What I had to offer the band, besides being Taylor’s guy, was that I could learn new instruments quickly. We kept talking about how good it might sound if somebody played pedal steel, that crying, sliding, homesick sound running beneath the songs.
I had always filed pedal steel under country twang until I heard Greg Leisz on Ray LaMontagne’s God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise. The playing was not twangy. It was patient and haunting. It made the hair stand up on my arms. That was the sound I wanted.
I found an old Fender pedal steel on Craigslist and handed a stranger seven hundred dollars I did not really have. I brought it home without knowing whether I would ever make a note that did not sound like a wounded cat.
I learned it well enough to play live. That seven hundred dollars became the smartest money I ever spent on music. I carried that same steel through the early records and years of touring. It is one of the few possessions I never drank away, never pawned, never lost in a move, breakup, or bad year.
An instrument can become a piece of a band’s identity before anybody knows that is what is happening. For us, it began with a sound on somebody else’s record, a Craigslist listing, and money I could not spare.