The British Steelies Society

Not long after the new year, I was fortunate enough to have been invited to play on a live video version of "All Your Friends Hate Me" by Leeds/York band "The Howl and The Hum". This was at the time was an unreleased song of theirs but came out on their album today.

The theme was to bring traditional crying pedal steel to the song. They are self described as an alternative/indie band so it was nice to get "country" steel into other genres!

Nice and tasteful playing buddy, and nice shirt too

ZakTF wrote:Nice and tasteful playing buddy, and nice shirt too

Cheers mate! Your new video is great. Just about got enough shirts now

Nicely played Steven, reminds me of the style of Southern Comfort band.

Uncle Roy wrote:Nicely played Steven, reminds me of the style of Southern Comfort band.

Cheers Uncle Roy, appreciate it!

Yes, that works really well...Nice one Steven...slightly odd little song tho!!

Gary James Peters wrote:Yes, that works really well...Nice one Steven...slightly odd little song tho!!

Cheers Gary! Yep, a definite culture shock moving away from songs about cowboys sat at a bar and NASCAR.

I like it though. I'm hoping to get more into this genre. This video was very countrified but I recently did a session with a different artist from a similar kind of indie folk vein. The pedal steel, although with natural attack peaking through, was made to sound ambient and my playing style was told to be basic pads and big chord bends. I haven't heard the end result but the songs sounded lush on the day.

I know a couple of younger British players that have already made the move into indie folk sessions but I haven't personally. I think there's a lot of untapped potential for not only myself but the instrument. The great thing is as well...producers want the pedal steel. It isn't just a token instrument at the back of the mix, like I find with some of pop country sessions I've done.

Absolutely! There is a huge and growing market in the US for ambient/folk steel guitar...it's quite the thing now. Onwards!

G