True country music guitarists addicted to the feel of steel

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2004 (8206 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THERE’S an old saying that goes, ‘It ain’t country music unless it has a fiddle and a steel guitar’.

And no one may agree more with that maxim than Wayne Link, long-time Winnipeg steel guitar player, builder and businessman.

“The steel is a different kind of beast,” he says of the multi-stringed instrument that is played using a steel bar and a variety of pedals, that when depressed, change the notes of the strings. “But it’s a big part of the country music sound.”

Link’s love affair with steel began when he was a young teen and steel guitar lessons were only “a buck and a quarter”. He graduated to different types of steel guitars over the years, and by the late 1960s, he was custom designing his own.

“I had to (build my own),” he says. “I bought one that was used by Buck Owens’ steel player, but it kept giving me trouble.”

The handyman not only realized he was skilled enough to build his guitars, but that he could sell his creations to other players as well. Thirty-five years ago, he started Linkon Guitar and has been building and selling steel guitars ever since.

Link has also played and recorded with many of Manitoba’s prominent country acts through the years, most notably the group Red Wine.

“(Red Wine) made four albums, and we’re going to make a ‘best of Red Wine’ CD,” he says.

It was 15 years ago that Link organized what many consider to be Winnipeg’s best-kept secret — the Mid Canada Steel Guitar Show.

“It started small at the Charleswood Motor Hotel and there were about 50 people or so,” he says of that first steel guitar show.

In recent years, including this year’s show on April 23 and 24, the steel guitar ho-down is held at the Howard Johnson Hotel on Ellice Avenue.

“It’s still pretty small. We get about a couple hundred people, but this year I have steel players coming in from Texas, Kentucky and all across Canada,” says Link of the event, which includes performances by 15 steel guitar players as well as a small exhibit of steel guitar makers, including Link himself.

“It’s for people that love steel guitar and love country music,” says the jovial musician.

Although the majority of the attendees at the Mid Canada Steel Guitar Show are middle-aged or older, Link says he recognizes that to continue the legacy of the instrument, there needs to be an attempt to reach out to the younger crowd. On that issue, Link says he is seeing more and more young people adopt the instrument, not only to play country and western music, but to play jazz, pop, blues and rock.

“We don’t have punk rock and rollers here, you know, but I’ve talked to many (young people) who are curious about the instrument, or who have bought one,” he says.

Although the steel guitar shows are always a success, Link says organizing and staging the event — which he does with his wife, Joan Link — is a labour of love.

“It’s not about the money,” he laughs, explaining that most years he barely breaks even. “If it were about the money, I would have quit years ago.”

For information or tickets to the show, call Linkon Guitar at 895-0115, or send an e-mail to linkon@mts.net.