to the stage and studio, thanks to such lap-slide virtuosos as Ben Harper and David Lindley.
Sol Hoopii was the most famous of the Hawaiians who spread the sound of instrumental lap slide throughout the world. The earliest record of the Hawaiian guitar being used in country music is said to be when cowboy movie star Hoot Gibson brought Hoopii to Los Angeles to play in his band in the early 1920s.
The Hawaiian guitar sound was soon adapted to other genres. In the southern United States, blues musicians tuned a regular acoustic steel-string guitar to an open chord and used a knife, glass bottleneck, or sawed-off piece of pipe to glide along the strings. Hill country string bands began using a lap-played instrument that evolved into the Dobro when John and Emil Dopyera added a resonator cone to increase the guitar’s acoustic volume. (The word Dobro, a contraction of “Dopyera brothers,” also translates to “good” in the brothers’ native Slovak language.)
Despite their mind-blowing mechanical complexity, pedal steel guitars evolved from the humble 6-string lap steel.
Lap It Up
The first lap steel guitars had bodies similar to typical acoustic guitars, but by the ’30s the hollow body was replaced by a flat slab of wood or metal and electrified with pickups. These electric lap steels were originally marketed as electric Hawaiian guitars. These electric lap steels with their six to 10 strings are direct antecedents of the pedal steel. The lap steel guitar figures heavily in pedal steel history, as many bar/picking techniques and tuning variations were initially developed on this instrument.
The first production electric lap steel was introduced in 1932: the aluminum Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) A22 “Frying Pan.” This was the first electric stringed instrument of any kind. In 1935, when Bob Dunn went into the studio to play it with Western swing star Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, it also became the first electric stringed instrument on a commercial recording.
Western swing became an experimental laboratory for this new musical device. Musicians found it could provide horn-like punctuation and single-line solos, or join fiddles and guitars for three-part harmony. Extra necks were added for different tunings. Legs were sometimes added, raising the instrument off the lap and enabling players to stand. Legged versions were known as “console” steels.
Lap virtuoso Noel Boggs (who played with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and Spade Cooley) was a close friend of jazz guitar pioneer Charlie Christian. Boggs would transcribe Christian’s solos on such tunes as “Flying Home” or “Good Enough to Keep” to create arrangements for three guitars. He was one of the first players to shift from one neck to another in the middle of a solo, and was lauded for his ability to play piano-style block chords. Boggs began on a Rickenbacker, but when he met Leo Fender in 1946, he became the owner of Fender’s first steel guitar.
Another early multi-neck user was Leon McAuliffe, composer of the classic “Steel Guitar Rag.” During his tenure with Bob Wills, the bandleader’s cry of “Take it away, Leon!” was often heard.
The non-pedal steel had perhaps its most populist moment when Santo & Johnny—the Farina brothers—hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard hit parade with “Sleepwalk.” The brothers were from, of all places, Brooklyn, New York. Accompanied by Johnny on guitar, Santo played this chart-topper on a Fender triple-neck console steel.
An early triple-neck steel equipped with seven pedals. As the instrument’s technology advanced, builders added knee levers, allowing skilled players to simultaneously use their feet and legs to change string pitch.
Pedal Pushers
Lap steel players found their ability to shift from chord to chord was limited, and changing from major to minor, or from the I to the IV or V required skittering the bar across the neck. Players devised workarounds like angling the bar, using extra strings for extended tunings, and even bending strings behind the bar. Given these limitations, such players as Leon McAuliffe, Jerry Byrd, Joaquin Murphey, and Herb Remington worked musical miracles, but a more sophisticated solution was needed.
To meet this need, in 1939 the steel guitarist, big band leader, television personality, and inventor of the “talking” steel, Alvino Rey, collaborated with a machinist to design an electric steel guitar with pedals. In 1940, the Gibson Guitar Corporation introduced the Electraharp. The initial instrument had a group of pedals fanning out from its left rear leg, like those on a harp. The pedals and mechanical system made it possible to alter various string pitches—with or without moving the bar—to smoothly transition from chord to chord.
Mounted across a rack between the front legs of the instrument, the pedal system we know today was the brainchild of a man familiar to many guitarists: vibrato tailpiece legend Paul Bigsby. Bigsby was soon building these more complex instruments for such top players as Speedy West, Noel Boggs, and Bud Isaacs. In 1948 West asked Bigsby to build a three-neck, four-pedal model. His first recording with it was Eddie Kirk’s “Candy Kisses” in 1949. West later worked with Ernie Ford and Loretta Lynn, but is best known for the energetic instrumentals he recorded solo and with Telecaster wizard Jimmy Bryant.
In 1952, Zane Beck—a steel player and builder who had backed Hank Williams, Jim Reeves, and Webb Pierce—began adding knee levers to console steel guitars. Unlike standard pedals, Beck’s knee levers lowered string pitch rather than raising it.
It’s Crying Time
Early pedal players avoided changing string pitch while notes sustained, considering it “un-Hawaiian.” But around 1953, a console steel player named Bud Isaacs attached a single pedal to one of his guitar necks and configured it to change the pitch of two strings at once. While recording Webb Pierce’s hit “Slowly,” he used altered his tuning while sustaining a chord, and the crying voice of the modern pedal steel was born.
On Isaacs’ instrument, an E triad was changed to A by raising G# to A and B to C# via a single pedal. In 1956 pedal steel legend Buddy Emmons, who played with everyone from Jimmy Dickens to Lenny Breau, heard “Slowly” while Bigsby was building him a guitar. Emmons had him construct it so one pedal raised B to C# while an adjacent pedal raised the G# to A. By splitting Isaacs’ single pedal, Emmons could not only perform the E-to-A move, but also play suspended chords, or shift between major and minor chords without moving the bar. Another legend, Jimmy Day (Webb Pierce, Ray Price, Willie Nelson), split the pedal as well. Though both players’ setups do the same thing, the pedals’ functions are reversed, requiring manufacturers to ask customers whether they want an Emmons or Day setup.
More Innovations
Seeking new sounds, Emmons constantly tinkered with his steel. One technical problem he was hoping to overcome was the difficulty steelers had playing a scale without moving the bar. Just before he went into the studio with Ray Price for the first time, Emmons came up with the concept of moving the 2nd and 7th scale degrees to a different set of strings. This allowed him to play cascading scales by using pedals rather than moving the bar—another major step in the pedal steel’s evolution.
Emmons soon incorporated a third pedal, and in 1957 he joined forces with steel-playing machinist Harold “Shot” Jackson to form the Sho-Bud company—the first manufacturer solely dedicated to the pedal steel guitar. Sho-Bud instruments incorporated all the innovations developed through the 1950s, including 10 strings, the third pedal, and Beck’s knee levers. This standardized the single-neck pedal steel guitar as an instrument with three pedals and up to four knee levers.
The pioneering Buddy Emmons engraved his signature on this 1980 Franklin S-12, serial number 023. Photo by Andy Ellis
As Emmons and Day proved, the functions of the pedals and levers are often highly personalized. A particular tuning and pedal function setup is sometimes represented by a graphic table called a “copedent” (pronounced co-pee-dent). Coined by pedal steel guru Tom Bradshaw in the early 1970s, the term is short for “chord pedal arrangement.” A copedent specifies the tuning, string gauges, whether a string is plain or wound, and how the pedals and levers alter pitch.
Degree of Difficulty
These new mechanical additions opened up a world of harmonic possibilities and heralded the dawn of a new sound—and made the instrument extremely difficult to learn. Playing a steel requires both hands, both feet, and often both knees.
When reading music, we guitarists are painfully aware that the same note can appear at different points on different strings. Imagine an instrument where—through the magic of pedals or levers—the same note can appear at up to four points on the same string. This economizes bar motion, but increases difficulty, due to an ever-changing relationship between the barring hand and the actual pitch.
On a pedal steel, you can change the pitch of one or more strings while other strings stay the same, change pitches at differing rates, or change them in opposite directions—all while sustaining the harmony and adding consistent bar vibrato. Sound daunting? We haven’t even gotten to barring techniques like angling and bouncing, or damping strings to avoid unwanted overtones.
Then there’s the volume pedal. Steel players constantly manipulate a volume foot pedal to eliminate string attack and create violin-type effects. (Hint to guitarists simulating steel licks: A volume pedal greatly increases realism.) And while markers indicate bar position, playing in tune requires years of practice and the ear of a virtuoso violinist.
To further expand its harmonic potential, a pedal steel might have two necks, usually with 10 strings each, each with its own set of pedals, or a single neck with as many as 14 strings. Pedal steel players who use two necks typically tune the farther one to E9 and the nearer one to C6. The C6 neck is commonly used for playing jazz or Western swing. (See “Tune Up” sidebar for details.)
Sonic innovator Russ Pahl plays a custom single-10 rigged with onboard effects and Strat- and Tele-style pickups.
The Steels of Progress
While there are many pedal steel heroes, when it comes to advancing the art, Buddy Emmons stands out. In addition to his mechanical innovations, Emmons expanded the instrument’s harmonic boundaries by venturing into more modern jazz, notably on the two-volume Redneck Jazz Explosion with guitar wizard Danny Gatton. During his time in California, Emmons pioneered the use of pedal steel in modern pop on discs by Nancy Sinatra, Carol Channing, the Carpenters, Judy Collins, and Henry Mancini.
The California country boom of the ’70s produced such great players as Dan Dugmore (“Blue Bayou”) and “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow, who helped form the Flying Burrito Brothers and experimented with fuzz and tape echo. Kleinow’s sonic explorations influenced other California steelers, including Jerry Garcia, Al Perkins, and Buddy Cage of the New Riders of the Purple Sage.
In 1972, “It’s So Nice to Be with You” by a pop band named Gallery was an AM radio hit. It featured a pedal steel prodigy named Paul Franklin. On an instrument that takes many until middle age to master, Franklin was accompanying pros around Detroit by age 9, and at 16 was touring with another fine pedal steel player: country star Barbara Mandrell.
Franklin’s rapid progress was aided by his father, who built his instruments. Through the years, father and son created new versions of this classic instrument. Featured on Randy Travis’ “Forever and Ever, Amen,” the Pedabro offers a Dobro sound with the advantage of pedals, and their baritone model is tuned an octave lower than a traditional pedal steel.
Through his technical tinkering, creativity, and prodigious technique, Franklin has inherited Emmons’ mantle as the preeminent pedal steel player. He has added his genius to the music of such traditionalists as Jerry Reed, Dottie West, Lynn Anderson, Donna Fargo, and Mel Tillis, as well as pop and rock artists like Dire Straits, Sting, Megadeth, Barbra Streisand, and Peter Frampton.
Steel Wheel
The 6-string guitar, once a poor relation in jazz, went on to usurp the saxophone during the fusion era. Dance music drove pop guitar to the background again, while alt-rock seems to be bringing it back. Similarly, the pedal steel has cycled around its own wheel of fortune.
“When I moved to Nashville, pedal steel was hardly being used,” says session ace Bruce Bouton. “It was largely ‘countrypolitan’ then—mostly watered-down pop. Sonny Garrish was doing much of the pedal steel on records. He had a chorus pedal and he would just double the keyboard or add little parts, as opposed to solos.”
Fortunately, Bouton arrived just in time for a shift. “In the late ’70s Ricky Skaggs came along, and I was lucky enough to get the gig in his band,” he relates. “He led the charge of the New Traditionalists. You started to hear more real pedal steel on the radio, not just as a pad or color.” Other New Traditionalists featuring pedal steel included Bouton employers Kathy Mattea and Foster & Lloyd. There was even room for the instrument on the country-pop records Bouton cut with Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn, and Garth Brooks.
The pedal steel began to have a new attitude. “You had younger players who grew up with a rock sensibility, but appreciated the old style,” Bouton explains. “Guys like Buddy Emmons, Lloyd Green, Pete Drake, and Weldon Myrick came out of the Jerry Byrd and Herb Remington Western-swing era. The next generation started with Sonny Garrish, who used some effects. I came along with a Beatles approach—I knew about the Beatles before I knew about Merle Haggard.”
The New Millennium saw pedal steel recede into the background once more as country music became, in the words of one wag, “bad ’80s rock with a fiddle.” You might see a pedal steel onstage, but the player would contribute more guitar or “ganjo” (a 6-string banjo) than steel, and you wouldn’t hear a solo. At the same time, the pedal steel began appearing more frequently outside country, on record or onstage with My Morning Jacket, Bill Frisell, and the Kings of Leon. British steel player B.J. Cole, whose pop pedigree goes back to Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection, began appearing on records by Blur’s Graham Coxon and Björk and on his own electronica-based excursions. Daniel Lanois offered up his unique take on the instrument, both solo and when producing other artists. Bouton himself added beautiful non-idiomatic colors to Maxwell’s cover of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work.”
Future Steel
In the last five years, the pedal steel has once again rotated into the Nashville country lineup, thanks largely to one man. Russ Pahl has been in Nashville for 30 years, playing traditional pedal steel with the likes of Vince Gill and Patty Loveless. But over the past decade he has been developing a unique sound and language on the instrument, aided by winding his own pickups and building in effects. This forward-thinking attitude helped him become the pedal steel guitarist who played on the most No. 1 country records in 2014.
“Ten or 15 years ago I decided I could not beat guys like Paul Franklin—he is the best at what he does,” says Pahl. “I needed to find something I was the best at. I realized guitar players don’t sound like Charlie Christian today because they’ve been changing their sound for the last 50 years. Pedal steel guitar hasn’t changed sonically since 1975—they still use the same big pickups through clean amps. I use a two-pickup guitar built by Sho-Pro with a Strat-style neck pickup and a Tele-style bridge pickup in the same position along the scale as a guitar. I treat pedal steel more like an electric guitar—more of a texture thing. I use tube saturation with lower-output pickups. That gives the distortion a more pleasing sound. It lets guitar pedals work like they were designed to work.”
Sometimes Pahl treats the pedal steel as a kind of synthesizer. “You’re starting with essentially a sine wave,” he notes. “Then, if you run it through a Fuzz Face, you get a sawtooth wave. I use a wah pedal like a filter. When I run the neck pickup with the tone rolled off through the automatic swell setting on the Strymon Mobius and a pitch/vibrato I built, it sounds just like a Mellotron.”
This willingness to experiment and seek out new sounds has endeared Pahl to Nashville artists on both ends of the country spectrum, from the “bro-country” of Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, and Jason Aldean, to alt-darlings Kacey Musgraves and Nikki Lane. He has also become the go-to guy for Dan Auerbach’s productions, playing on records by Lana Del Rey and Ray LaMontagne.
The pedal steel is an instrument of infinite potential, only a fraction of which has been tapped. There are glimmers of hope: Pahl, Susan Alcorn (who uses it in a free improvisation context), and Fats Kaplin, who is part of Jack White’s latest aggregation. Still, for the most part, pedal steel players remain more conservative than their 6-string counterparts.
“Don’t get me wrong, there are amazing players around, but they look at my guitar and go, ‘Why would you do that?’” says the 60-year-old Pahl. “Well, why wouldn’t you? Look at what guitar players have done. My biggest influence on pedal steel has been Jeff Beck. The steel guitar is waiting for some young kid to come along and be its Jimi Hendrix.”
Special thanks to Carter Vintage Guitars for access to their Franklin S-12.
Tune Up
Tunings are a crucial part of the pedal steel story. The standard Nashville E9 tuning for 10-string pedal steel is B-D-E-F#-G#-B-E-G#-D#-F#. The pedal steel’s most common C6 tuning—sometimes called “Texas tuning”—is C-F-A-C-E-G-A-C-E-G. Like pedal and knee lever arrangements, tunings can be highly personalized, and this often makes it difficult for pedal steelers to sit in on each others' instruments.
The ability to play in tune is an important attribute that separates the successful session steel players from the wannabes, and as with guitar, pedal steel intonation is a compromise. Because one note can play a different role in different chords, a note that’s perfectly in tune in one voicing might not be spot-on in another. “You might have to shift your bar, use more vibrato, or stay away from certain chords,” says Bruce Bouton. “You have to play positions that are in tune.”
Here too, Paul Franklin’s father was innovative. He noticed that while his son’s strings were returning to correct pitch when the pedals raised them, the strings were returning sharp after being lowered. The elder Franklin invented a return compensator that made the string return to pitch after being lowered.
Ten Essential Pedal Steel Albums
You have to start somewhere, so here are 10 pedal steel records that exemplify the art. These are handpicked by Joe Goldmark, a fine pedal steel player with some fun records of his own. He is also a steel scholar, record collector, and an owner of Amoeba Music, California’s legendary indie record chain. Goldmark’s top picks, in alphabetical order:
- Buddy Charleton with the Texas Troubadours, Almost to Tulsa
- Jimmy Crawford, A Ton of Steel
- Pete Drake, For Pete’s Sake
- Buddy Emmons, Steel Guitar Jazz
- Lloyd Green, The Hit Sounds
- Doug Jernigan, Uptown to Country
- Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Shiloh Records Anthology
- Red Rhodes, Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy Band
- Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant, Stratosphere Boogie
- Various, Pacific Steel Co.
YouTube It
Buddy Emmons works his magic onstage with Ray Price in this vintage television performance.
This recent clip of Western swing band the Time Jumpers features long-time collaborators Vince Gill and Paul Franklin and reveals Franklin’s jaw-dropping technique.
"The weird but nice combination of country and jazz has always fascinated me,"
says Finnish multi-instrumentalist Ville Leppänen.
After touring his native country as a singer-songwriter for many years, Leppänen was toying with the idea of a power trio in 2010 while working with the country-rock group Commotion Band, led by the singer and guitarist Kari Huovinen. One evening Leppänen found himself in a rehearsal room with the group's bassist, J.P. Mönkkönen, and drummer, Tero Mikkonen. Leppänen led his cohorts in a few of his original compositions, and the sound instantly gelled.
Since then the group, Southpaw Steel 'n' Twang, has played Finland's club and festival circuit, and held an informal residency at a Helsinki bar. Their recent debut album, Hale's Pleasure Railway, is a mostly instrumental Americana survey—and a pleasurable listen for guitarists and non-musicians alike.
somehow surprise me."
We chatted with Leppänen about his affinity for American music and were surprised to learn that he conjures so many different sounds with a relatively modest collection of gear.
Tell us a little about your formative musical experiences.
I'm 48 years old now and was 13 or so when rock 'n' roll hit me. I'd been playing clarinet and classical guitar in a music school from age 9, but that had been more like something my parents wished me to do. My musical awakening happened at the end of the '70s. Punk rock and new wave were going strong in Finland, and then there was a huge '50s rock 'n' roll revival. Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran were my heroes. That naturally led me to country and blues, especially Robert Johnson.
Then there was my Austin, Texas, period. A lot of great American blues-roots guys played in Helsinki: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, Ry Cooder. Winter and Rory Gallagher were my main slide heroes. At the same time, the hot jazz bug bit me in the form of Hawaiian steel guitar—first Bob Brozman, then Sol Hoopii, and finally Leon McAuliffe, Herb Remington, and Buddy Emmons. And there were jazzmen like Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery. I still love to listen to Wes's The Incredible Jazz Guitar. I've mentioned just a few names. In general, my main influence has been American rhythm music.
What kind of gear did you use early on?
Prior to my awakening I'd been playing my father's old Landola, a Finnish-made nylon-string acoustic. When I wanted to go electric my dad was a bit skeptical, but he eventually bought me a pickup, knobs, and tuners, and I built my own, trying to shape it to look like the Gibson ES-355 Chuck Berry had in all those pictures. It was horrible, barely playable—but I loved it!
As a lefty, I had difficulty finding a proper guitar. In high school I tried to play a right-handed electric Hendrix-style, but the knobs always felt like they were in the way. So I got a summer job, got the dough together, and a guitar workshop in Helsinki made me a butterscotch early-'50s-style Tele from ESP parts. I still play it.
Have you spent much time in the States?
I've been to California a couple of times, and to Memphis, where my group was a semi-finalist in the 2012 International Blues Challenge. That same year we recorded in New Orleans. It's been a great experience to visit those places so crucial to this music, but I already had a firm musical identity before I visited the States.
Living in Finland, do you feel any kinship with composers like Jean Sibelius?
Sibelius composed beautiful, timeless music. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of adapting one of his pieces for steel, just as Buddy Emmons did with Pachelbel's Canon.
You have an impressive command of jazz harmony—the minor-major seventh chords and unusual chord progression of “Open Field," for example. How did you develop your harmonic language?
By listening to and studying jazz. I'm not exactly a jazz player, but I like to throw in interesting harmony and diminished ideas. The jazz players I mentioned had such big, luxurious chords and interesting notes in their bluesy playing. I wanted to do something like that.
Did you study jazz formally?
My studying has mostly been sitting on my butt and sorting things out by myself. I finally did get a musician's degree at a pop-jazz conservatory a few years back, and that helped me to update my theory knowledge.
Ville Leppänen uses his 1980 ESP T-style to guide Southpaw Steel 'n' Twang through an original instrumental.
Your melodic voice is also sophisticated—for instance, the way you draw from the diminished scale on “Dark C."
I like soulful, traditional playing, only sometimes it's too predictable. The players I love to listen to the most are the ones who somehow surprise me. For example, in the blues-rock field, take the great Jimi Hendrix. He sometimes drives off the road but it's so interesting! Or think of all the great jazz-rock/fusion players. So when improvising, I try to surprise myself with unpredictable note choices, hoping that the listeners will be surprised too.
Western swing is clearly a big influence.
Yes. The weird but nice combination of country and jazz has always fascinated me. When I was a kid we played—at the risk of sounding politically incorrect—cowboys and Indians. Now I had cowboys playing swing, hillbilly and jazz—those Charlie Christian-influenced guitar hotshots like Eldon Shamblin, etc. And that steel bunch! Eventually I bought myself a Japanese Fender Stringmaster D8 copy, a great guitar that I didn't have a clue how to tune. But then the pieces clicked together.
Ville Leppänen's Gear
Guitars
Fender Japan 1957 Stratocaster reissue with Kinman pickups
1980 ESP parts T-style with Texas Special pickups
1957 Fender Stringmaster D8 (22.5"-scale doubleneck 8-string lap steel)
1935 National Duolian
Pedalmaster S-10 Ranger (10-string pedal steel)
Amps
1969 or '70 Fender Vibrolux Reverb
Effects
Boss ME-70 multi-effects
Morley M2 Wah Volume
Strings and Picks
Various S.I.T. sets and singles
How so?
On conventional 6-string steel I use high-G tuning [G–B–D–G–B–D]. Meanwhile, the Stringmaster has two 8-string necks. It took me a while to figure out how to add those sixth notes to the basic triads, and then get used to having two strings tuned just a whole-step away from each other. It's pretty hard to play “Dust My Broom," for example, with that tuning, but the Western swing thing is right there!
What inspired you to take up steel guitar?
I heard Bob Brozman's playing in the late '90s, and I just had to make the same kinds of sounds. I found a 1930 National Triolian roundneck and played it both bottleneck and lap-style, with a flatpick and two fingerpicks. Slide guitar has always been my thing, so it wasn't a big step. I just had to get used to the lap playing position.
Do you think of yourself as more of a guitarist or pedal steel player?
They're both fascinating tools of expression. Of course I've logged more miles with the conventional 6-string, and that's probably my most natural thing, especially slide. But I think I'm catching up with lap and pedal steel. Those instruments are also just so much fun to play. Difficult, but fun!
Which is your favorite 6-string these days?
I've mostly been playing a Japanese Fender 1957 Strat reissue with Kinman noiseless vintage pickups. It's a good, reliable guitar—a real workhorse. And it's not terribly expensive, so I don't have to worry about it.
Is there any new gear that you've been coveting?
I'd love to get a 12-string pedal steel—maybe one of these days. A full-bodied jazz box would also be great. And I've never had a Les Paul. I could easily make a long list!
Talk a little about the Hawaiian influence evident on tracks like “Secret Sunset."
That's a 1957 Fender Stringmaster, short-scale, which I got via eBay from a seller in Arkansas. The tune is a vain attempt to bring the sun to the cold and dark Finnish winter. Hawaiian music made me feel happy when I first heard it, and it's always been a kind of “secret sunset" for me.
Why did you decide to set aside your instruments and do a mostly a cappella thing on “Steel 'n' Twang?"
There's so much guitar on the record, and I thought it needed a breathing break. In concert we usually play the piece and some other vocal numbers between the instrumentals. It works well, and it wakes up the audience.
YouTube It
Watch Ville Leppänen play Jimi Hendrix's “Little Wing" on pedal steel.
How would you describe your compositional process?
I can write a composition down—melody, rhythms, and harmony—but usually I just mess around on 6-string or steel, or even a keyboard, with a melody, chords, and rhythms in my mind. I might write down certain lines for a reminder, but more often I just record a rough version, no overdubs or anything, then we all arrange it together with chord charts. That way the music has a free-flowing feeling.
Talk about how the album was recorded.
The recording took place in the main hall of an old wooden house in Helsinki, and most of the stuff was recorded live. Everything leaked all over the place, because we were all in the same big room. The guys—J.P. Mönkkönen on bass and Tero Mikkonen on drums—played together for a long time before we started the group, and it worked pretty well. A bit rough, but very organic.
What made it rough?
We used the takes that had the best feeling, even if there were some mistakes. I don't really mind a few wrong notes if I hear the band reaching for something we haven't done before, not just playing it safe. And, as we know, sometimes in the end the wrong note is exactly the right note!