July 4, 2015 editorial: comments

The Notorious Mr. Murphy

Happy Independence Day, everyone! I hope you’re all enjoying a great holiday weekend with some time off to spend in your studio or just chilling. I’m really looking forward to some free time, in part because the last couple of weekends were extremely busy, and they featured an unwelcome visit from Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame. Here’s what happened.

I had a string of five gigs in eight days, playing with a few different bands. The common thread was that on all of them, I was hired to play pedal steel, one of the instruments I play in addition to guitar.

I’ve had my current pedal steel for a couple of years, and it’s never given me any mechanical trouble. For those unfamiliar, pedal steels have a lot of moving parts. The pedals are attached to rods that push and pull mechanisms inside the instrument, which bend certain strings either up or down by a half or whole step.

I was at rehearsal the afternoon of the first gig, and, after pressing down on one of the pedals, I saw to my horror that the metal ball joint that connects it to the pedal rod, had sheared right off, rendering that pedal useless. I was freaked, because without that pedal, I would be almost completely hamstrung on the instrument. Fortunately, a couple of the guys in the band, who were more mechanically inclined than myself, figured out a way to temporarily jury-rig the pedal to the rod using zip ties. That temporary fix, along with a little duct tape, got me through the first few gigs.

On the Monday afterwards, I drove 90 minutes to get to the nearest pedal steel repair guy I know (they’re few and far between here in the Northeast). He was only able to temporarily fix the broken pedal, and told me I needed to order a replacement. I thought I was all set to get through the next two shows, before the new pedal arrived and could be installed, but on the final show, a different pedal broke — in the exact same place.

This got me to thinking about the issue we all face of preparing for instrument and gear breakdowns. My pedal steel disaster was not something I could realistically have prepared for, pedals don't usually break like that. (It was apparently an issue of metal fatigue.)

That being said, there are many predictable gear issues that performing musicians face, such as broken strings, broken drum heads, broken cables, dead batteries, and so forth. We should all carry spares for any such “consumables” — to use an annoying business-jargon word — that are likely to give out on a gig. Without overloading myself with stuff, I do try to have spares of most items other than instruments and amps whenever I go to a gig.

It’s certainly more critical in a live performance situation, because it’s not possible to run to the store in the middle of a gig for replacement items — but it’s also a good idea to have important spare parts on hand in the studio. Who wants to interrupt a good recording session to go get guitar strings or replace broken drum sticks or a bad mic cable?

So what do you do to prepare for Mr. Murphy’s inevitable visits?

On another subject, I wanted to mention that the Summer NAMM show starts this Thursday, and runs through Saturday. Yours truly and the Audiofanzine crew will be in Nashville, TN to cover it, and we’ll be posting news and videos about the new gear that’s announced. Hopefully, there will be some cool stuff. Stay tuned.