Pedal Steel Is Weeping Its Way Out of Country and into the Mainstream
The post Pedal Steel Is Weeping Its Way Out of Country and into the Mainstream appeared first on Consequence.
For most, the hard-to-describe but easy-to-spot timbre of the pedal steel evokes melancholic honky tonks and lonesome saloons. When many people think of the instrument (if they think about it at all), their minds go to country music. And country music has indeed put pedal steel to excellent use for the better part of a century, but it also inadvertently monopolized steel guitar in the process — until recently, that is.
From indie icons like Mitski to up-and-coming noisemakers like Wednesday, the gentle weep of steel guitar is slowly but surely infiltrating the indie rock scene. For seasoned session players like Spencer Cullum — who’s contributed pedal steel to songs by Angel Olsen, Billy Strings, Kesha, and more — it’s an exciting trend, and not just because it means more work (“Of course, I’m a steel player, so I would say this,” he laughs). At the same time, he admits it’s a cycle that pop music has seen before.
“It goes in circles, the steel guitar. One moment it’s a hot topic and the next, it’s like no one gives a shit,” Cullen tells Consequence. He goes on to reference Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and ambient touchstones like Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks as examples. “[But] there’s a community of steel players that are like,” — he drops into an American accent — “‘Keep it country! Don’t change our instrument! What the heck are you doin’?'”
A not-insignificant number of pedal steel players are staunch traditionalists against the instrument’s wider use. It’s a sect that Cullen, himself a Nashville transplant from England, has encountered for years. He’s not alone. “When somebody takes the stage [at a pedal steel convention] and plays something other than country, people get up and walk out,” founder of the now-defunct Steel Guitarist magazine Tom Bradshaw told NPR in a 2020 interview.
Leading the charge in the opposite direction, there are musicians like Xandy Chelmis, who fuses classic Neil Youngian pedal steel with the distorted, noisy beauty of ’90s indie rock for acts like Wednesday and MJ Lenderman. Self-taught and with an omnivorous taste in music, Chelmis and those alongside him are helping pedal steel break back into new scenes by appreciating its link to country music but not allowing that history to dictate their playing, as seen in even harder rockin’ acts like Black Midi or Touché Amoré.
Chelmis became interested in the steel guitar because “I was trying to figure out what the instrument was in the background music for Spongebob,” he tells Consequence. “But it was only after years of playing lap steel that I felt ready to try to learn pedal steel, because it was so intimidating… When you sit down on the pedal steel and try to play it, it’s like a wall; it is so anti-intuitive to figure out.”
Visually, pedal steel looks like a boxy guitar laid flat on its back. The body is suspended in the air like a tabletop with (you guessed it) pedals and knee levers underneath. Unlike a traditional guitar, players don’t press the strings along frets to create pitches; rather, they lightly glide a steel bar across the strings. This technique, along with the pedals and levers that can bend full chords when engaged, provide the instrument with its signature glissando sound (the continuous slide from one note to the next). “[My mentor] said it’s like the sound of toffee,” Cullum recalls. “There’s no other instrument in the world that can change a variety of chords just in one position. It moves so subtly and slowly.”
The lap steel functions in a similar way, sans the pedals and knee levers, making it a much more accessible introduction for beginners. But no matter what, playing steel is a complicated hobby. The economic investment required to get started, with low-end or beginner models regularly costing four figures, only further raises the barrier of entry, shrinking the pool of young, rebellious steel guitar players. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy: General knowledge and interest in pedal steel is contained within the sphere of country music, so burgeoning players are primarily inspired by such music, learn from those who create such music, and end up mainly producing the same Leave the American country scene, and music fans might not even be aware steel guitar exists.
“I’ve been meeting a lot of people abroad, and you make friends and they’re like, ‘What do you do?’ And I’m like, ‘I play music,'” Chelmis explains. “And they’re like, ‘Oh, cool, what do you play?’ And I’m like, ‘I play lap and pedal steel’ — then their eyes go blank.”
Cullum, for his part, found it difficult to locate a mentor while living in London, despite initially falling in love with the instrument via English pop and rock. “He was, like, the only British steel player in London,” he says of his teacher, the legendary B.J. Cole.
American country music’s stronghold on pedal steel becomes all the more surprising when examining the instrument’s origins, which takes us out of the continental United States. Before Gibson introduced what’s widely recognized as the first commercially available pedal steel guitar, the Electraharp, halfway through the 20th century, lap steel had instead been associated with native Hawaiian music. It was popular, too. In 1916, 78 rpm records that featured indigenous Hawaiian instruments outsold every other genre, according to Smithsonian magazine.
After European sailors introduced the Spanish guitar to the Hawaiian islands, the native population quickly put a distinct spin on the instrument. Pioneering an entirely new playing style, they raised the strings so they wouldn’t come in contact with the neck and abandoned traditional guitar tuning in favor of open or “slack tuning.”
By the 1950s, however, thanks in large part to the innovations of session player Buddy Emmons, country musicians had capitalized on the steel guitar’s potential. In 1954, Webb Pierce’s “Slowly” topped the Billboard Best Sellers chart for a whopping 17 weeks, helping cement pedal steel as a necessity for melancholic, tear-in-your-beer country balladry.
“[The pedal steel] got grounded in country music early on,” Cullum explains. “And it does sound great in country music. I mean, that’s the sound, ain’t it?”
Ever since, the pedal steel has largely been the sound of the rust belt. Even those outside of capital “C” country music often shared signifiers with folk rock or country rock. Artists including Neil Young, the Byrds, and Led Zeppelin put the instrument to use in their bluesy rock songs, and Jason Molina continued the practice with landmark albums like Magnolia Electric Co.
And yet, the rebel alliance pushing to expand pedal steel’s reach has hope. Despite technical, economic, and systemic challenges, pedal steel is seemingly back, with innovative bands like Wednesday not only inspiring their peers in the scene to consider adding pedal steel to their songs, but exciting a host of new, burgeoning players. Chelmis has grown used to fans asking for advice after performances, hinting that an army of new steel guitarists might be just around the corner. Maybe in a few short years, bands without pedal steel players will feel as novel as bands without bass players (okay, it probably won’t be that drastic, but a steel guitarist can dream).
“People are so psyched to see that instrument,” Chelmis says. “I even had some people from this math rock band from Maryland approach me, and they wanted me to track pedal steel on some of their math rock songs.”
Whether it’s trickling down from the top of the charts, where country music continues to dominate, or up from the underground, where bands like Florry or Greg Freeman are helping to bring a newfound Neil Young-ian sense to indie rock, there’s excitement in the air. With more players and more use, pedal steel might finally become a cross-genre mainstay, bending notes and breaking hearts for the punks, indie kids, rave babies, and (of course) cowboys alike. At this rate, even the most diehard country purist are bound to bend.
Pedal Steel Is Weeping Its Way Out of Country and into the Mainstream
Jonah Krueger
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