Luke Schneider
Pedal steel player, composer and improviser Luke Schneider is on the phone with the Scene from his camper van, hauling ass back from Muscle Shoals to Nashville, which he’s called home for about two-and-a-half decades. He’s in good spirits after a good gig, and his positive energy is pinging off the cellphone towers and satellites between us. Schneider has been having a good year filled with cool shows, like Thursday’s performance opening for Australian experimental funk trio Glass Beams at The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn., and cool record releases like A Companion for the Spaces Between Dreams, his new collaboration with soulful electronic wizard Jamie Lidell, out Friday via Northern Spy records.
Through the end of last year, Schneider was on the road extensively with longtime musical partner William Tyler as a member of Tyler’s band The Impossible Truth. But the opportunity arose for Schneider’s scattered solo dates to coalesce into something more substantial.
“In January [William] was like, ‘Hey guys, I think this is going to be a solo year for me, probably not going to be doing any band stuff,’” Schneider recalls. “And I was like, ‘OK, it can be a solo year for me too.’”
He quickly put together two tours, one up New England way and one out west. While Schneider built a name for himself playing steel with more tradition-focused Americana and the kind of badass pickin’ you’d expect to go along with that, his solo work has been focused on the abstract potential of the instrument. His work vibes so hard it blurs the lines between ambient — the use of sound to evoke a sense of space over time — and New Age, the use of sound to create a sense of spiritual well-being. It is a balance of ethereal and corporeal that works best as a communal listening experience.
“Every night I’m definitely trying to bring a moment of peace and grounding and help people exhale through all of the crazy shit that is going on right now, and just sort of the burning of Rome that we’re living through, and just everybody being just clenched and on edge doom-scrolling,” says Schneider. “I want to try and help people exhale. I think that that is getting across. I think it’s starting to sort of be [an] opportunity that people have to come and just fucking close their eyes and just breathe and turn off the phone for 30 minutes. I’m playing and sort of listening to these different tones through this weird pedal steel instrument that they don’t usually get to see played. I think that’s a big part of the appeal, just breathing. Peace, slowing down, getting grounded, getting more present.”
Schenider’s work has become more open, more spacious with each step down this path. His August solo EP For Dancing in Quiet Light is steeped in minimalism — the exploration of sound over time — without being bound to its dogmas. His work with Lidell is the sound of two musicians disintegrating the barriers between past and future, stretching the listener’s ear out like a yin yoga class for your tympanic membrane.
Throughout his body of work, he employs his signature 1967 Emmons push-pull pedal steel and various effects to cover some wide and beautiful territory, creating soundscapes that evoke natural phenomena — whether of our planet or some other. Schneider’s catalog includes his Tangerine Dreamy debut Altar of Harmony and its Windham Hillbilly follow-up It Is Solved by Walking, both released via Third Man Records, and the delightfully deep Understand, a COVID-era collaboration with fellow traveler Tyler.
“Third Man really was a great foundation for me, and I’m so appreciative that they took the chance on putting out their first kind of ambient record [with] mine,” says Schneider. “I’ve been doing stuff with Tompkins Square Records and Northern Spy and most recently Leaving Records out of L.A., and that’s just really kind of grown the circle of people who are discovering what I’m doing, especially out west.”
Discovery seems to be a prime motivator in Schneider’s music. As each note unfurls, you can feel it poking and prodding the outer limits of what can be done with a pedal steel guitar, drawing on traditional techniques, bending and twisting sound in ways that feel like they are defying physics.
“Pedal steel is definitely something that lends itself to making interesting, ambient New Age sounds. [It’s] versatile and gives a very, very kind of universal — I don’t know, energetic tone to it that really hits people and they respond to.”
Now just think about how awesome that will sound in a fucking cave. Not since Pauline Oliveros climbed into that cistern to record Deep Listening have an underground artist and an underground venue been paired so well. It’s a rare opportunity for fans of literal, metaphorical and metaphysical deep listening to close their eyes and receive sound in a new and revelatory way while also engaging one of Nashville’s most beloved traditional instruments.
“I am proud of the fact that this sort of came together in the South and in Tennessee and is sort of a uniquely American thing. … In terms of what pedal steel can do in different genres, how it can be introduced in different parts of the world, I think we’re just now hitting our stride.”
