Musicians Featured:

• Dave Easley - pedal steel guitar

• Cathlene Pineda - Wurlitzer electric piano

• Chad Taylor - drums

• David Tranchina - double bass

Cover Artwork:

• Painting, Composition Two: for Dave Easley (2021) by M P Landis

• Cover Photograph by Gary Lowell

• Back Cover Photography by Ian Souter

• Layout by David J. Woodruff

Press:

“Easley adapts the pedal steel for jazz, working on pieces by Coltrane, Monk and Zawinul in the grooves of Byways of the Moon, but he leaves space for Led Zeppelin and The Beach Boys in this mix as well, somehow making them never seem out of step, or like they weren’t made for the strings of the steel guitar.” — Raven Sings the Blues

“The best way to approach this one is to forget everything you knew about how a pedal steel is supposed to sound, and how these songs are supposed to sound. Virtuoso player Dave Easley makes his solo album a time for exploration, finding new possibilities in a handful of jazz standards and a couple of classic rock ringers.” — Offbeat Magazine

“His technical mastery and melodic generosity have been kept busy in New Orleans, working in many different stylistic contexts. He’s achieved a well-deserved degree of fame for his gorgeous work as a member of Brian Blade’s Fellowship… a concise repertoire of standards, framing the brilliance of Easley in a perfect, woozy light.” — The Quietus

“Easley is nimble on the strings and motors of his instrument, gliding, picking and ascending the melody with glowing pointillism. It's easy to float away in his glissando, but Easley returns to Earth just as Pineda takes a spirited piano solo warmed by the Wurlizter's hum and the rhythm section's spacious scene setting.” — NPR, All Songs Considered

“a set of exquisite instrumental pieces performed by pedal steel guitar maestro Dave Easley and his colleagues. Although most of the album centers on contemporary jazz, Easley easily crosses into spirited blues, rock and Americana.” — Progressive Rock Central

Full Liner Notes by Susan Alcorn:

Dave Easley plays the pedal steel guitar, but this is not a “pedal steel guitar” album; it’s an album by a gifted musician at the peak of his career. His phrasing, sense of touch, harmonic sensibilities, and sheer virtuosity put him in a league with greatest musicians of our time. So I won’t go into how difficult an instrument to play the pedal steel guitar can be or the extraordinary coordination and control is takes to play chords with a light touch. I’ll talk about the album and the music.

I had heard about Dave Easley playing with Brian Blade in the early nineties and over the years. Whenever I encountered New Orleans musicians, the first thing they would say to me (a fellow steel guitarist) was always, “Have you heard Dave Easley?”, but I hadn’t. I finally had that opportunity in 2012 at the International Steel Guitar Convention in St. Louis in a rather sterile environment, a convention and a hotel  that had seen better days. I played in the main ballroom where half the audience left during the first song and Dave was playing in a conference room to fifty or sixty rapt steel guitarists hanging on to every note. I walked in just as Dave said, “People say you should play from your roots, but what if your roots are in the sky?” and lit into Roger McGuinn’s “Eight Miles High”. It was a revelation.

The pedal steel guitar, an infant in the family of instruments, is an enigma. Perhaps the last musical instrument borne of the mechanical age before the beeps, blips, and cold comforts of electronic music, it is one of the most expressive instruments on the planet and one of the least understood: a neck of anywhere from 8 to 14 strings, a set of pedals for the feet, knee levers and inside the guitar, a Rube Goldberg contraption, a Mondrian painting, a cluster of rods, levers, cogs, and springs to enable the pedals change the tension and thus the pitch.

Like all instruments, the pedal steel guitar has unlimited musical possibilities, but unlike most other instruments, these possibilities have barely scratched the surface. In the right hands, an instrument leaves an indelible mark on the styles of music it touches. This is what Dave Easley has done for jazz — and for everything else he has played. We came up listening to Buddy Emmons, Curly Chalker, and Joaquin Murphy. Now another name can be added to that pantheon.

There is plenty to love in this album - the lyricism displayed on “My Foolish Heart” and “Ruby My Dear”, a version of “In a Silent Way” that Brian Wilson would love and an interpretation of “In My Room” that I think Miles Davis would have approved of; and, of course, John Coltrane’s formidable composition “Giant Steps”. The deft and tasteful ensemble-like accompaniment of drummer Chad Taylor and double bassist Dave Tranchina. Cathlene Pineda’s piano rhapsodic solo on “Jesus Maria” and more. This is one of the very few albums by a pedal steel guitarist that simply takes my breath away, and I, as surely will you, will treasure this record, returning to it again and again through the years, each time discovering something new.