After a pair of solid releases that established Robert Ellis as an eccentric singer/songwriter with a traditional country foothold, his new self-titled LP is as definitive and weirdly beautiful a statement of defiance as you’d expect from a guy whose primary touchstones are Paul Simon and Randy Newman, as opposed to Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker. Perhaps that’s why the two best tracks on a uniformly great record—the structurally sophisticated yet effortless opener “Perfect Strangers” and the brooding, soulful “California”—are keyboard-based. Already an acknowledged ace on guitar at 27, Ellis has been reacquainting himself with the keys over the last few years. Ellis will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Ellis: Will Van Horn plays in my band. He is a pedal-steel and banjo player and a nerd of the highest caliber. I talked with him about the pedal-steel guitar over coffee in Houston.
You are constantly buying a new pedal steel. Why is this? Which one do you have now?
It’s very important to blame all of your problems as a player on the tools you have. The only way to curb your insecurities is by constantly buying new gear. “It’s not me, it’s the pedal steel!” My newest guitar is a 1969 Emmons push-pull that spent the ’90s touring with Joe Diffie. It has brand-new changers C&C routed out of aluminum stock. I haven’t figured out what’s wrong with it yet but I’m sure I’ll invent a problem soon and buy something else.
What are the most common things people at shows have misidentified your steel guitar as?
Cheese grater, stenographer’s typewriter, piano (most common), electric mountain dulcimer, upright horizontal lute, C&B torture machine.
“Slide guitar” is one that I find particularly irritating. It isn’t that far off but so wrong. Ricky Davis often tilts his guitar forward to show people the strings. What’s your move?
I occasionally try and look up so that the audience doesn’t think I’m sleeping, but I’ve given up on them knowing that I’m playing a “pedal-steel guitar.”
Who are your favorite steel players?
The greats: Jimmy Day, Buddy Emmons, Buddy Charleton, Paul Franklin. Susan Alcorn. Paul and Susan both have reached a mastery of the instrument that I think is unprecedented. Paul can and has made it fit in every musical context including doing a world tour with Dire Straits. Susan’s execution of new music is mind blowing.
You also take lessons from her?
I’ve gotten to take a couple lessons with Susan, which has been eye opening. Still dreaming of a lesson with Paul Franklin.
Palm blocking or pick blocking? (For those that don’t know these are techniques for muting notes on a steel, and there is much debate about which is better)
I think they both have their place. To get some of the early steel tones you kinda need to palm block. But overall pick blocking is a much more versatile technique. Your goal should be to make music. It just seems easier with pick blocking to choose whether you are playing legato or staccato and to have control of the execution of a musical passage.
In the van you are often on The Pedal Steel Forum on your phone. For people that don’t know what this is, can you explain?
It’s such a niche community that there is one single forum related to it on the internet. What’s great about it is that you can search through the archives and find posts where Paul Franklin is asking Buddy Emmons questions and Emmons is answering. The for-sale section is handy for when you are constantly trying to buy a new steel. But like all forums, it can also be an incredibly frustrating waste of time.
How much and what do you practice?
I try to practice as often as possible. When I’m in a good routine, I’ll practice rudiments a couple hours a day (scales, technique, intonation exercises), transcribe steel-guitar music for an hour or two, and learn tunes for a while. Lately I’ve spent more time transcribing non-steel related material. I’ve been learning a bunch of Ethiopian jazz and Björk tunes. And a bunch of Depeche Mode.
Any advice to young pedal-steel players?
Take the Steel Guitar Forum with a grain of salt. Don’t stick your right elbow out while you play. Learn everything off of ’60s Buck Owens and Haggard records and the entire George Strait catalogue. Oh, and for god’s sake, learn how to use the volume pedal correctly.
Just intonation or equal temperament? Explain what this is?
So temperament is the overall system of tuning musical notes to one another. The ear naturally wants to hear temperaments that are very consonant: Pythagorean tuning, just intonation, etc. Those temperaments present a lot of problems, notably when playing music in multiple keys. This became evident especially with the development of keyboard instruments. To address this, people came up with temperaments where all keys sounded equally in (or out) of tune – meantone and equal temperament, for example. Bach had a lot to do with developing those compensated tunings. It’s a pretty complicated subject, but if you YouTube “just intonation vs equal temperament,” you’ll find videos showing the difference. Steel players typically tune to “just intonation.” I go back and forth a lot.
Well that seems like enough. I’m certainly bored. Thank you for your time. Back to practicing.
Wait, check out this John Hughey lick at the beginning of this Conway tune!
