Are you DELUSIONAL?

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

As A Pedal Steel Player I've noticed that I and others seem to have delusions in regards to their careers, successes, and failures. Maybe moreso than other instruments (save possibly bassoonists.

While reading a Western Civ book, I read a passage that contained a quote from a "Montaigne" fellow that went: " People should respect one another's delusions."

It set me thinking about my Pedal Steel Playing delusions.

I'll post my answers to the following questions if more than Jody Carver, Bobbe Seymore, or Mike Perlowin respond.

1. What made you realise that you were a delusional pedal steel player?

2. What do your main steel playing delusions consist of?

3. Are your pedal steel playing delusions getting smaller, or larger?

4.Why?

If you believe you are not, and answer accordingly, I will qualify that answer as a delusion, and it will count toward my providing my answers.

Thanks for any input, as always.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 02 February 2004 at 06:10 PM.]

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

And this relates to steel guitar how, Eric?

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Bobby Lee
-b0b- quasar@b0b.com
System Administrator

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

"Steel Players: Are you Delusional" Would be more accurate. You may edit the topic heading appropriately if you wish. I cannot from here.

It is directly pertainant to my makeup as a Steel Player, and I strongly suspect others'. Without mine, I would find myself unable to play even the simplest of gigs.

I didn't ask if they flew airplanes, rode harleys, had pets, recorded with top name acts, or beat their sigothers, or whether their butts hurt when they played them, or their computers had viri. I didn't think many of those things had as much to do with steel playing as do our "steel players' delusions".

I consider it a fair question considering the multitude of delusions obviously common to playing this instrument.

I have edited the post accordingly.

Thanks for the question.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 02 February 2004 at 06:17 PM.]

Ken Lang · From: Simi Valley, Ca

Just because I'm delusional doesn't mean without practice I can't be a great psg picker someday.

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Ken, Sometimes, as in the last year, an increased amount of daily, structured practice only seemed to make my delusions worse.

EJL

Robert Thomas · From: Mehama, Oregon, USA

I think I am and since I am, I wonder what I are! If you think delusional you are delusional. So, where does that get me? Where back where I started from!

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

Yes, I am, I just can't spell it. How come you only named two steel players , Eric?
bobbe

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

I think very little about me playing steel guitar these days, I think about helping others to play and enjoy steel guitar the way I have enjoyed it over the years. I want to see everyone play well and sound great. Possibly this is my delusion.
Unfortunatly, what I want out of steel guitar these days isn't the playing, what I want is to live long enough to see the bigger picture. I want to help the kids that have that burning desire and are on fire with that magic that occupies there soul 24 hours a day. Like I was when I first heard Jerry Byrd, Jimmy Crawford,Buddy Emmons, Curly Chalker, Maurice Anderson, and Bud Isaacs and the like.
Those that enjoy what I have done, my playing, CDs, videos and teaching etc., give me the most satisfaction I could ever have. Guess I'm really getting old. I hate clubs, sessions, the road, so, what's left? You guys are whats left.
What can I do to help?

bobbeseymour

P.S. Thank you Eric, you da' man.

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Well Bobbe, After talking to Merle Haggard's nephew Tracy, a long time friend and giggin partner of mine, ( little guy in picture) this weekend, I thought I'd bounce your name off'n him.

He lit up and said that you were one of the best!. He'd known of you in Paycheck's band and others' I've heard this from a couple "plain ole run of the mill guys" lately. Guys that don't even know who Weldon Myrick is.

I've found myself embarrased talking to you like you were 'one of my peers", and I think if anything, your unassuming manner or assessment of you career in small terms sometimes, is the delusion. Your CDs are the ones I find myself "playing along with".

If anything you've helped me to see through my delusions of inadequacy when I've experienced them coming home from gigs that nobody else seems to want. ( of course none of my current ones are).

I don't know if I'd buy a steel guitar from you, but I'd come as close to it as I would with anybody. We'll see after playing the old PIII for another decade....

We also need to know how the "Free Bobbe" CD is coming along.

Bobbe, you're a Prince Among Men in my book, and I don't think that's one of my delusions.

I was only trying to get responses to get it "started" while I think of my answers to my questions while hauling excavation stuff tomorrow.

There's nothing wrong with most delusions, as we all seem to have them.

I thank God for most of mine.

EJL

Bill Llewellyn · From: San Jose, CA

By "delusional", do you mean that some of us kid ourselves that we might actually get good at playing this extraordinarily difficult instrument someday?

I dunno if I'll ever get "good" at it. Prob'ly not. But I have been having fun! And I hope to make people happy with the sounds I create. I hope none of that is a delusion!

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Bill, steelin' since '99 | Steel page | My music | Steelers' birthdays | Over 50?

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Wwll Bill. I'll let it slip a little.

When I started taking lessons from Mr Charleton, 26 years ago, I had the straight up delusion that I wanted to become "one of the best". I told him that, and for a couple years he rode me like a stubborn quarter horse. I went home to the barracks, and practiced 4-12 hours a day, or until my fingers had blood blisters. He sent me home more than once in pretty emotional bad shape for a person over 21. I learned a lot. Mostly that HE was "the best", and the mark from which I would always come a little short of.

I think it was that delusion that helped me get over a lot of the blockades that would have stopped me could I have "taken or left it".

As I've said before, to this day, I see this picture of him sitting across from me with his head cocked and his kindly worried look. Just like it was yesterday. Not a gray hair on his head.

Fortunately or not, I still have that delusion, two and a half thousand gigs and a hundred moose lodges later. I refuse to "go home". In some ways, a lot of those gigs wore away at my playing instead of making it better.

I fully realise there are people around me that are "better", but it dissuades me not a whit. I watch my old videos, listen to old tapes, and pick out my weaknesses, my unsurities, and try to fix them in the next critter club or truck stop. I don't listen to "constructive criticism" very much at all. Compliments even less. My "Delusion" tells me where I "ought to be" playing wise.

I'll have people tell me that it's useless playing the kind of music I play, with the kind of bands I play with, tasteless to play fast stuff, with too much reverb, or such a ratty old guitar. They aren't being "mean". It's just what they see, hear, and think.

Still my Delusion is stronger. In the face of Reality, if you will.

That's my partial answer to #2 I guess.

Tired now. Nice to have a break in my nights for 4 nites with this new day job. Last week was a long'n.

EJL

Doug Jones · From: Oregon & Florida

I think my delusion is that I'll get some continued sense of accomplishment and reward out of my playing. Being your own worst critic hampers one's ability to reflect on the quality of your playing. Also to truly enjoy the spontanaity of improvisation is directly affected by the ability of the other musicians on stage with you at the time. Don't get me wrong, I love being a steel player, but boy sometimes it's a real struggle of a compromise. The delusion will be some day it will get better. As my arthritic knuckles slow me down, as the gigs pay less and less, as the gear seems heavier to schlepp, as it gets harder and harder to find a good rhythm section I can't help but feel the delusion will realize through compromise and selling myself out. Bitter? Maybe, but I do still hold on to great memories, good cuts on past session work and the comraderie of all my steel pickin' pals. Maybe the delusion should be there is no delusion at all!

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

That's why I don't think delusions are necessarily bad.

Reality has eaten it's way through mine very seldom.

Usually after fridays of a two niter....

EJL

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

One of us is, but I'm not sure which one.

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Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic,
and so am I

Rick Collins · From: Claremont , CA USA

Whoa!!!
...delusional? ...sounds like a central nervous system disorder to me.

I have always played for the fun of it. I'm sure I had fun; ...no delusion here.

Rick

Peter Siegel · From: Belmont, CA, USA

The nice thing about being schizophrenic is I always have each other.

-Peter

Gene Jones · From: Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)

Delusion is the fabulous sound and technique of your steel-guitar playing that was recorded and played back at 3AM during a party at the pad of one of the band's fans.

Reality is what "it" sounded like later when played back during daylight hours when you were cold sober!

www.genejones.com

[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 03 February 2004 at 10:52 AM.]

David Doggett · Posted 3 Feb 2004 11:29 am

I have listened with awe and joy to all kinds of music in my life - classical, jazz, blues, R&B, hip-hop, rockabilly, rock, country, country rock, alt country, Celtic, Flamenco, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Latino, Peruvian flute, African, Caribbean, etc. In my head I hear all of that being played on a pedal steel guitar. I have the delusion that I will be able to play some of the simpler forms of all of these on a pedal steel guitar, and thereby pass on to others the thrill of hearing new things for the first time on this amazing instrument. And having heard it in these other kinds of music, they will be able to better appreciate how wonderful it also sounds in country music, in a way they may have never understood before.

Then after I sit down and play a few notes, that delusion passes, and I develop the illusion that maybe if I sold all this junk off I could pay off my credit card and be able to retire sometime before the age of 80.

John McGann · From: Boston, Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.

Some folks think this is ALL an illusion...Dance of Maya...and stuff...

...as long as you are enjoying the ride, I suspect it doesn't matter.

It's not a delusion if you are making yourself and/or others happy, and providing music that makes the world a better place. Cain't no harm be done there- even if you suck, what's the worst that can happen to anyone??? The worst 'bad music' can do is make you puke, and you recover quickly enough from that (as long as you stay out of earshot)...unless you are in a rough biker bar, in which case you get to practice Channeling the Adrenaline Rush by Getting the Steel, Amp and Pac-a-Seat out the door in 4.5 seconds...

Sometimes that little editor in your head is your worst enemy, ain't it!

Ray Minich · From: Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra

Delusional?, naw, never, nada...
Psychotic? Maybe. Perhaps neurotic with a little touch of paranoia to round out things.
You don't need to be paranoid, but they really are out to get you. Steel guitar in one room, psychotherapist in the other...Is there symbolism here or what?

Yes, I too am deluded into thinking I can play this stringed monster well at all, until I hear somebody play that plays it well, then I'm just depressed and anxious...
This is why we have beer I guess...

Eric, where do you come up with these questions? :>)

[This message was edited by Ray Minich on 03 February 2004 at 01:38 PM.]

Stephen Gambrell · From: Over there

Yep. To the point where I think a suit like that would look good on ME!

Bob Carlucci · From: Candor, New York, USA

Yes I am delusional.. I have deluded myself in thinking I actually know how to play pedal steel. When I hear people that really DO know how to play it,reality reasserts itself,the delusion fades and I realize how bad I really am. I like my delusional state far better bob

Anne Marie O Keeffe · From: Co.Waterford,Ireland.

Dave Horch · From: Frederick, Maryland, USA

Hey Eric - I really like that notion of putting a chain in front of your steel when playing a dance gig (see your previous picture). Do you pass a high voltage charge through that sucker?
Best, -Dave

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Ray Minich, and others I suppose.

It was that passage in the Western Civ book about people "respecting other's delusions".

Many times I'll read posts from the obviously delusional, and am sorely tempted to "set them right". About that time, I realise that I have a princely amount of them my durn self.

More later. I'm bushed.

MP. Just got the CD, and am about to pop it in and play it. Thanks a BUNCH.

EJL and the legion of...

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