Emerging Jokes about the pedal steel.

[Barry Yasika]

“I’ve started hearing more jokes about the banjo and the steel guitar. The banjo gets stuck with the hillbilly schtick, the steel guitar with the weepy cliché. But those jokes add insult to injury, because both instruments once defined the sound of American music, and now they’ve been pushed aside, evicted from the very traditions they helped create. To laugh at them is to forget the history, craft, and emotion they still carry.”

This kind of mockery really gets my goat!! I've spent and spend so much time tryng to refine something I see as beautiful only to be slapped in the face with veiled cliches referring it to the move "Deliverance"

[Bill Ford]

Prime example of missing steel, fiddle....I watched CMA awards for about 2 minutes,
thinking I was going to maybe see/hear country music,
big mistake, then realized why I no longer turn a radio on expecting to hear "real country"
staying with my old cd collection of real country and Green, Emmons, Franklyn, Byrd...Vince, George, ET, Allen J, well, you get it.
Banjer..deliverance, steel guitar...whiney thingy....etc, etc

[Bill McCloskey]

Jokes about instruments are not limited to banjos (one of our SGF founder's favorite topics) and steels.

Jokes about violas in classical circles are legendary :
"How can you tell if a viola player is playing out of tune? The bow is moving."
"What is the only thing a violinist can do better than a viola player? Play the viola."
"What's the difference between a viola player and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four."

[William Seeders Mosheim]

I'm a banjo maker by trade and play steel and banjo both professionally...I've heard all the jokes and continue to. I enjoy hearing new ones but I get awfully tired of the Deliverance jokes in particular. Luckily, that movie is no longer a mainstay in popular culture so it's becoming less frequent. Banjo and steel are becoming hip again in a lot of circles so they're on their way back up in the ranks and starting to be taken very seriously again. Even some huge pop stars are featuring banjos and pedal steel in recordings and on stage with them these days so the tides are turning, as slow as that may be...

There's jokes about every instrument and it's players. It can be incredibly obnoxious at times but try and take it for the lighthearted nature it usually is as a good laugh is always healthy. Most of the time I've found the people telling them aren't musicians and they think it's a fun way to relate or take someone down a peg they're envious of as they can't play music. I agree that there's a line though and some people cross that line with a smile on their face...

Barry, on another note, I see your Bethlehem Steel profile photo and it brings a smile to my face. My great-grandfather was a riveter for Bethlehem Steel and I hold that history very proudly as he helped build some of this countries most impressive bridges. I also have a friend who's currently reviving parts of the original factory and restoring and putting to work old power hammers that haven't been used in a generation or more. What a legacy that company had!

[Bill McCloskey]

Speaking of Bethlehem Steel: my grandfather was the VP of Edgewater Steel in Pittsburgh. I grew up in a steel town.

[Nico Hillary]

I dunno, I've been taking the rise out drummers for so long (What's got three legs and one a**hole?
A drum stool! etc.) I guess it's kind of our turn...

[Greg Forsyth]

Some jokes make me wonder where they are emerging from

[Robert Miller]

I don't take it personally. I have a feeling a lot of them start with players themselves. Unless you play a lot of temp/humidity controlled environments (Studios aren't generally even that stable) you're gonna have some oh @#$?! moments that sound like an SNL skit sooner or later. Nothing to do but fix it and laugh.
Of course, I might be letting myself off the hook for mercilessly taunting bass players after bring equipment in to a club out of a trailer that's legit -15F or colder. Necks don't warm up as quick as strings do...

...I'm a bad people

[Brooks Montgomery]

What’s the difference between a fiddle and a violin?

You don’t spill beer on a violin.

[Nico Hillary]

Now stop me if you've heard this one...

What's the difference between an onion and a banjo?
Nobody ever cried when a banjo got cut in half.

Thank you, thank you. You've been a lovely audience. G'night!

[Don R Brown]

Such jokes are not unique to music, I'm a "car guy" and certain styles of Corvettes are occasionally made fun of. My reply is "Make all the jokes you want, I'll even tell a few myself. Just don't try to take mine away from me!" A similar reply might be worth having available if the digs bother you.

[Bobby Hearn]

How do you get a steel player to play out of tune? Hire him for a gig!

[Bill McCloskey]

Here is one I heard from David Grisman:

I stopped at a 7/11 to pick up some coffee after a gig and stupidly left my Gibson Granada Banjo in the back seat with the windows down. When I came back...you guessed it...

There were two banjos in the back seat.

[Bruce Coffman]

Oh please oh please oh please — let’s do drummers! I’ve got LOADS of those and they’re all both funny and painfully accurate.

[Per Berner]

OK, here you go: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians? A drummer!

[Nico Hillary]

How can you tell there's a drummer at your front door?
The knock speeds up and he has no clue when to come in.