Based in Louisiana, Dave Easley is widely recognized as a master of the pedal steel guitar.
He has worked with musicians ranging from Brian Blade to Joni Mitchell to members of the String Cheese Incident and has released albums under his own name including “Byways of the Moon” (2021) and “Ballads” (2023). The latter saw him collaborating with guitarist Jeff Parker, double bassist David Tranchina and drummer Jay Bellerose.
Easley will perform at Walker’s Jazz Lounge on Saturday, Dec. 28, as a member of the Charlie Rumback Quartet. The group will be rounded out by guitarist David Lord and bassist Christopher Shaw. Easley will also join his fellow musicians in the studio to work on material from a forthcoming LP by Lord.
Easley recently spoke with KMUW about his first experiences with steel guitar and how he deals with the demanding nature of the instrument.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Do you remember what first interested you in steel guitar?
I’m originally from Hilo, Hawaii. I always heard steel guitars growing up. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back there, but I remember one time when I was back there and driving around in my uncle’s pickup truck. I just turned on the radio station and [heard] all this traditional Hawaiian music with the steel guitars playing just on the local radio station. That’s probably why I wound up playing that, although I started ukulele, then regular guitar, then steel guitar. I have that in common with John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix. We all started out on the ukulele.
There are probably a lot of people who heard pedal steel first through country music, but, of course, it exists in a number of different musical settings. You use it primarily in jazz.
When I got my first pedal steel, the first thing I did was join the college jazz band. I really had a lot of work cut out for me because [the band director] gave me this list of tunes [and I said], “Oh, I’m brand new on this instrument. I’ve got to catch up with all these kids that have been playing their instruments for a while.” That was a good learning experience.
I’ve been learning more about the pedal steel guitar recently and it occurred to me that it’s almost like playing the drums in a sense because you’re using all your limbs pretty much all the time.
Yeah, when you play pedal steel, you’ve got your feet and your knees. You usually have knee pedals. There’s a lot of things going on like that.
You’ve got all this physical stuff going on and then you’ve got to play the right notes. You really have to be on your game.
You gotta be sitting up and sitting in the right place.
Sometimes in New Orleans, I’ll play multiple gigs in a day, and if I’m on the last one and it’s getting late, sometimes I might just want to play the regular guitar even if I could play the song better on the steel guitar because when I play the regular guitar, I can just kind of lean back and relax a little bit more.
