Steel guitar

We'll soon have a chance to explore music history, some not very well-known music history, at least not here.

Joseph Kekuku is credited with serendipitously creating the steel guitar.

There's history and legend involved with this origin story.

Both history and legend are explored in the production Joseph Kekuku and the Voice of the Steel Guitar, written by Moses Goode and produced by Honolulu Theatre for Youth.

That company is bringing the show to Northwest Arkansas as part of its first-ever national tour.

There will be a public performance Saturday, October 17th at 11:00 AM at the Jones Center in Springdale.

And this is one of the things that, that really brought us to the story.

Uh, we, we do theater for families and for young people, and, um, when he was a young man, um, it, the, the, and there are several versions of the story, both told in the play.

This week, I'm talking to Isaac Stanford of the tiki bar-inflected Slowie and the Boats from Philadelphia, who released Merry Christmas from Slowie and the Boats Volumes 1 and 2 in 2020.

Stanford's lap steel guitar leads the band and gives it its signature sound as they echo Exotica and Stereo Test records from the late 1950s and early 60s.

They bring to mind the sound of Exotica artists Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny, though they work with a slimmer lineup.

David Stream's Fender Rhodes electric piano is Stanford's principal musical foil in the band, and he occupies the musical space that vibes and xylophones had in the original records.

The band here that we're talking about, Slowie and the Boats, has been going now for close to 15 years.

And we are, you know, I'm the front guy, I'm Slowie.

And so it was kind of my idea just to put together some latent talent that some friends of mine, when I was, you know, younger, 15 years ago, when I was just kind of putting together some steel guitar repertoire.

I'm still learning the steel.

Very country.

Steel guitar, strings, heartbreak.

Miranda singing down in the lower part of her voice.

Give me it all.

Which

is exactly why I love doing this.

Went from Rhiannon Giddens and American Roots to Miley Cyrus and Electric Pop over to Miranda Lambert with Steel Guitar and then Carly Rae Jepsen gave us Entire Day and Night.

And somewhere in the middle, Nicole Atkins gave us Rain, Drama and Chris Isaac.

But to me, that music has like a tranquil quality.

You know, we heard Ben Keith on Still Guitar again.

Young was playing a Wurlitzer.

And the band's Levon Helm was on drums.