(Photo courtesy of Scott Sandeman-Allen)

The above photo is taken from a concert at Festival Place in Sherwood Park, Alberta. The concert was a salute to Ian Tyson's Music and was called "The Gift". The event took place on April 28, 2005. The guitar I am playing is a rosewood formica Fessenden D10 with 8 pedals & 8 knee levers.

My Early Years

I was born at Rocky Mountain House in the province of Alberta but grew up in the province of British Columbia. In 1976, when I was 13 or 14, I sold my old Yamaha 180cc street bike that I could push faster than it ever carried me under it's own steam..

With the money that I received for that bike, and some help from my parents, Dad and I ordered a little single neck Emmons guitar from Ronald L. Lashley for the grand sum of $714.00 plus an import duty and sales tax of $201.52. That meant that we paid $915.52 before we ever even looked at the guitar. I only remember the price because I still have the original invoice Mr. Lashley sent with the guitar.

By the way, I still have that Emmons guitar. It came with 3 pedals and 2 knee levers, plus a volume pedal and case to put it all in. My parents watched me struggle with it for a while as I tried to learn what I could on my own. If the truth was known, I probably tortured my parents with the gawd awful noise that I got out of that little Emmons (through no fault of the guitar).

One day, in desperation I'm sure, my Mom loaded me and my guitar into her Pontiac and we headed south to Yakima, Washington to take in a Pedal Steel Guitar Seminar that Jeff Newman was hired to teach. That pretty much changed my life as far as Steel Guitar went as I saw and heard that these guitars could actually make a sound that was beautiful. To hear it on record or the radio is one thing but to actually witness it being done is quite another, I was very impressed.

That trip gave me the tools I needed to develop my technique enough that I started to get something that resembled music out of that guitar. The trip also gave me access to Steel Guitar Instrumental Albums. I remember that the first record I bought was from Tom Bradshaw, (he had a booth set up at the seminar), it was the double album by Buddy Emmons called Steel Guitar Jazz & Four Wheel Drive. It is still one of my favorite records.

Sometime after my 16th birthday, I left school and have been playing and making a living with a steel guitar ever since. I have had the pleasure to have played with some fine songwriters and musicians along the way. Some are famous, and some are not so famous, but all were unique in there own right and I am proud to say that I have worked with them.

Below is a list of singers and pickers that I have performed and/or recorded with in no particular order other than the spelling of their first name.

Cindy Church / Performing & Recording