Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium hosted Sho-Bud Showcase Live, a four-hour celebration of the pedal steel guitar featuring players from country, rock and blues. The event highlighted the instrument’s range and the return of the Sho-Bud brand, with Slash, Marcus King, Robert Randolph and 89-year-old steel guitarist Lloyd Green among those taking the stage.
Sho-Bud was founded by steel guitar figures Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons and became a leading brand in the 1960s and 1970s. After Gretsch acquired the company in 1979, production slowed. Shot Jackson’s grandchildren, Dawn and Will Jackson, reacquired Sho-Bud in 2024 and restarted production. The Ryman concert was presented as a showcase of that revival and benefited causes including the Peter Frampton Myotosis Foundation and the Cerebral Palsy Foundation.
The lineup included Green, known as “Mr. Nashville Sound,” as well as Junior Brown, Dan Dugmore and Grammy winner Robert Randolph. Don Felder joined the evening to perform the Eagles’ “Take It Easy,” while Marcus King brought a blues-rock sound to the steel guitar, including a performance of the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Fire on the Mountain.”
Green and Andrea Whitt demonstrated the instrument’s versatility with an instrumental version of Elliott Smith’s “Waltz #2.” Randolph, introduced as “The Jimi Hendrix of Pedal Steel,” played a wah-wah-heavy take on “Voodoo Chile” and tilted his instrument on its side during the performance.
One of the evening’s featured moments paired Green with Slash. Green played the first Sho-Bud model bearing his name, while Slash sat behind the first new model. Slash picked out the opening of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” with Green joining in. The moment also underscored how the pedal steel can be overshadowed by electric guitar, even at an event devoted to celebrating it.
Sources: Rolling Stone.