At one time I was delusional enough to think I could play pedal steel. Long story short: it ended up in my basement. When we were shooting the Trailer Park Boys Christmas special, I wanted to score it entirely with steel and John Campbelljohn did a great score for us. I also had a scene where a dude played the pedal steel in church at midnight mass. John couldn’t make our shoot so I asked our key grip Dave Chisholm, aka Ratty, to sub in. Ratty did a great job, looked the part, and unlike me, he could actually play it. So I knew it had to be his and gave it to him that night. I bought it from Nashville and the legend is, it belonged to Johnny Paycheck’s pedal steel player.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2010.