The varieties of steel guitar experience
The steel guitar is a thing of diverse beauty. The lap steel and the pedal steel can be roused to make primal howls or massaged to create subtle yawns. Whether they are part of Hawaiian music, gospel's sacred steel movement or country-western song, steel guitars can rage and murmur with delicious slid
The steel guitar is a thing of diverse beauty.
The lap steel and the pedal steel can be roused to make primal howls or massaged to create subtle yawns. Whether they are part of Hawaiian music, gospel's sacred steel movement or country-western song, steel guitars can rage and murmur with delicious sliding sustain. Rock's best may get physical with their axes - pulling guitars' necks as if throttling the poor dears. But there is nothing like watching seated steel players tense their thumbs in anguish.
Philadelphia's Mike Brenner has made those sounds and struck those poses during his time in the Low Road and his rollicking Slo-Mo act. He loves steel guitar; he even has a custom-made six-string lap steel/dobro hybrid. So Brenner hosted Slo-Mo's Steel Guitar Summit Friday at World Cafe Live with Susan Alcorn, Jim Cohen's Quartet and the Campbell Brothers not just to show off his band's brand of slippery funk, but to prove the all-consuming power of steel.
For Alcorn, pedal steel is an instrument of somber improvisation. While her self-penned compositions were frostily delivered, her gently yowling covers of Nina Simone and Astor Piazzolla were warmer. Less sober was Jim Cohen, whose take on be-bop classics such as Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite" hummed like elevator music (that's a compliment). Cohen's easy-breezy pedal steel lines imparted humor into the proceedings.
Generously, Slo-Mo did not take the headlining spot.
Brenner's lap steel-encrusted hip-pop with rapper Mic Wrecka and percussionist Hoagy Wing was more about his instrument's coloration than its grand solo moments. His octet rocked. But Brenner's swishy twang ("Waterfalls"), rhythmic kink ("Aramingo Take-Out") and luscious lope ("My Buzz Comes Back") showed steel at its nuanced best rather than as a manic lead.
This left lap steeler Darick Campbell and pedal steel man Chuck Campbell - the Campbell Brothers - to enlighten disbelievers about the mysterious, eerie soulfulness steel guitar holds. The electric gospel band proved how sweet and holy steel sounded on "Jump for Joy." But so manic was the interplay between the brothers on "Morning Train" that you hardly imagined their frenzied noise came solely from guitars.
