Acclaimed West Coast pedal steel guitarist JayDee Maness discusses his storied career as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Nashville Cats series. This program, recorded April 12, 2025, was moderated by the Museum’s Dave Paulson and offered in support of the exhibition “Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock,” presented in partnership with City National Bank and the Academy of Country Music.

During this interview, California native Maness discusses discovering the pedal steel guitar at a young age and how the instrument led him to work with acts such as the Byrds, Gram Parsons’s International Submarine Band, and Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. Maness also shares stories about recording for the soundtrack to the television series “The Dukes of Hazzard” throughout its seven-season run and recording the pedal steel solo on Eric Clapton’s multiplatinum 1992 single “Tears in Heaven.” The program concludes with Maness reuniting with Ray Stevens to perform Stevens’s 1975 hit “Misty,” then playing a solo rendition of Steve Wariner’s “Forever Loving You.”

At the outset of his sixty-plus-year career, Maness helped sow the seeds of country-rock, recording with the Byrds on their landmark 1968 album “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and with the International Submarine Band on their 1968 album “Safe at Home.” Additionally, he was a founding member of the Desert Rose Band and toured with Buck Owens’s Buckaroos. Many of music’s biggest names have sought out Maness’s driving, precise style: as a session musician, he has recorded with Vince Gill, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Rod Stewart, Tanya Tucker, Dwight Yoakam, and many others. Maness is also an eighteen-time winner of the Academy of Country Music’s Steel Guitar Player of the Year award.

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