Chuck Campbell Interview
A resident of Rochester, New York when we met in 1996, Chuck Campbell was one of the first steel guitarists from outside Florida I documented. As a pioneering pedal-steel guitarist in the House of God who possesses a solid knowledge of music theory, he led the way in incorporating the pedal-steel guitar into the House of God musical tradition, which the non-pedal or “lap” steel guitar had dominated for decades. He was also an innovator in introducing a variety of electronic effects into the tradition. In 2004, he was honored with the National Heritage Fellowship, the national’s highest award for traditional artists, for his contributions to the “sacred steel” musical tradition. As a member of the Campbell Brothers band, he has toured extensively throughout the world.
– Robert L. Stone
- The Robert Stone Sacred Steel Archive: Chuck Campbell 00:00
Interviewees: Charles T “Chuck” Campbell and Phillip “Phil” Campbell
Interviewer: Robert Stone
Date: 6/13/1996
Location: Nashville, TN
Language: English
For the archive overview:
The Robert Stone Sacred Steel Archive
This is an interview originally recorded for research purposes. It is presented here in its raw state, unedited except to remove some irrelevant sections and blank spaces. All rights to the interview are reserved by the Arhoolie Foundation. Please do not use anything from this website without permission. info@arhoolie.org
Charles T “Chuck” Campbell and Phillip “Phil” Campbell Interview Transcript:
Robert Stone:
Okay, this is Bob Stone, it’s the 13th of June, 1996. We’re here at the Keith Dominion National Assembly, and I’m here interviewing Chucky Campbell, Chuck Campbell, and his brother Phil is here too, we might get a question or two out of him. We got music in the background. So how did you get started playing? And how long have you been playing?
Chuck Campbell:
I’ve always admired the steel, and I guess I got started my father bought a lap Gibson six-string, which is a classic now, but I got rid of it of course, when I was 12.
Robert Stone:
He bought it for you?
Chuck Campbell:
For Christmas.
Robert Stone:
And you heard it in church, is that true?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes.
Robert Stone:
So that was your first exposure to steel, was in church?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes.
Robert Stone:
You grew up in this church?
Chuck Campbell:
Correct. From birth.
Robert Stone:
And in the Keith Dominion?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes.
Robert Stone:
Okay, because I know that there’s some that have started in the Jewell and gone to the Keith and vice versa.
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Robert Stone:
And, so that was when you were 12?
Chuck Campbell:
Mm-hmm.
Robert Stone:
And a six-string Gibson, so how’d you get started?
Chuck Campbell:
I started, it was a gentleman at our church that played, whose name is Luther Robertson. He’s a elder, and he started out… He was playing at church. And it took me about a good year before I played in church.
Robert Stone:
That’s not very long.
Chuck Campbell:
I know.
Robert Stone:
He makes it sound like a long time.
Chuck Campbell:
And my first experience probably in church was they told me to take it home.
Robert Stone:
Sound like dying cats?
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah, it was pretty ugly.
Phil Campbell:
Amongst other animals.
Robert Stone:
But you weren’t discouraged obviously?
Chuck Campbell:
No.
Robert Stone:
Kept at it. Did you have somebody show you tunings?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes, he started and then-
Robert Stone:
And what was his name again?
Chuck Campbell:
Luther Robertson. And what happened was at the time, what really made me really love the steel was, my parents brought back tapes of Calvin Cook playing in Nashville. And in fact, I got one from him playing in 1968 that I’m going to let you listen to.
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
And the way he played just did something for me and I wanted to play like him. He came over and rendered a few concerts in a banquet setting for our church. And at that point, him and his cousin, Charles Flenory, which he’s a good player, great player too.
Robert Stone:
Charles Flenory?
Chuck Campbell:
Right, Flenory. They started teaching me and tuning, and when they would come over, and that’s when I really started making great strides.
Robert Stone:
So how old were you then?
Chuck Campbell:
I was somewhere in the neighborhood, all this happened so rapidly, it’s about the same year, I’m still 13 going on 14, if I’m not mistaken.
Robert Stone:
That’s when a lot of musicians move fast.
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Robert Stone:
Fast progress.
Chuck Campbell:
And you know this one of the things where you’re playing in the bathroom, you’re playing… You’re not into sports that much, you just playing that’s it…
Robert Stone:
Uh-huh. Drive your family crazy.
Chuck Campbell:
Yes. And that’s all I did.
Phil Campbell:
But I thought he was great.
Robert Stone:
And Phil you play guitar, right?
Phil Campbell:
I play lead, yeah.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, lead guitar. And how long have you been playing?
Phil Campbell:
I guess I started out as a bass player when I was 16, I got this late start. And in fact, the way that all started is Chuck brought me home a bass and said, “I want you to start playing this, and I want you to play with me.” And I had that same kind of deal about a year and half gestation period, and then got a chance to start playing in church kind of thing. And then I had to switch to lead because another pretty talented guy came to our church, and so I switched to lead to facilitate that. So that’s been about – that was about 11 years ago.
Robert Stone:
What tuning do you use now, and how did you get there? Was there a progression? Did you start with a G tuning or an A tuning, or?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes, I started with the straight E.
Robert Stone:
E.
Chuck Campbell:
E major.
Robert Stone:
Excuse me.
Speaker 4:
Is there another drum stick in here?
Robert Stone:
Break one?
Chuck Campbell:
Nah, I don’t think so.
Robert Stone:
Must’ve broke one. You were talking about your tuning.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
Go ahead.
Chuck Campbell:
I started with…. My tuning that I have now, started with… Is really a mixture of Ted’s tuning, and Calvin’s, and Henry’s. And it evolved into a E ninth top with the bottom being a mixture of those.
Robert Stone:
You know the names of the notes on the strings?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes.
Robert Stone:
Can just you say them?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes. My tuning at this point is F#.
Robert Stone:
You start from the bottom or the top?
Chuck Campbell:
Top. Starting from the top is an F, I’m playing a 12-string MSA.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Chuck Campbell:
So I have a F# to a Eb to the G# to the E, E7, this is where Calvin’s tune come in. I mean the next one after the E is a D that’s where Calvin’s that’s the seventh.
Robert Stone:
Right. Come out at seven.
Chuck Campbell:
And then I have the B, G sharp, two Es that are tuned exactly the same, this is Calvin’s. And then I have a B, another E and a B. And what happened with the… I moved from a… Let me give you a progression of my guitars, so that’ll give you a glimpse of what happened. I went from the six string, to a dual eight. And what everybody wanted at that time was an eight string Fender.
Robert Stone:
Mm-hmm. I’ve got one.
Chuck Campbell:
Deluxe.
Robert Stone:
All right.
Chuck Campbell:
And I’d kill for one of those right now so if you make it out of here alive…
Robert Stone:
I’ve got a eight deluxe and a double eight string master.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
Yeah a nice guitar.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay, nice. Right. And Ted had the double eight at the time and Calvin had the single eight and I always wanted eight and I finally got an eight, but by that- I went from a double eight Japanese made steel, to an eight string Fender, and then I went to a 10 string double neck white sierra with the Z legs. And that was one pretty box, but it had two cases to carry this thing around there.
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
But it was pretty as all get-out.
Phil Campbell:
What was the first-
Chuck Campbell:
Right, and it had a sound, the country western players didn’t like. But it was the most beautiful sounding guitar I’ve ever had for church. And at that point, what I did then was had an E ninth up top, and I had it and the way I got my tuning, which is from God. You got to be. Because all I did was I said, I wanted pedals so that I could switch between Calvin’s and Ted’s tune. And come to find out actually switching between Ted’s and Henry or Calvin’s and Ted’s are close. But if you try to… If you hit the pedals and go to the progression, you end up with the natural progression of going from your root to your fifth fret.
Robert Stone:
To your four chord, yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
Right. To your four chord. And that’s how the tuning evolved from there, because I would hit the two pedals and that would bring me – I’d be riding Ted’s tuning. Then I lift them up and I was in Calvin’s too many. And that’s how that started. And at that time, when I got my pedal steel, if I’m not mistaken, Ted had started with the pedals. He got his directly from Sho-Bud here. And he had them tune his up although he had a certain tuning he had. And at that time, Calvin got his a little bit later. And at the age of, I guess, 15.
Chuck Campbell:
At that point, at the age of 15, which was an honor, Calvin called me, I went over to Detroit and I actually tuned his steel up at the age of 15. And that was an honor for me to be able to tune his steel. And of course, Calvin being the type of player he is, of course he never played it like I did. He did some things with it that I would never do.
Chuck Campbell:
I was telling them how excited I was to do that. But then you took it and you did some things with the steel that I would never do with that tuning.
Calvin:
And I’m still playing it now. And that’s been 23 years ago.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah. And that was back-
Robert Stone:
Who was it- Lloyd Green that said that Calvin is the B.B king of the gospel steel and you’re the Eddie Van Halen.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah. That’s what they call us, yes. When Lloyd… That was great when Lloyd came over and played.
Calvin:
That was exciting boy, he did.
Chuck Campbell:
He came and played for us.
Calvin:
Sure did, yeah. Privately.
Robert Stone:
Is that right? He was a great player.
Chuck Campbell:
Great ain’t no word.
Calvin:
He said, “I don’t do this normally but you guys-“
Chuck Campbell:
He don’t do it for nobody, but he just-
Calvin:
And the guy that got him to do it, bro. We appreciated it. What was his name?
Chuck Campbell:
Bobby Seymour.
Calvin:
Bobby Seymour.
Robert Stone:
… yeah. That’s the guy that wasn’t he involved when Glen took lessons up here?
Chuck Campbell:
I don’t know.
Robert Stone:
I think he said it was Terry Crisp and Bobby Seymour.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay.
Calvin:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
When he came up as a young guy.
Calvin:
He’s the one who got that done and tuning ever since he done it, that’s 23 years ago, because my daughter’s 23. I just got it. And I’ve been playing with it ever since. Learned how to play it.
Chuck Campbell:
And Calvin did some things with that tuning. And I was just telling him, I was… The way I play is a combination of everything. And Calvin was coming and… Calvin over there he was coming over, teaching us, doing the banquets, him and his cousin, Charles Flenory.
Calvin:
We were together all the time, more than anybody else. Me and him were together so much.
Chuck Campbell:
And I got a tape to let him listen to you in ’68 when you played Thank you for One More Day.
Calvin:
Man. I wish I could play that again.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah. I probably play that better than you now.
Calvin:
Yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
And that’s-
Calvin:
Okay. Can’t touch it.
Chuck Campbell:
That’s the strange thing is kids can play stuff that I played years ago, better than I play. And with the tunings, that’s where I got the tuning. And then there’s another guy I ran into called Acorne Coffee. And Acorne, just the name alone gets you started right?
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
Well, Acorne, he was a minister that rode with Bishop Harrison and Bishop Lockley. And Bishop Lockley was the guy that started Willie Eason-
Robert Stone:
Right, with the gospel…
Chuck Campbell:
… playing around with somebody and Henry Nelson came in and played I guess a little bit with his father and along with Lockley and all of them. All of them guys came up. And Acorne, he was learning what I knew at the time my Sierra got stolen. And they took the top, but left the legs. The Z legs, okay. And at the time Acorne gave… Let me use his Fender Eight with pedals, with the sunbursts that Fender.
Robert Stone:
Right, the old 400-
Chuck Campbell:
With the cables.
Robert Stone:
… yeah, the old 400, yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
The slick thing was about the cables though that I really enjoyed was I could change – experiment really quickly rather than going through- And what happened was I became a real mechanic on the steel understanding because I did all my own setups and experimented with a lot of tunes. And one reason I can pop the tunes off my top of my head is because all the younger guys now they’ll call me up with 10. I have tunings for 10 string, eight string, for the 12 strings, toward our style. And I was thinking about doing a video or something rather, so I don’t have to keep telling them over the phone long distance and some more to illustrate what’s going on. But at the time Acorne came up and he was starting to teach me…
Chuck Campbell:
He was teaching me, Acorne was trying to teach me some nuances of what the essence of what Harrison did. And he was trying to learn from me the mechanics of what I did. And he always… He was the type of guy that pretty much was telling me, “Man, you got the potential to be the best that there ever was because of the mechanical knowledge.” And what I ended up doing was my tuning evolved to a point where each pedal became a chord that you could go across the whole string, just like a harpsichord and each pedal would make a whole chord. So all of my pedals are set up that my first pedal is the sixth, my second pedal is a suspended, next one is a seventh, the next one is a minor.
Chuck Campbell:
And the next one is a different type of sixth, a different form. And the last one is a ninth. The knee is a major seventh, the other knee unsuspends. I got another knee that goes into a different ninth and a last knee gives me an augment. And then I have a way to get diminished with the half sixth, if I got this correctly. And that’s the way my pedal is set up, evolved in that form. And the difference is in country, playing country Western opposed to playing this way is we have to, as Henry Nelson, most eloquently, always subscribes to, you have to play in the spirit. And so a lot of times you don’t have time to be pulling it out. And in fact, key-
Robert Stone:
You don’t want to have to think too much.
Chuck Campbell:
… right. And in fact, he used to beat us up for bringing the pedals in, because he’d say you don’t need all that to play in the spirit. All you need is to… And to some extent he had a lot… He was right to some extent, but… And being progressive and try to take this to another level. I was always, I used a lot of effects. I had one the first, I think set up of effects pedals in a suitcase before DOD and all of them started breaking out with the Boss, with the pedal boards. I had that set up where I’d have the pedal set up right next to the steel, where I had a phase shifter. I had the envelope filter. I had the Boss Stone. I had the Electro-
Robert Stone:
You still use a lot of that?
Chuck Campbell:
… not much. My sound now is more tailored toward, as I told you, I’ve been very influenced by Ronnie Moselle sound and the sound that he has with the wah and the-
Robert Stone:
So he does a lot of wah wah?
Chuck Campbell:
Right. And in fact, he… Best I ever heard.
Robert Stone:
Do you use a wah wah pedal?
Chuck Campbell:
No, I use an envelope filter because I use the volume pedal. I also knew how to-
Robert Stone:
What’s an envelope filter?
Chuck Campbell:
It’s like a wah.
Phil Campbell:
Automatic.
Chuck Campbell:
Automatic wah.
Robert Stone:
Okay, right.
Chuck Campbell:
But I go into that before the volume pedal so I can control my volume opposed to most wah wah pedals, well all of them that I know once you press the button, it’s all wah no volume control. I also learned the technique of, with the volume.
Robert Stone:
With the knobs.
Chuck Campbell:
And the greatest guys I’ve seen with the knobs is of course, Henry Nelson and Calvin. Calvin had a knob thing. He had the wildest Fender deluxe. It had sheepskin, because it was so beat up, somebody put sheepskin all around it, pseudo leather. And he had a volume control on this thing that was completely broke and what it would do, it would go from zero volume with just a nudge to max. And Calvin got so good with even that set up that he could actually go from… He got increments out of that. I don’t know. I don’t know how he did it, but he had… Nobody else could play this box the way he could get that out of there. Part of my set up is I’ve always used the volume as a part of the sound. And the wah is not for wah as much as it is for tone. And Henry Nelson uses the tone control.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Chuck Campbell:
A lot.
Robert Stone:
Aubrey too.
Chuck Campbell:
Right. Let me just say something… What I was saying was you got players that invented certain things and they’re the originators. Willie Eason was the guy that originated that mimicking a song, a voice to the… And I had the pleasure of hearing him play live in Philly, just at a service. And I said, “Man, if he was doing this back in the forties, I know you was knocking them dead.” Well, Henry took that a step further with I think – being melodic with it. But he also brought in this thing where, you really had a praise service. And what Henry really had, it took me a while to understand it, that really made a service go was he had a beat to his fram, that this beat is wild. He can actually get his whole service going just off the beat.
Chuck Campbell:
Just, and it’s almost like he’s got sticks there going along with a little tone going with it. Calvin thing for us was… It’s people that said when Calvin first started playing over here, he wasn’t that great because he was bringing over the Jewell type thing. But he came into his own and what made him great was that he was just the best that- Calvin could play melodic and fast. I mean, he was the guy that brought in the speed and that’s what always made me try to be a speed demon, was Calvin. I tried to take it another step with the speed because of Calvin’s.
Robert Stone:
You said you’re speaking in the past tense, have you changed? Have you changed your approach or are you still trying to play fast?
Chuck Campbell:
I still try to go for speed. I have different techniques for speed too, and blocking techniques. And that’s what-
Robert Stone:
Do you do right hand blocking as well as left?
Chuck Campbell:
… right. And also pick blocking as well as some thumbs and bars.
Robert Stone:
All these lessons from this guy.
Chuck Campbell:
Bars and the whole nine. And so-
Robert Stone:
Was that a long haul for you to learn that?
Chuck Campbell:
Yes.
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
But I was going to tell you Acorne Coffee… I’m trying to keep this as uniform as possible for you. Acorne coffee introduced me to Winnie Winston. And I had bought the Winnie Winston steel book which showed you blocking techniques. And the way I learned about blocking techniques was at the time, Ted was the guy that had the turnarounds and Ted playing is more reminiscent of big band to me. He’s always got some thing going where it’s like two things converging on each other from different angles, almost like a big dance style. And so-
Chuck Campbell:
Ted told me – I went, my father took me to see Jimmy Day downtown. And it just so happened Jimmy Day was in the store. At the time, I didn’t know how great Jimmy Day was at the time. And Jimmy Day said, “Come here boy.”
Robert Stone:
Which store was that?
Chuck Campbell:
This was a Sho-Bud. Shot Jackson. He said, “Come in son.” And so Jimmy Day got his deal and he said, “What’s this piece of sh- you got here?” And he said, “This Sho-Bud, give me a…” No, they had some other steel. He said, “Bring me a Sho-Bud. You give me this junk.” He had a bottle of wine. And this guy took us a swig of the wine and played What a friend we have in Jesus with no bar with just the pedals, no bar.
Chuck Campbell:
And then he said, “Come here, son. I want you to play something for me.” And I was so beat up from this that I could not hold a bar. It kept falling out of my hand. I was so nervous. He said, “Don’t worry about it. Just keep on son, keep playing.” And from that day on, I had to have pedals. I had to have pedals. That was it. And it was just a matter of trying to try to… I’m now 14 and I haven’t been playing but maybe a year or two. A year and a half or so. And here I am, I want to get into pedals. But at this time I’ve already proven myself on a state level. I am playing some church conventions and on a state level. Of course at that time, Calvin would come over to our state a lot of times and I’d be playing and people would just take my guitar off the stage – right off the stage and just set his up while I’m right on there.
Chuck Campbell:
And that’s the kind of- But he deserved that respect because he was so much better at moving the service. It was hurting for me, but that’s another thing that drove you to be the best. And after this guy, this influence from Acorne Coffee and what Calvin had, and then Ted, I said, “Ted, I enjoy the steel players, the country Western.” He said, “You don’t want to play like them.” You know… And it was a smug attitude. And I was like, and I didn’t understand what he was getting at. We play a different style. But I did want to play like them. I’m sorry. I do want to play like them. And he said, “Well, they block with their right hand.” Now Ted knew this. I said, “They block with their right hand?”
Chuck Campbell:
And I didn’t understand what blocking meant. It meant you cut off the sound. And at that point I was interested in learning that technique. And once I learned what it could do for you on the speed side, of course, listening to tapes of Sneaky Pete, Buddy Emmons, and Maurice Anderson, all these guys, it was super fast, jazz chords galore.
Robert Stone:
Real clean.
Chuck Campbell:
Real clean, precise. So I wanted to be more of a technician in my approach too. And I think that’s what made me come into my own and even be included in the great four as Calvin just said, was that I was the guy that came on the scene with the pedals. That was, although Ted started playing pedals in Nashville and the general assembly before I did. In fact, I was just moving on the scene when I came here with pedals.
Chuck Campbell:
But I think I had a different flavor than anybody I’d ever heard. And at this point, a lot of the younger players tend to mimic the way I played more so than any of them. Although my style is a combination and I will show you with the steel- or what I do, that is the same licks that they play, but it’s just using the pedals, which gives it a different flavor. And then of course the pedals by being able to line up certain tunings, I can do a lot of speed stuff just by technique. I don’t think I’m that really that fast, as much as I am technical. Technically sound as a steel player. And that is my claim to fame. And right now my… Later on my influences have been, like I say, I’ve been… The story was that the Lorenzo Harris, the reason why he moved his people so great was because he had total control.
Chuck Campbell:
The reason he moved his people so well in dancing was it was choreographed. That was the story over here. And that he was… He had total control because he was a great bishop and he had unlimited bank account where he would come here and he’d just have a steel made and set it up in each one of the churches he has to play at. That’s the kind of juice this guy had. And I went along with that story for a while until I heard some of his disciples play. And that Ronnie-
Robert Stone:
Ronnie Mozee
Chuck Campbell:
…. on the steel, him and his brother, Rob. Now, Rob, I’ve heard some tapes of Rob and I’ve heard other steel players. But for my money…
Robert Stone:
Ronnie’s real tasty. Let’s change tapes. We’re just talking about Ronnie Mosey and the Jewell Dominion. You think he’s just a wonderful player.
Chuck Campbell:
No, I don’t think. This guy moves me.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. What is it about his playing?
Chuck Campbell:
The way he’s-
Robert Stone:
His tone?
Chuck Campbell:
… his tone.
Phil Campbell:
His control of it. Command of it.
Chuck Campbell:
Command.
Robert Stone:
Touch.
Chuck Campbell:
I don’t know what it is. His touch, his… He’s technically sound too. The guy knows because he was able to show me what was going on and what I came away from my experience with Ronnie and Rob was the realization that Lorenzo Harris knew what he was doing mechanically. And some players just play and their playing is-it happens. And you hear this thing, a spirit is the spirit is here. And then you got the players that know what they’re going for and how to control, how to bring the spirit. And you’ve got, it’s some guys can do some real rain dances around here. And that’s the difference between the big boys and these guys that are coming up. And Calvin would put it in a manner that the guy has a great hand. Ted will say he’s a real musician.
Chuck Campbell:
He’s a real… What they’re saying, all these type of, these… When they use those terms, that’s what you… When you got command and Lorenzo, yeah, they services are set up toward, but I can see why it got that way. They actually had tunes. And to a certain extent, Phil and I, and in our latter years here have been able to get certain tunes that move a service, just as well as a song where… And especially people that know us, that when we come in and we play a certain tune, it’s almost like the DJ putting on that right record at the right time. And so those are the types of things and when it comes to Phil and I have a brother, Darick. Darick started playing. And I have to practice things over and over, and I have to practice a tune.
Chuck Campbell:
My brother has this gift and Phil has it to a certain extent too, where they can actually go in and just play things off the- quick on the feet. And my brother taught me a lot of those types of things, my younger brother, because although he wasn’t as technical as I was, and he wasn’t as fast as I was, he could move a service better than I could at certain points. And it took me awhile to understand what was the nuances that caused that.
Robert Stone:
Could you close that?
Speaker 4:
Yeah, I’m on it.
Robert Stone:
Okay. See you later Curtis.
Phil Campbell:
Let me know if Glen needs me, man.
Speaker 4:
Okay.
Phil Campbell:
Thanks.
Chuck Campbell:
And so that what we were talking about was the-
Robert Stone:
Does Ronnie mostly play at pedal guitar?
Chuck Campbell:
No.
Robert Stone:
Just a straight eight.
Chuck Campbell:
Eight. Straight eight.
Robert Stone:
That big fat E tuning they use.
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Robert Stone:
That those bass strings…
Chuck Campbell:
This guy changes his tunings a little bit too.
Robert Stone:
Well Sonny will do that too.
Chuck Campbell:
And Calvin used to do that a lot. Calvin-
Phil Campbell:
Depending on the situation all the time.
Chuck Campbell:
… Ted did too. All of them.
Robert Stone:
And he played, did Ronnie play a Fender?
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah, no, they had the one he was playing in Indianapolis was a Sho-Bud made into a Fender Rhodes cabinet with a Tapco PA under here, right here. And a Boss Tone here and the big Morley, right where you saw, I guess Glen had one of those.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, right.
Chuck Campbell:
Right. But that came from-
Robert Stone:
From Harris.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah, that came… But Ronnie Moselle knows how to make that Morley thing talk. He hits this thing at a certain and it’ll get a- he’ll get a harmonic out of that thing that that’ll make you just like, you just send chills down your back.
Robert Stone:
You can’t stand it.
Chuck Campbell:
You can’t stand it.
Robert Stone:
Do you use harmonics in your playing? Do you play artificial harmonics?
Phil Campbell:
But he uses straight, yeah, you use straight harmonics.
Robert Stone:
But not artificial.
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Phil Campbell:
You pick up artificial ones too, right? You play games with the bar and spacing and stuff, right?
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah. Calvin was the guy that was-
Robert Stone:
Was he doing that?
Phil Campbell:
Yeah. We used to call him Chimes.
Robert Stone:
Are you a Jerry Byrd fan too?
Chuck Campbell:
No.
Robert Stone:
Do you know who he is?
Chuck Campbell:
I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never heard his playing. I’ve heard of him.
Robert Stone:
I’ll send you some.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
He’s the champion of non-pedal, he won’t have anything to do with the pedal steel. He’s been playing since the late ’30s.
Chuck Campbell:
Wow.
Robert Stone:
But he moved to Hawaii and he’s the King of the slanted bar. And he’s a cleanest player. No one’s cleaner. And no one has a better tone for vibrato. They call him the master of touch and tone. He was like, I think the first guy they elected to the steel guitar hall of fame.
Chuck Campbell:
Wow.
Robert Stone:
You probably won’t like his music. He plays a lot of real schmaltzy Hawaiian and stuff, but he could also… He also plays swing and he has got-
Phil Campbell:
No, we-
Robert Stone:
… let me tell you, he’s got the tone and the technique, and I’ve got a… I’ve even got an instructional video by him. He says stuff like, “Now this is a nice tuning. I started using this tuning in 1940.”
Chuck Campbell:
Geez. Well, that’s a lot of-
Phil Campbell:
The other thing I think that we have done, I guess, and that we listen to all styles of music. Everything is fair game. You name it. It’s all fair game. Salsa, rock, blues, bass. You name it. It doesn’t matter.
Chuck Campbell:
Rap.
Phil Campbell:
Yeah. It doesn’t matter. I mean, big band, raggy, you name it.
Chuck Campbell:
We really like… We got this thing now we do cuatra type.
Robert Stone:
You make a cuatra type sound on your-
Chuck Campbell:
Right with the bass and my brother playing the lead. And what happened was he- my brother is- got to be a real good musician. He was top on bass, one of the tops on bass and then his lead playing got ridiculous. He was just the type of guy that could pick up, Phil’s the type of guy… We call him, he has a 50 pound brain. He’s an electrical engineer, so it all goes together, but he-
Robert Stone:
The mathematical end of music.
Chuck Campbell:
… right. And he was… So Phil can remember more stuff than any of us. So like choir songs and stuff like that. This guy, Phil he’s the top bone. He’ll remember all these, just picking them up and remember how to play just crazy stuff, he even go into we playing a reggae. He also has the Casio synthesizer guitar. So a lot of times in church Phil would be playing an organ for me, or… We had it at one time where we’d be using our phase shifter.
Phil Campbell:
Yeah. Just to speed it up.
Chuck Campbell:
To speed it up that way.
Phil Campbell:
To simulate that.
Chuck Campbell:
Then one crazy thing we had was my… I had a cousin named Willie Blue who happens to be Glen’s cousin too, although Glen and I are not related.
Robert Stone:
He’s related to the Blues in Miami?
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Phil Campbell:
Exactly.
Robert Stone:
To Frank and-
Chuck Campbell:
No, those are my… They’re first cousins.
Phil Campbell:
They’re direct cousins. Yes, he’s related, yeah, he’s distant on that..
Chuck Campbell:
They had influence on me too, but this Willie Blue, this guy played lead and he had this Hammond type thing that looked like an organ type thing that make his guitar sound like all these different things. And he had the little, the old style speakers, something like Willie Eason had, the wood thing all around you, and he put them on stereo. And this guy-
Robert Stone:
And when was this?
Chuck Campbell:
I saw him in Florida, my father took me to see this guy.
Robert Stone:
But when- about?
Chuck Campbell:
About ’83, ’82. Yeah. But he’d been doing this for years- been doing this for years because you could tell. And he was playing the service and then he just took over the service with the lead. He just took it over, just him. He played, he sang, then he started healing people with this thing. He had them coming around prayer lines with his guitar. We sitting up here looking at this like, “How do you get that much juice? I mean, where you guys get off?” And so when you have all these influences, you soon realize that it’s a lot of stuff you can do with an instrument that you didn’t… You might not… And Henry Nelson used to say this thing, I’ve gotten some people saved through my music and it’s no lie. We have actually… People have come up to us and say, “Hey, I was healed.” And when you can get it on that level, now you’re talking. And what that means is you end up learning how to-
Phil Campbell:
You’re going back to this command thing.
Chuck Campbell:
The command thing. Where you actually use every section of the service as an opportunity. And in order to do that, what I’ve done by me being a combination is a lot of my playing is pseudo. In other words, it’s a copy of Henry, a little Willie in there. A little Ted.
Robert Stone:
But you’re still a young man too.
Chuck Campbell:
A little bit of Calvin. And then of course what I do. And then what I’ve gotten from a lot of young players like Glenn and the players that have come along, playing some of my style and of course some other people’s styles, if they shown me really, what they’ve been able to show me is influenced me to the other styles out there that they come in contact with, which helps me grow. And I can’t thank country Western players enough for even inventing this instrument. It’s just with the pedals. I mean, I’m a pedal man. I like lap. And I play a lot of lap in church now just for the convenience. But you give me a pedal, man, give me a pedal steel every day of the week, mine has five knee levers, seven pedals, and I’m constantly working on it, continually adding, subtracting. I’m pretty satisfied with my tune because it is so mechanically and mathematically correct. Which I’ll be able to illustrate to you.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. That’s great.
Chuck Campbell:
And that’s why I feel like it’s made me almost- my tune is from God. And I used to hear different players say that and I used to think, okay commander. Commander Brag, God came down and told you this tune. But mine was actually just a combination of them and then evolved into this country type E ninth. And the reason why I have the two Es tuned the same is because when I hit the two knee levers, one pulls it up to the ninth and the other one pulls that seventh, drops the seventh and you have almost a pure E ninth out of it. And so that’s my tune.
Robert Stone:
That’s great. I can’t wait to hear you all tonight.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay. And a lot of times it’s harder to do things in service. What we might want to do is for me to set up and just show you before service so I can get… So you can really see of how I am. I never took lessons per se, from any country player, other than that book, Winnie Winston’s book.
Robert Stone:
That’s incredible.
Chuck Campbell:
It was a pleasure for me to meet Winnie Winston, play on his 14 string.
Robert Stone:
He’s over in where, New Zealand now or somewhere-
Chuck Campbell:
I don’t know. Last time I saw him about 10 or 15 years ago in Philly.
Robert Stone:
Well, I’ve been… I just started really at first a year of subscribing to the Steel Guitar World magazine and he writes in there every now and then. He’s… And I believe he’s in Australia or New Zealand somewhere like that. And he’s still- he’s playing, I don’t know what drove him. Because he was from upstate New York, right? From-
Chuck Campbell:
I don’t know. I know Bobby Seymour was from… Was living in Jamestown. Because the MSA, I got Bobby Seymour recognized as one of the first ones they made, him and Maurice Anderson and I guess another guy was in with them when they first… When they designed that.
Robert Stone:
See, there’s a musician I know, a guy named Jay Unger who’s a real fine fiddler, more like violin style. And he’s the guy who wrote that song that they used in that series about the civil war, that tune called Ashokan Farewell. Real, pretty melody. That tune has done very well for him. But Winnie Winston used to come… He’s got a music thing he does up there called Ashokan by the Ashokan reservoir in New York state, near Jamaica, NY.
Chuck Campbell:
Wow.
Robert Stone:
And Winnie Winston was one of that bunch up there. They were around Woodstock where they had the big Woodstock festival. He was from around there. And he was a guy from New York state who got into pedal steel when, before it was hip, you know what I mean? And when, remember, while you probably don’t remember, in the 60s, the hippies and stuff started exploring pedal steel and they were doing sitars and everything.
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Robert Stone:
All of a sudden these crazy hippies are showing up with a pedal steel on some of their records and it because it’s a great sound. I think what a lot of us realize is that there’s two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. And it doesn’t matter where it comes from. You can appreciate it.
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Phil Campbell:
Absolutely.
Robert Stone:
When you hear that steel guitar, you don’t care if it’s some drunken hillbilly or whatever. That sound is there, and it comes- and it hits you.
Chuck Campbell:
Another influence for me has also been Eddie Van Halen Top of the World. I love those hammer-ons and stuff… Of course Jimmy Hendrix using the fuzz stones, that always fascinated me.
Phil Campbell:
Yeah, you do a lot of that stuff too.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah, I was influenced heavily.
Robert Stone:
Now, do you lift the bar at all when you play?
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
You do that. Do you have a bar that’s notched out?
Chuck Campbell:
Of course.
Robert Stone:
You do, okay.
Chuck Campbell:
I resisted that for a while. I think Ted was the first one to do it. He had his cut at Sho-Bud then I think Calvin got into it and I went… They cut theirs into three. They had three cuts on theirs. So it looked just like a Stevens almost. Mine has only two cuts, just on the sides.
Robert Stone:
That’s what Ted is using now. It’s two.
Chuck Campbell:
Okay. And so that’s the way I went. I went with the two cuts and when I got a chance to get the 12 string allowed me to go from a double neck, I’ve had a double neck Sho-Bud Pro II. And the 12 string allowed me to go from a double neck to a single neck to where I’m almost in a universal tuning. It’s very close because when I do certain things, I can get in a C6.
Robert Stone:
Similar ideas.
Chuck Campbell:
Similar, yes, idea.
Robert Stone:
I can’t wait to hear you play. I’ve heard so much about it and-
Chuck Campbell:
Well, good things.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. All of them are good. I mean, Darryl just wouldn’t hardly stop. I got to go Darryl, Chuck is awesome, he’s awesome.
Chuck Campbell:
Look, Darryl is the guy that… Darryl was a great lead player. Darryl was the guy that could make a lead sound just like we play steel. If you was outside and you didn’t know this guy was playing lead, you’d think Henry Nelson was in there. He had the whole nine, he could play all of our licks. Darryl was so good that he would make you mad playing with him. Because he’d bend up playing the lick. And he even got it good on the synthesizer where he could sound just like a steel almost. It was just a little nuance missing. You just can’t mimic that guitar enough. But he was awesome. And what happened was Darryl was… I started him out on, I was helping him with lead when he was starting out.
Chuck Campbell:
I think one other good thing that happened with me was I’ve always been a teacher of sorts. And my brother here is a nerd. They call me the ambassador of love because I always meet people and tell them how great they are. And what I found out was it’s just a form of positive reinforcement that I’ve always had in my nature. And I’ve always inspired- encouraged the young guys to learn and then come back and teach me. And what Darryl learned was so great was he learned to the point of tone, where he had perfect pitch, almost where he could just, somebody start singing, he didn’t have to find it. And he always told me I was unprofessional because I [sings, finding the note]. And he’d go right to it.
Robert Stone:
He does have a good ear.
Chuck Campbell:
Right. Phil took some bass lessons and he learned notes, my brother, and he taught me different notes. Although, I always could read chord charts. And Glen was the guy that I was pretty much saying would probably be taken to another level because of his musical skills and knowledge of being a saxophone player along, which would tend to lead you toward phrasing. That is really, would be a little unique for what we do. So the younger players and my brother Darick, and a lot of other peers… A guy named Lonnie Bennett has shown me a lot of things.
Robert Stone:
Where is he?
Chuck Campbell:
He’s from Rochester, but he was originally from Connecticut. And he was big in the country western steel. And he’s about the same age-
Phil Campbell:
Yeah, I think- actually, when it comes to service, probably hurt him a little bit because he actually played- he probably played the purest country western steel out of all of us. But that genre of music, beautiful stuff, when you’re playing the hymns and all that and the slow song, man, you just you’re moving people to tears, but then when it comes time to the praise service that he still use the country in Western style and that didn’t-
Robert Stone:
That didn’t quite get it.
Chuck Campbell:
And what the deal is, is even when he played lead, I’d say, “Hey man, you got the two step thing going here. That’s not going to work. If they were doing the two step out here, we’d be good to go.” And I’ve had other younger players that I came up with that were peers or rivals or whatever you want to call it because at certain times, you’d always be compared who was the best, who was the greatest, and all this good stuff. Even to the point where you got to play because you were supposed to be better than somebody else. So some of it is hierarchy.
Chuck Campbell:
Some of it is because you are the man. And I think one thing I’ve been blessed with, although my father is a bishop and in the hierarchy, I pretty much earned it as far as from my view because I think I have the respect of the other players from the older to the younger players that really they respect me. And of course I return the respect because I’ll never forget what Calvin and Ted have taught me and what I’ve learned from Henry. Henry didn’t really teach me nothing personally, more so than what I had to learn from looking at the way he did things.
Chuck Campbell:
And my last influence, like I said, has been being able to go over to Indianapolis. Because at one time we didn’t associate with the other side. And in other, it was bad news if you were like they said, you’re bringing this Jewell music over here. It’s not, it’s almost devil music. You don’t bring it over here. And our decree, it’s against blues, rock and roll, any music other than what’s in the church. And of course in all actuality, I’m influenced by everything other than real liberal on that to the point that…
Robert Stone:
I know you younger guys, I know because I’ve been around Glen a lot and I’m sure it’s similar with you pushed the limit, how do you keep that in line? Or how do they keep you in line or whatever as far as-?
Chuck Campbell:
Well, I’ve been embarrassed-
Robert Stone:
…what’s okay to play and what’s not-
Chuck Campbell:
I’ve been embarrassed a few times in national convention for playing too far out. I guess-
Robert Stone:
Did the bishop let you know or something?
Chuck Campbell:
Oh yeah. They’ve gotten up in the pulpit say, “I don’t know who was playing that blues up there” or “playing this loud rock and roll.” And so you lead the assembly, you weren’t good. You was terrible. And persistence, all trailblazers tend to get this type of… And what I was, was did you ever see the movie Back to the Future? The first one where he’s playing the guitar as Chuck Berry?
Robert Stone:
No.
Chuck Campbell:
Well, he’s playing the… This is the scene. They back in the fifties and he’s playing this guitar standing in for Chuck Berry and the crowd is dancing and he playing these Chuck Berry licks- he was standing in for this band- so the guy is supposed to be Chuck Berry cousin. He calls Chuck Berry and says, “Hey, you got to hear this white guy play this guitar, man.” And he was playing all the Chuck Berry licks from… And because he had went back in time and the story goes that he’s playing these Chuck Berry licks and his cousins tell him, “You got to hear this guy play this stuff. You got to hear.” So they record and they give it to Chuck Berry. That’s the gist of it. But he starts playing this in the proudest dance and they never heard this music like this, Chuck Berry stuff back in the fifties, which is the era for that. Then he starts going into a little Jimmy Hendrix. And at this point the crowd almost stops dancing.
Chuck Campbell:
And then he just goes into Eddie Van Halen and started sliding across the floor. And now this is back in the fifties. And at this point, the crowd is like, you can hear a pin drop because they’re looking at him because he’s done the Pete Townsend thing and Eddie Van Halen thing, he’s on the floor and just, he’s just doing it and everybody just like, what… And that was me years ago because I throw the fuzz tone on. I had the fuzz built into my… I built it into my guitar. I know MSA would build it in there. But I put boxes up under my guitar where I had switches on it. I switch in and just start going away and wailing and doing all these fast licks. And at some point people would be looking at me like, where are we going with this, man? This is not… You’re not at a rock concert, man, this is a service, man.
Chuck Campbell:
So I have pushed the envelope too far at times. But what has happened, I had a little mishap where I went through a divorce and whatnot, and I went… I didn’t play for a couple of years. And when I came back, I was shocked. Everybody in Florida, which was Henry Nelson’s territory. If you didn’t play like Nelson in Florida, you weren’t playing. All the young guys in Florida were playing all of these licks that I played. And were doing it, I couldn’t believe it. All over the country, everybody was starting to play the licks that I thought was too fast for these guys.
Chuck Campbell:
And they were playing them, and it’s few guys that… I’m at the point now where an actuality, my brother and I had actually talked about where we will retire. We probably won’t go on like some steel players have. Just go on and go on. Because what happens is we see it as eras. You have your era. And right now it’s probably my era as the top. One of the top influential players. And I don’t know if you would see that same assessment, but that’s-
Robert Stone:
You’re thinking you don’t want to hold some younger guy back. Is that it? You want to make room?
Chuck Campbell:
I think they’ll just get better.
Robert Stone:
Right. If you step aside and make room for those guys.
Chuck Campbell:
No, I-
Phil Campbell:
It’s inevitable.
Chuck Campbell:
They’ll push me out.
Phil Campbell:
It’s inevitable that you’ll be surpassed.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. Well, one thing about- any tradition changes, you can’t stop it. And this one certainly is one that’s changing…
Chuck Campbell:
It’s evolving and the younger guys are coming up and what they’ve done- like by Calvin teaching me everything, I didn’t have to go through the years. It might’ve took them 10, 15 years to learn.
Phil Campbell:
Develop more.
Chuck Campbell:
Develop that stuff where they just teach it to me in a matter of… And I had good tape recorders, which they didn’t have.
Robert Stone:
Videos and everything.
Chuck Campbell:
Right. Well, Calvin tells me the story of… Calvin and Charles Fennery would tell us the story of how they grow and listen to Lorenzo. And they’d have to hum the tune. They’d pick a tune out of the service that they’d have to hum until they got back home to Cleveland, if it was it’s another city and then I had the tape recorder. Well now all these guys, they throw a video on me. And they got a network that’s unbelievable. Where Phil and I, we can break out a tune, and these guys play it better than we do. And so it’s inevitable that I’ll be pushed out. And what I… At that point. I don’t plan to be… I’ll let nature take it’s course.
Robert Stone:
Doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Chuck Campbell:
No, that’s a great thing. And I enjoy it. One thing about me and my brother too, I can say this honestly, we do enjoy different styles. Especially when a player brings himself to the table, In other words. And I guess that’s one of the things we really enjoyed about Ronnie and Rob is that yeah, they are legacy from-
Robert Stone:
Harrison
Chuck Campbell:
… Harrison, but the chords and stuff that they throw in there is more modern. And you know it’s something that they developed and you could tell it.
Robert Stone:
You make me want to head North when I leave here, instead of heading back South.
Chuck Campbell:
I’m telling you, man, it’s-
Robert Stone:
Because I could sense it in his Spanish guitar playing. You know what I’m saying?
Chuck Campbell:
Right.
Robert Stone:
It’s just nice.
Chuck Campbell:
I guess that’s the word always come to your mind.
Robert Stone:
It’s tasty.
Chuck Campbell:
Yes, that’s it. That’s the word. That’s the word that always come to mind whenever… The first thing that you think is nice, oh man, that’s…
Robert Stone:
He doesn’t overplay either-
Chuck Campbell:
No, I don’t never remember this guy overplaying.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. Well, Sonny, he told me that he learned a lot from Sonny. And actually he told about his Spanish playing. He said, I said, “I really like your guitar playing by the way.” Because we were there to record the steel, that’s what we were after. And he says, “Sonny he taught me everything I know about the Spanish playing.”
Chuck Campbell:
That’s another thing.
Robert Stone:
You see Sonny would never overplay. He doesn’t have a bone in his body that would let him, he’s just not that kind of guy.
Chuck Campbell:
Now you speaking to you speaking to the overplay master here. That’s what I am. That’s me.
Robert Stone:
You jump out.
Chuck Campbell:
I’m a rocker. I go in there to… I push… I’m getting a little more finesse in my game, but that’s the one thing Calvin and Charles Flenory have always tried to teach me is to milk the note. And there’s no milk in my notes. I mean, it’s just, it’s out there. And it’s a thing that I’m conscious of. And one thing that I have come to the realization is that maybe that’s the way I’m supposed to play. Because a lot of people like that. And that’s my gift. And other people have gifts. And if we all had the same gifts, we wouldn’t have no spice in life.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, that’s right. We’d have ketchup on everything.
Chuck Campbell:
That’s it. And Phil talks about me and I look around, Phil and I, Phil can make his guitar sound like steel too of course. Most players can in the church. But he’s great that but Phil will play by himself and kill a service. I play by myself and kill a service. We play together and kill each other. So we came to the realization. I say, “Phil, you play half speed.” In other words, “You play every other note and I’ll play every other note.” And we finally started coming to some type of agreement.
Chuck Campbell:
Now we do a lot better now. But we just had to sit down and say, “You play half of what you play and I’ll play half of what I play.” And at different points of the service, we have to look at each other and say- So what happened was, I started getting into the bassing. And actually at certain parts to the service I just bass and he just, he takes it… He plays the whole thing, whatever that part- certain parts he has to back off. And he just plays a little bass.
Robert Stone:
Now you guys play together back home in church. Right?
Phil Campbell:
Right.
Robert Stone:
So you do that on-
Phil Campbell:
It was just the two of us.
Robert Stone:
– a regular basis. Just the two of you with a drummer.
Phil Campbell:
Yeah.
Chuck Campbell:
And in fact, most-
Robert Stone:
And how many services do you do a week?
Phil Campbell:
One to two.
Chuck Campbell:
Two.
Phil Campbell:
Something like that a week.
Robert Stone:
And this is your father’s church, I’m assuming.
Phil Campbell:
Right.
Chuck Campbell:
And we also play all the state conventions. We’ve been hogging the show, to be honest with you.
Robert Stone:
So is the church House of God church pretty big in New York state?
Chuck Campbell:
No, it’s not big as it is in Florida.
Robert Stone:
One thing we haven’t been able to do is get figures on the exact size of the church, I guess, there’s not any accurate records on that.
Chuck Campbell:
What figures did you get- estimates?
Robert Stone:
Well, I have heard figures in Florida, it’s estimated that there’s 50 or 60 churches in Florida. And then the only other thing I could say for certain, it’s just based on the comparative size of the state assemblies in Florida. That in Florida, the Jewell Dominion appears to be about a fifth, the size of the Keith Dominion.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah, they’re a lot smaller.
Robert Stone:
And when I say that people say that that’s probably true on a national basis. It’s about the same comparison, but total number of churches, we don’t know. Now, I’ve got… Now we got the state flags out there and all that stuff. So that helps. But Sherry DuPree, who’s an African-American Holiness Pentecostal scholar. She’s done a bunch of books. The most recent one is a… She did a picture biographical dictionary. She did a recent one that’s a hard bound book cost $200 or something like that. It’s a library reference book. Just a listing of all the organizations. But anyhow, she tried to help me out on… She did, in a booklet with the sacred steel album, she wrote the essay and did the research on the history of the church, but we could only get so accurate. Anyhow I don’t know how we got off on that.
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah. Well, we don’t know the exact size, but we play most of the state conventions.
Robert Stone:
The other state, you mean, as well as New York?
Phil Campbell:
Well, we play in New York and generally we play in what you’d I guess term my father’s territories. That would be the state of Georgia, Alabama, Northern Florida, and New York.
Chuck Campbell:
And because of our popularity right now, in actuality, most places we go in there in this organization we play. So that’s a function of our popularity. And we also get a lot of respect from the older players, Calvin and Ted.
Robert Stone:
Here comes Ted now.
Chuck Campbell:
I gave that up.
Robert Stone:
It was shaped like a ukulele, seven string Gibson.
Chuck Campbell:
They make a six string model too and it was a seven string one and I just gave that up.
Phil Campbell:
For a synthesizer.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, well, you know, that’s how you do it. A horse trading by himself. So you still play some lap?
Chuck Campbell:
A lot.
Robert Stone:
Quite a bit.
Chuck Campbell:
In fact, I’ve gotten much better on the lap lately because of my playing it so much in church. And being able to-
Robert Stone:
What kind of lap do you play?
Chuck Campbell:
It’s a made, homemade.
Phil Campbell:
No name. It’s a wood. This is a real… This is a box.
Chuck Campbell:
But it’s got a, what’s that-
Phil Campbell:
A DiMarzio pickup in it, a good pickup.
Chuck Campbell:
Oh man, this thing sings.
Phil Campbell:
Because it was originally for my brother Darick and he had this thing and he was playing it.
Chuck Campbell:
And then he made this thing. Darick had this thing-
Phil Campbell:
He was getting it going. But he couldn’t get out like he wanted to. So I said, Darick, I got a trick for you. We’re going to go and get this thing souped up. So we got to pick up and then we had to call a tap switch, put into it tube. So he said he could play a lot of games with it. And then Chuck lifted it off from one main through some horse trading deal it was.
Chuck Campbell:
No, what happened was we got-
Phil Campbell:
It was steel right?
Chuck Campbell:
Yeah we got an MSA for $300 with seven pedals four knee levers and… Yeah I said, “Hey man, you take this steal and give me that lap man.”
Robert Stone:
And he fell for that?
Phil Campbell:
Yeah, he fell for that.
Chuck Campbell:
And he had a Fender Eight. He got a hold of a Fender Eight.
Phil Campbell:
Right. Yeah…
Chuck Campbell:
But I don’t think the Fender Eight can hang with this piece of wood.
Phil Campbell:
Yeah. Just because you got it so souped up.
Chuck Campbell:
It’s souped up. I was telling him, Ted that all the big boys got the steel souped up one way or the other. I’m telling you, these guys got them souped.