It’s 10 am in Las Vegas when Spencer Cullum joins my Zoom call. He’s coming to the end of a three-week residency playing pedal steel guitar in Miranda Lambert’s band in Nevada’s Sin City. It’s a different world to Romford, Essex, where Spencer was born and bred but a pointer towards his professional progression following his move from the UK to Nashville. Alongside his stage and studio work as a sought-after hired hand, he’s also a member, alongside Jeremy Fetzer, of the Nashville-based psychedelic instrumental band Steelism. A further string to his bow in recent years has been his self-penned COIN COLLECTION records, the first of which was released in 2021 and is about to be followed in a few weeks’ time by a further selection of alt-folk, psychedelic rock and free form jazz.
How are you enjoying Las Vegas?
I'm not the biggest fan of it, to be honest. It's a bit of a rough town. We’ve recently had a shooting at the hotel. I was playing a show two nights ago and we had a lockdown at the hotel and a fourteen-year-old kid was murdered. I was chatting to people in the band and they're like: ‘Oh, that is the norm now.’
You play there regularly in Miranda Lambert’s band.
Yes, Miranda has got a Vegas residency, which is really fun actually. The best bit of Vegas is the ninety minutes on stage. We do a three-week residency here three times a year. It’s great being able to balance what I’m doing with Miranda and my own music and tours.
How did the Miranda Lambert connection come about?
Ian Fitchuk, who is now a producer - he has produced Kasey Musgraves’ records - was the drummer who played on Miranda’s studio records. I was working with him in the studio a lot and he gave Miranda my details. She was looking for a steel guitar player to tour with and her band leader gave me a call and I’ve been with her for quite a while now.
I recall seeing you play with Jeremy Fetzer in Steelism at an in-store show in Grimey’s record store in Nashville when it was located on 8th Avenue South about eight years ago. Is Steelism still alive and kicking?
Yes, but we haven’t done too much recently. We took a bit of a break; I was touring a lot and Jeremy was doing other things but we’re planning to get together again towards the end of the year. It’s really good fun playing live and we’ve done a few records. Instrumental music is freeing but you also want each record to feel a bit different so we need to think of what we want to do next.
Tell me about your initial connection with pedal steel. I don’t expect that Romford was the hotbed for the instrument.
No, it’s not exactly the mecca of pedal steel. I got obsessed with pedal steel guitar after hearing Torn And Frayed by The Stones and hearing pop and rock from the 60s and 70s that had pedal steel. I actually bought my first pedal steel guitar from a guy called Ted Nesmith, a steel guitar dealer in Drogheda in Ireland. I bought this old showboat from him. I was going through all my vinyl records looking out for pedal steel players and I came across the U.K. steel player B.J. Cole. I tracked him down at a London show and asked him to teach me. From then on, I just got sucked into it.
What were you listening to at that time?
Humble Pie, a lot of Beck and the Burrito Brothers were a big thing for me. They were my first sort of inkling into the West Coast Country sort of country.
Had you been playing guitar before pedal steel?
Yes, I played guitar beforehand in a number of bands around London. There was one band that allowed me to practise my pedal steel in a few pubs in London which was a start because when you start playing pedal steel it can sound like you’re killing cats.
Did you take formal lessons with B.J. Cole?
Yes, formal lessons. He really helped me out and we became good friends. I gravitated towards playing traditional steel but using it in different types of music. BJ always pushed me forward in that direction. I then started playing in a lot of Nashville bands that were touring Europe. That led me to move to Nashville and having to learn more country pedal steel stuff.
You toured the States with The Deadstring Brothers before moving to Nashville.
I did. I would have done anything to tour and play pedal steel in a band so I got to tour in America with them. I was much younger then so it was fun, sleeping rough wasn’t a problem as long as I was playing music.
Was relocating to Nashville a conscious career move?
Yes, after playing with The Deadstring Brothers I moved back to Whitechapel in London for a while. I started playing with Caitlin Rose, she was doing really long tours in Europe and getting a lot of good press. Her guitar player Jeremy Fetzer and Caitlin convinced me to move back to America and Nashville because she was recording there. I moved in with the singer songwriter Andrew Combs and it felt really encouraging in Nashville as there was a nice group of people and I was getting a lot of work. It seemed to be easier than lugging my steel guitar around on the tube in London – it’s a heavy instrument.
Was being from the UK an advantage or disadvantage in getting work in Nashville?
I feel it was a little bit of an advantage because I think they liked my sort of approach to the instrument as it was similar to BJ Cole. I definitely had to quickly learn Nashville country numbers and to play quicker to get more work. When I was playing on records that I could branch out on, they definitely liked that. I think they were more intrigued by my playing than the typical Nashville player, no disrespect to that wonderful world of Nashville players. I think that adding pedals and adding effects and whatnot, is still frowned upon in some circles there but it worked for me. But definitely moving to Nashville made me learn more about the traditional steel guitar world to have in my pocket.
COIN COLLECTION 2 is being released in May and is in a similar vein to your debut album as it explores a wide range of musical styles but in particular UK classic folk. Were you listening to that genre growing up?
When I was about sixteen, I definitely loved my Canterbury scene sort of music. I was a huge Soft Machine fan and loved bands like Gong but also a lot of folk artists like Bert Jansch, David Graham and Fairport Convention. I had been touring before the pandemic and feeling a bit homesick and lost in the States and I became intrigued in writing that style of music and trying to create an identity for myself. When the pandemic hit, I would meet up with a guitarist in Nashville called Sean Thompson and we would hang out and listen to and play a lot of that music.
As well as Sean Thompson and others, you’d had Erin Rae and Caitlin Rose record on your albums. Can you take the credit for introducing that music to those artists in East Nashville?
Surprisingly, no. Erin and others were already into it, which was great. I had seen Erin play at The Fond Object and I thought she really had a Sandy Denny-type voice. Caitlin has amazing musical influences so it was easy to get them to play that music because they were already into it but hadn’t actually played it before.
The track Betwixt and Between, on the new album, is classic U.K. late 60s folk.
We had a Halloween fun horror night in Nashville with Erin Rae and Andrew Combs and covered The Wicker Man soundtrack. It was so much fun that I decided to write Betwixt and Between along those lines. Even though Erin is from Tennessee and can sing amazing country songs, she can also do Sandy Denny and Shirley Collins well.
Given the personnel involved did you record the songs on COIN COLLECTION 2 piecemeal?
It was tracked in two days with the band. We got the drums, bass, flutes, clarinet and guitars all down in those two days. It took me some time to get the overdubs because I had to reach out to Tokyo singer Yuma Abe to record over there and it took some time to get the other singers to overdub as some were touring.
Have you toured the new material in The States yet?
I don’t really tour in The States so it will be April and May in Europe. I’ve done one-off shows in Nashville, Vegas and L.A. but I’m more intrigued to tour in Europe, it’s so much easier. We’re doing quite a long run. As well as Ireland we’re playing London, Brighton, Leeds and Glasgow. Before that, we’re doing Cologne, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Paris and Belgium. It’s a lot of driving but over here a short drive is nine hours, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m also back over to the UK in August to play The Green Man Festival in Wales and I’ll probably do some shows before that festival. I’m actually terrified of being a singer songwriter, it scares me a bit. I’m used to hiding behind the pedal steel.
Who will you have on stage on tour?
It’s me, Sean Thompson and a guy called Rich Ruth, who is an ambient free jazz composer. I’ll play pedal steel, guitar and sing, Sean will be on electric guitar and Rich on synths and also guitar. It’s different instrumentation but it’ll be fun, we’ll bring an Eno aspect to the music. I’ll try and fit a few of Sean’s songs in the set too, it’s an opportunity for him to do his Jerry Reid, Richard Thompson thing.
Is Nashville home for you now?
Yes, Nashville is home for me, my wife and our two dogs. My wife runs a really cool bookstore in East Nashville that just opened recently and I’ve been helping out a lot with that, sanding floors and doing some woodwork.
Interview by Declan Culliton
Spencer Cullum plays Kilkenny Roots Festival on Friday 28th April and Whelan’s Dublin on Saturday 29th April