Cage The Elephant's Nick Bockrath is known for his diverse portfolio of vintage guitars. However, he recently revealed that one lap steel guitar, a vintage Gibson BR-6 lap steel, belonged to Nashville legend William “Bucky” Baxter, famously a member of Bob Dylan's backing band.
“Bucky Baxter sold this to me, who was my good friends’ dad, and he was my buddy, as well as a mentor, when I first moved to town [Nashville]. And I think it's from the ’30s or ’40s,” says Nick Bockrath in a rig rundown video with Premier Guitar. “He played this thing with Bob Dylan and Steve Earle.
“When he sold it to me, he was like, 'This is the only lap steel I would go out and play rock and roll with, like you're doing, so really, this one's for you.’ This is a badass guitar and keeps me connected to the Buck.”
Baxter also served as a sounding board for Bockrath when it came to guitar-buying advice. “Due to Bucky's advice, I remember I was like looking at [pedal] steels. I was checking out like, Sho-Buds and all this stuff.
“And I'm like, ‘What do you think of this one?’ He'd be like, ‘Too heavy, you know? Just get a GFI. You're not gonna want to learn how to tech the thing. You don’t want to learn how to be in tune for the first couple of years, right?’ I was like, ‘Huh, that's good advice.’ So I got this GFI, and I gotta say, it's heavy enough. It's perfect.”
Bob Dylan recognized Baxter's steel guitar mastery and requested steel guitar lessons from him in the early ’90s. These lessons led to Baxter joining Dylan's backing band as a steel player, joining Dylan on the 750 show-strong Never Ending Tour.
He also played at Dylan's iconic 1995 MTV Unplugged concert, and on his Grammy Award-winning album Time Out of Mind (1997). In addition to Dylan, Baxter was a founding member of Steve Earle's The Dukes and featured on albums by R.E.M., Ryan Adams, Joe Henry, Kacey Musgraves, and Beastie Boys.
While we’re on the steel feels, Guitar World recently checked in with Instagram star and pedal steel player, Noah Faulkner, AKA Pedal Steel Noah.
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