Studio Science: Heather Leigh on the Pedal Steel Guitar

Heather Leigh embraced the pedal steel guitar soon after discovering it, yet refused to be defined by the traditional boundaries of an instrument best known for its association with country and western music. The singer and songwriter, originally from West Virginia, instead uses the pedal steel guitar’s traditional roots as the basis from which to explore a much more expansive and vast sonic world, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with others such as German free jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. Tapping into the instrument’s physical qualities, Leigh straddles genres — noise, blues, drone, avant-garde — and puts the pedal steel guitar at the forefront of her gritty music, as evidenced in her Throne album for Editions Mego, which combines the guitar and her voice to imagine a different kind of popular music.

In this episode of Studio Science, filmed at the Funkhaus as part of RBMA Berlin 2018, Leigh detailed how she uses the pedal steel guitar to explore new sonic worlds.