Jim Palenscar kicks back at Steel Guitars of North County, his store in Oceanside, CA
Jim Palenscar was diagnosed with adult onset asthma just after his fiftieth birthday. For any ordinary desk worker, this might not have been a life-changing diagnosis, but for Palenscar, who was a practicing veterinarian at the time, it meant a big change. The doctor gave it to him plain and simple – you can’t take care of animals if you have asthma.
So he did what seemed natural to him and opened a store dedicated to selling and repairing the pedal steel guitar, the misunderstood, underappreciated cousin to the electric guitar.
A backup instrument for country music might be the easiest way to describe the role of a pedal steel guitar. Its ability to play crying melodies and lush cords made it a perfect addition to the dreamy countrypolitan hits coming out of Nashville in the early 60s. This association may very well be what has kept the pedal steel guitar in the dark for the last 50 years.
As a pedal steel guitarist, explaining how the instrument works goes with the territory of playing it. Palenscar said, “Yeah, people will either call it an electric cheese slicer or a sewing machine.” It’s sonically rich, but visually bland. The most noticeable gestures involve a steel bar in the left hand and finger picks in the right. The unseen pedals down at the foot of the instrument account for the magical sound; subtle changes in pitch and volume are controlled by the feet and knees in a coordinated dance. The result is a stationary, highly focused and thus, incredibly unsexy, musician.
Jay Dee Maness has played steel for Bonnie Raitt, The Byrds, Eric Clapton, Ray Charles and many more.
Palenscar is an active player, but he can’t sit still for long before he wants to lift the hood and start tinkering. He said, “I keep thinking what’s that squeak? What’s that noise? Where’s that sound coming from? What if I did this? The next thing you know, I’m under it because it frustrates me to play the instrument any other way.”
Since his is the only store on the West Coast that caters to pedal steel players, it naturally functions as a hub and a hangout. Palenscar joked that steel players are just one big support group. But from this outlier community, a strong network of musicians forms. Many of Palenscar’s customers have played in the most prestigious studios with some of the top recording artists. One is Palenscar’s good friend Jay Dee Maness. A former steel guitarist for the Byrds and Buck Owens, he has had a long career as a gigging musician in Los Angeles. When Maness was denied full recognition for a hit record he played on, Palenscar called on the collective influences of the steel guitar community for help.
“Being friends with Jay Dee one thing that was always kinda stuck in his craw was that he never got a gold record for playing on “Tears in Heaven” with Eric Clapton in the 90s,” he told me. Palenscar put his hands behind his head and recited a story, almost as worn-in as the green couch on which he was seated. The background of the story was that Jay Dee Maness played the solo break for a song that earned Clapton three Grammy awards, but the label, Warner Brothers, never awarded him the standard gold record placard.
“So I call Skip Edwards,” Palenscar continued, “who was Dwight Yoakam’s player for a long time and and I say, ‘Skip, where’d you get those gold records you have on your wall?’ He says, ‘I dunno, they just come to me.’ And I say ‘well, what’s on them all that’s the same’ and he says, ‘they all say RIAA.’”
Palenscar made a series of calls, talking first to the Recording Industry Association of America then to Warner Brothers. Then he called on another steel player, Greg Leisz, who was playing with Clapton at the time, and had him bring the gold record to rehearsal so that the author of “Tears in Heaven” could sign it.
Palenscar threw a party and invited steel players and musicians to present the record to Maness. Afterward, they screened a short film showing a list of performers Maness had backed up, reminding everyone of the contribution that their instrument had made to popular music. As the list went on, names like Ray Charles, Rod Stewart, and Julio Iglesias – performers not usually associated with country music – started appearing, making clear the instrument’s most neglected attribute.
Maness stands in his man-cave of musical achievements
Piercing at times and silky smooth at others, the pedal steel is a musical chameleon, able to play within many different genres. The question then is, if steel guitar is such a versatile instrument, why is it losing followers?
Palenscar doesn’t have an answer. As a teacher, he tries to be sensitive to the interests and taste of his students. He recalled in his first lesson how his teacher made him play “Harbor Lights” in a traditional Hawaiian style when what he really wanted to play was Jackson Browne’s “Take it Easy.”
“What I try to teach people,” he said, “is how to use the instrument to make the music that’s inside of them. I say go home and find a song you can listen to a million times and learn how to play it. Just pick out the melody notes and so it gets them used to reaching from their heart for the note.”
Although a more substantial revival may soon await pedal steel, a few modern country/folk acts like Meg Baird (Drag City) and Ray LaMontagne (RCA) already regularly incorporated the instrument into their music. But until the hipsters start flocking to his store, for Jim Palenscar, the restoration of pedal steel guitars remains a labor of love.
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett