ND: Most steel players used double-necks with E9 and C6 tunings. Your ten-string, single-neck Sho-Bud LDG departed from that. How did it happen?
LG: In late 1972, you carried your own instruments. I had a double-neck that weighed 85 pounds in the case and an amplifier, a Fender Twin with two 12-inch JBLs, that weighed 105 pounds with casters. I was in good shape, but it started getting heavier. We wore expensive sport coats to sessions. Within three months, the cuffs’d be frayed where my sleeve was raking those C6 strings.
I got my 1971 session book out. I did 595 sessions in 1971 and could account for only six that used C6. I thought, why not take C6 off and have something to rest my arms on — some sort of cushion?
David and Shot Jackson at Sho-Bud said, “You’re crazy! You’ll ruin this guitar.” They had someone take the C6 parts off and they weighed 18 pounds. At 2 that afternoon I was startin’ an album with Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass. I walked in with my guitar down to an E9 and a pad on it, said, “Danny, what kind of album are we doin’?” And he said, “Western swing.” The one time I would need C6. I faked my way through.
Within a week or two I started getting a lot of guys comin’ by to see what this new guitar was about. I suggested to Shot and David about makin’ a model. Once again, they said, “Nobody’d buy a guitar like that.” They started getting so many orders, within a few weeks Shot called back and said, “You know, we rethought this.”
I’m using the very first LDG ever built: May 9, 1973, a ten-string. I played it until 1988 when I quit doing sessions; my LDG and a Fender blackface Twin with 15-inch D-130F JBLs.
ND: When did the inner ear problems start?
LG: In 1988. I quit right in the middle of a Dolly Parton album Skaggs was producing [White Limozeen]. I did two songs, “Yellow Roses” and “Why’d You Come In Here Lookin’ Like That”. Both went to #1. And in the middle of it, I said, “I can’t do it anymore.” I was literally hearing a half-tone difference from my left to my right ear. And there was tremendous fluid buildup in the ears. I was hearing all kinds of extraneous noises.
Two different otolaryngologists told me, stay in the studio and lose your total hearing, or quit doing sessions, get away from headphones and stress, and the best we can offer is that you’ll maybe retain part of your hearing. The high ringing and everything persisted six or eight months, and I noticed the ringing starting to diminish.
One morning about a year later, I woke Dot up and said, “Dot,” I said, “the noises are all gone and the ringing’s all gone,” and it had disappeared totally. I didn’t suffer any hearing loss. A lot of guys I worked with can’t hear at all, hardly.
I didn’t go back until I walked in to do that album with Alan Jackson, a Christmas album that was my first session in 15 years.
ND: Now that you’re back, what sort of sessions are you doing?
LG: A lot of the off-the-radar stuff. I did a Mac Wiseman-John Prine album. Harper Simon, Paul Simon’s son that Bob Johnston produced, and all kind of things, and they want me to play what I play. I had a great career. I have no regrets. I came back not because I needed the money. I don’t. I came back because I felt I wasn’t finished.
ND: Neither Dale Watson nor you were happy with The Little Darlin’ Sessions album even though Mayhew produced it.
LG: We tried to do a Little Darlin’ type album, and for a lot of reasons it was a disaster. Aubrey thinks it’s the best thing Dale ever did and Dale doesn’t. Mayhew didn’t give us the freedom. He was doin’ what he thought would recapture the Little Darlin’ sound, but I don’t think he remembered that at Little Darlin’ he never interfered with what I did.
We cut five songs of Dale’s, but on the album, they’re all Little Darlin’/Mayhew Music songs. Dale issued a disclaimer for both of us on his website. In November or December, Dale and I will do another album for his label, Hyena Records. We plan to use guys who know, appreciate and understand the type of genuine country Dale loves and sings.
ND: What are some of your other favorite recordings?
LG: I love those records I cut with Mel Street and the Don Williams sound, somethin’ we worked on six months to get to that minimalist level. Once again it was a different type of music than mainstream Nashville. I thought Billy Sherrill was the best producer in Nashville. He literally choreographed every song. He didn’t tell you exactly how to play it, but gave you the idea of how he wanted you to play it, and it was always right.
ND: You’re satisfied with what you’ve done?
LG: It was a grand career. I couldn’t have written the script any better. Me and Dot struggled, and it probably made the savoring of success a lot more enjoyable. And yet I still had privacy because there was anonymity being a session player.
I don’t think good music should go out of style. I always said a record is two and a half to three minutes of illusion, and to create that illusion is the other stuff that fermented in the background, that contributed to the tune. Now the Little Darlin’ stuff wasn’t contrived, because we didn’t have time to contrive it. But everything else was pretty well thought-out, and we had time to fix things, polish ’em up a little bit and create the illusion we were trying to create: of a perfect two and a half, three minute record.
