Hi fellow steel players / builders, I would like to tell you how I got interested in the pedal steel guitar, you see it was my Dads fault, (well I’ve got to blame someone).
My Dad (Charlie) loved Hawaiian and country music, so I grew up listening to the likes of Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams, Slim Whitman, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash, my dad had loads of their records. He also had some old 78’s of a guy called Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenades and I was fascinated with the sound of the Hawaiian guitar.
As a 10 year old, I had never seen a Hawaiian guitar or a pedal steel and it wasn’t until 3 years later that I saw my first pedal steel. I was on holiday with my Mum and Dad at Broad Farm Caravan Park, near Great Yarmouth Norfolk (which they found purely by accident), and there was a band called “Jim West and the Texans” performing in the club - the steel player was a guy called Gerry Thain. Well I must have pestered my parents to death for one of these unusual instruments but, as a 13 year old, my Dad thought ‘just a passing fad’. It wasn’t until 3 years later, when we were at the same caravan park and the same steel player was there, that the bug really bit, and Gerry and myself became great friends ever since. Well my Dad knew then that it wasn’t ‘just a passing fad’ and at 16 I got a 6 string lap steel which I fiddled on whilst my Dad got to work on building me my first pedal steel. Gerry kindly let my Dad take some measurements of his guitar, which he had built himself from a copy of a Roto-Sound steel, and I thought I was the “mutts nuts” with this twin neck pedal steel that my Dad had built for me.
I had this guitar for a couple of years and, during this time, I met a steel player who became a very good friend to me called Peter Haywood who advised me to get a commercial one. So when I was 18 my Mum and Dad took me down to Kent to the Steel Mill where I met a guy by the name of Eric Snowball and my parents bought me a twin neck Sho-Bud pro custom for my 18th birthday (thanks Mum and Dad). That same year (1976) I met the man himself Lloyd green when I was at the Wembley Country Music Festival. Well 2 or 3 years later I swapped the twin for the guitar that I really wanted (Eric didn’t have it at the time) a Sho-Bud Lloyd Green. I had played in different bands, Lost Highway, Ryman Country and Well’s Fargo and I had done recording sessions and radio work at that time. I got married, had 2 boys and found that I had very little time to practice and play so I sold all my equipment at the tender age of 24.
Peter Haywood has submitted the following comments:
"My name is Peter Haywood, I have been a professional Steel Guitarist for over 30 years, and I have known David for most of this time. In the early days, David grew up pretty much in my shadow and we had a good deal of contact when he was a lad - he would join bands when I left. At the time, I knew he played pretty well but I did not know his real talent!
I remember getting through the post at the time, some very rare literature called “Bar Chatter” from the USA, and one of the bits of advice in this was, “if you want a pedal steel guitar, don’t bother trying to make one just do more overtime and buy a USA commercial model”. So when David, who incidentally played a ‘Sho-Bud Lloyd Green’ at the time, told me that he was selling his and going to make one, I thought - one step forward and two steps back! Well, after watching lots of people struggle with this endeavour I was somewhat taken aback when he turned up with his “home-made steel”, it really was very good and it worked just like the Lloyd Green Sho-Bud, and this was his first attempt, and I’m talking about 25 years ago!
David moved south from Sheffield to Southampton and after a number of years rang me up out of the blue, he was on the production trail again and he wanted me to see his latest creation this time aptly named, “Sheffield Steel”, nothing home-made about this little beauty! This is a class production; he had left nothing to chance, immaculate finish and a great solid sound. Since then he has been experimenting on the cutting edge and has developed some unique features which all help to move the instrument forward".
WELL DONE Charlie’s boy! Peter Haywood.
Well to cut a long story short, years later I got the bug again, and as you have just read I could not afford to buy a pedal steel so I built one. I then decided to build a twin so I sold the first one (1985) to a guy in Southampton whose name is Brian Coleman (this guitar is now in Gibraltar).
Years passed and so did my marriage of 20 years and at 39 years old I was single again; my 2 boys, Mum, Dad, Sister and friends saw me through all of this. Three days after my Dads 73rd (1997), birthday Mum and Dad went for a short break to Blackpool, where Dad decided to have a heart attack and ended up in hospital. I got a phone call from my Mum to tell me this sad news so I caught a train to Blackpool to be with them. Well that’s where I met my new wife, although I didn’t know it at the time, (she had travelled up from Southampton for the weekend). Well the guy (Brian Coleman) that I sold the first guitar to in 1985 came from Southampton and it turns out that he is my wife’s Mum & Dad’s best friend/best man at his wedding and lives next door to them (spooky or what!).
So here I am living near Southampton indulging myself in my passion of playing and building the Sheffield Pedal Steel Guitar. As you can see it took my Dad (who’s now 85) to have a heart attack for me to meet my lovely wife Debby, who supports my steel passion. So I can definitely say:
“IT’S MY DADS FAULT”!
