{"id":767,"date":"2011-07-08T11:34:28","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T15:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikeneer.com\/lapsteelin\/?p=767"},"modified":"2012-10-17T09:45:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T13:45:05","slug":"conversation-with-lee-jeffriess-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/?p=767","title":{"rendered":"Conversation with Lee Jeffriess, Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-0128288170403191\";\n\/* Link units *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"6249925589\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 728;\ngoogle_ad_height = 15;\n\/\/-->\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>M:  How did you end up in California?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  I went to Austin to play a gig and we do a show with Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys and I\u2019d already met him in the UK and I did tell him I played steel (I totally lied through my teeth), and they were like, \u201cCome on, come back to LA with us, join the band.\u201d  I just jumped ship.  I\u2019d just bought the Bigsby steel, literally the day before I stopped off in Houston.  It belonged to a guy called Dusty Stewart, who had played with Hank Thompson.  They saw the Bigsby and were like, \u201cYou bought that?  You\u2019ve got to come back with us.\u201d  They didn&#8217;t know if I could play or not\u2014everyone was just young and enthusiastic.  They probably thought, \u201cHe\u2019ll get it together\u201d and that\u2019s when the pressure came on, when I went into overdrive.  I remember Palomino Club and places like that doing these big shows and I was pretty green.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  California is where a lot of the history of the instrument was and you must\u2019ve been like a kid\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  I was obsessed with it.  Let\u2019s say you were into musicals and you\u2019re a young actor or dancer\u2014where you gonna go?  You\u2019re gonna go straight to New York or the West End of London and live your dream.  Well, I went to my West End [laughs].  <\/p>\n<p>By this point I wasn\u2019t just into to Western Swing; I was into Bop, good R&#038;B\u2014it was all in LA.  LA was the ultimate melting pot.  You\u2019d have guys like Stuff Smith playing a bar gig in El Monte and playing with Speedy and Jimmy, and then you\u2019d have Jimmy going to Central Ave. to play with the black guys, and it reflects in his playing\u2014it was just hipper.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  Were you ever interested in learning to play Bop?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  No, because I was just so narrow-minded about the steel\u2014Speedy, Joaquin, Noel Boggs, Vance Terry, early Chalker.  Even though I was open to listening to a lot of stuff, when it came down to actually physically playing I was narrowed down to LA, 1947 to \u201953\u2014that\u2019s what I wanted to play like.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  Speedy and Capitol Records was right in that timeframe\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Absolutely, Speedy was right at the core of it for me.  He really was the guy that made me go, \u201cI want to buy a steel guitar and learn.\u201d  I remember I was at Ashley\u2019s (Kingman) place in Southampton one night and we\u2019d stay up \u2018til 6 in the morning listening to music, and he said \u201cI\u2019ve got to turn you onto this, there\u2019s some mad steel and guitar playing\u201d and he  showed me the jacket and it was \u201cTwo Guitars Country Style\u201d.  He put it on and it just ripped my brain out!  Still to this day, it excites me just as much as it did then.  Jimmy excited me just as much as Speedy\u2014Speedy for his energy, Jimmy for hip.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  Speedy\u2019s playing, man, still is the highest standard for me.  Speedy couldn\u2019t do what some of the other players could do, and he couldn\u2019t keep up with Jimmy on his level, but he had the energy\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  He wasn\u2019t with Jimmy harmonically\u2014Jimmy\u2019s ears were way bigger\u2014but Speedy just came up with this stuff that\u2019s exciting, like a shot of B12.  I had heard him before\u2014someone had played me a version of Frankie Laine \u201cAce In the Hole\u201d and it sounds like a whirlwind blowing up a canyon.  I like the fact that he\u2019s breaking rules, he and Jimmy.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  You can hear the influence that Speedy had on other players, like when I heard Vance playing Skiddle-dee-Boo\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  You know, Mike, I don\u2019t want to contradict you, but I remember thinking the same thing\u2014Vance was always a very classy, civil, polite guy.  Even in the end he had a diplomatic air about him.  He basically\u2026I don\u2019t think he dug Speedy [laughs].  He didn\u2019t want to say bad things, but you tell could tell it wasn\u2019t there for him.  I don\u2019t think he took him that seriously.  I think they both had a similar excitement in their playing, but I don\u2019t think it had come from Speedy.  Vance had it, too, you know.<\/p>\n<p>Vance had a way of starting up solos that\u2019s pretty damn exciting, and he has cool pauses that set up tension like Speedy, too.  He just goes harmonically somewhere else with it, his harmony\u2019s hipper.  But I\u2019ll tell you what&#8211;a big guy for him was Boggs.  He wasn\u2019t even that enthusiastic about Joaquin, to be honest, and I asked him numerous times.  I\u2019d say, \u201cWhat about those Plainsmen things?\u201d and he\u2019d say, \u201cJoaquin was really good wasn\u2019t he?\u201d  It always came back to Boggs.  It was like, \u201cNoel\u2019s chords, man, the drive\u2026.\u201d  That was it for him.<\/p>\n<p><em>Comments from Lee<\/em>:  Here is the Billy Jack Wills band moonlighting with Paul Westmoreland, Tiny is playing twin fiddles with Cotton and I believe Rusty Draper is playing take off guitar, Vance is on fire on this one some of his best non pedal playing.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7eQPmFpVitI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>M:  It\u2019s funny, because when I think about it, if it wasn\u2019t for the internet, I\u2019m not sure that I\u2019d even be playing the steel today.  I mean I\u2019ve owned a lap steel longer than I\u2019ve owned a computer, but I know that I would have never learned how to play, because I was so isolated from it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Yeah, it put you in touch with like-minded guys across the United States\u2014\u2018cause we\u2019re all isolated, there wasn\u2019t that much around for me.  I couldn\u2019t go see anyone else doing what I wanted to do initially.  I mean, there were some nice guys, great pedal steel players out in Los Angeles and they were nice people and good at what they did, but they weren\u2019t doing what I was doing, so I really couldn\u2019t glean that much from them.  They were good musicians and I could glean that much from them, but it wasn\u2019t until JW (Jeremy Wakefield) came along, and he\u2019d been playing way under the radar, then all of a sudden there was another guy in town playing the same stuff as me and that was good.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  Were you really interested in gear at that time?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  I\u2019m like a poor\u2026a gear head\u2026but with no money.  I\u2019d hustle a cool amp together and make it happen and then I\u2019d trade it on for something else.  I\u2019ve never really had a collection of stuff\u2014I\u2019ve always had a nice guitar to play and a nice amp to use.  I\u2019ve tried a lot of different things and a lot of different brands.  Probably the one I\u2019ve got now is the one I\u2019ve been most happiest  with\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  That\u2019s the Sierra?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Yeah, it\u2019s an early Sierra, a \u201964 Sierra Wright Custom.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  It sounds beautiful.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:   It sounds very similar to the Bigsby I owned.  It\u2019s 24 \u00bd scale.  They are Chuck Wright pickups but what I did was scrounge some Bigsby magnets from Todd Clinesmith and I upped the inductance of the pickups quite a bit.  It went from sounding good to really good\u2014smoother, more extended bass.  It was more noticeable in the bass.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  Chuck\u2019s pickups had  a really unique sound\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  A lot of them have this really scooped out,  really unique sound\u2014you hear it on \u201cCrazy Arms\u201d with Jimmy Day playing that Quad.  It\u2019s that sound.  I like it, but I don\u2019t like it\u2014it\u2019s not for me.  I like hearing Jimmy Day with it, but I wanted to get away from that.  My guitar had a little of that going on, but not as much as Day\u2019s.  The magnet thing seemed to cure that.  There were 2 types of pickups he made:  the blade one and the pole piece one and mine is a blade which, for all intents and purposes, is identical to a Bigsby.  I just put a Bigsby magnet in mine and it made the guitar more \u201chi-fi\u201d and also more microphonic.  When I hit pedals and stuff I can hear it.  To me, it\u2019s like riding an old 1949 Harley.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  I really think that adds a lot to the sound.   With most of the good recordings I hear, like yours and JW\u2019s, you can hear all the dynamics coming from the amp\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Yeah, definitely.  They\u2019re more honest sounding guitars, I think, and they\u2019re just so beautiful looking\u2026a Bigsby, or a really nice Rickenbacher console, or an early Wright Custom\u2026.beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  But back to Maurice Anderson, who said there\u2019s something about when you sit down behind a pretty guitar that\u2019s pleasing to your eye\u2014you will play better.  I sit down at my guitar and I think, \u201cGod, you\u2019re pretty!\u201d  And I made the cabinet, so maybe it\u2019s sort of like I\u2019ve got a little bit of extra pride in it<\/p>\n<p>Originally when I got the guitar it was made of\u2026the top platforms were made of mahogany and the back aprons were made of plywood and everything was skinned in a cherry formica veneer.  I think he was the first guy to make formica guitars.  It didn\u2019t sound bad, but I had all this wood lying around because for a long time I\u2019d been a French polisher\u2014I repaired antique furniture. So, I said, \u2018you know what, I\u2019m gonna take this apart and rebuild it.\u201d  I had fiddle back cherry and western quilted maple and I just used the original body parts as a pattern and remade it and finished it.  I put it all back together with the original mechanism and everything.  I did that because I wanted the guitar to look like a \u201850s one, beautiful maple and all.  <\/p>\n<p><em>M:  How many pedals do you have on the guitar?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Well, the guitar originally had 9 pedals with no knee levers and I use 6&#8211;2 of the pedals work on both necks and there\u2019s 4 pedal changes on the front neck.<\/p>\n<p><em>M: Do you use an E13 copedent?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  I use F13, Boggs\u2019 tuning and I just have the split pedal change like Vance did on the Bob Wills and Billy Jack stuff and the front neck is probably considered just standard C6 changes, but it\u2019s in Bb6.  But I do have the option\u2026the pedals that operate the back neck also come to the front neck and they lower the high 3rd and the high root \u00bd tone, so when I go to the IV chord, I can fake Bud Isaacs\u2019 changes there.  That lowers the 3rd to the 2nd and the root down to the maj7.  It\u2019s backwards\u2014a lot of guys did that in the \u201850s\u2014they got these E9 things in 6th tunings.  I first picked up on it on Brisbane Bop.  I remember telling a couple of old-timers about it and they were like, \u201cOh yeah, everyone was doing that.\u201d  [laughs]<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  I\u2019ll admit, I\u2019ve always had trouble digesting that stuff\u2026I try to envision but it doesn\u2019t make all that much sense to me.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Well, I don\u2019t really have a comprehensive understanding of it, either\u2014I try and approach it from the old way of just looking at those things as \u201cchord changers\u201d\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  That\u2019s what I\u2019m hearing when I listen to you, I don\u2019t hear a lot of pedal action, but every once in a while there\u2019s this chord\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Right, I really believe it\u2019s still primarily non-pedal playing, but there are these chord changers.<\/p>\n<p><em>M:  Right\u2014I hear a lot of bar movement as opposed to staying in position\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>L:  Well, I\u2019m just trying to find those notes [laughs].  I honestly really believe that the most interesting pedal steel players\u2014guys like Chalker and Vance\u2014they were damn good non-pedal players first.  I think it makes you understand the tuning better and makes you more of an individual.  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/2011\/07\/09\/conversation-with-lee-jeffriess-part-4\/\"><strong>Go to Part 4<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>M: How did you end up in California? L: I went to Austin to play a gig and we do a show with Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys and I\u2019d already met him in the UK and I did tell him I played steel (I totally lied through my teeth), and they were like, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[79,77,78,76],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapsteelin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}