Sam Wenc; Marathon '77, Garden of Love, Aswan Dam
Common Beat
4916 Baltimore Ave.
Philadelphia
Sept. 29, 2025
Is the pedal steel played out?
“Here’s my music hot take: we need a moratorium on the pedal steel until we figure out what’s going on,” my friend told me a few days ago. I laughed and nodded. I don’t totally agree, but the twangification conundrum is real: the pedal steel pendulum has arguably swung too far in the past year or two, and whether it’s more and more former punks making a profitable pivot to country, classic rock ‘n roll bands tiltin’ that damn thing, or shoegazers shoehorning it (however effectively) into their sound, it’s a totally great instrument, versatile and capable of extreme beauty, and it’s everywhere lately.
So it was refreshing last night to see Sam Wenc – one of Philadelphia’s most inventive, against-the-grain pedal steel players – leave the instrument at home in favor of the far-more-portable nylon-string classical guitar, for an 18-minute improvised performance in the back yard at Common Beat. Wenc studied with the late, great Susan Alcorn, and like her, his approach to the instrument is deeply idiosyncratic. Though the bill was otherwise a punk rock show – power trios from New York, Philly and Montreal, the classic electric-guitar-bass-drums-vocals format – to my sensibility, Wenc’s set was the most ruthlessly punk. At first glance, you might expect a sort of pedestrian, amiable solo guitar set, but even before his first note, Wenc-and-guitar struck a provocative pose: seated before a volume pedal and large Fender Twin Reverb amp (customary, trusted pedal steel tools, repurposed here), there was a nine-volt battery dangling loosely, grotesquely, from a cable coming from the body of the instrument, like entrails.
The performance that followed was appropriately violent, like nature documentary footage, with Wenc as the starved predator desperately trying to subdue his meal; often on the edge of his seat, his playing was restless, rhythmic, dynamic, and physically exhaustive. Totally atonal, fingerpicked passages — like neurons misfiring while dreaming about flamenco — gave way to full-bodied chords; a menacing 6/8 jig abruptly leapt to twitchy, ankle-breaking, manual tremoloing with his volume pedal. This unbroken improvised string of ideas risked actual broken strings when Wenc drastically de-tuned the instrument, hilariously evoking Les Claypool with a fearlessly floppy-stringed bassline, as if in call-and-response with the deep frequencies of the occasional aircraft noise passing above us. When the furious energy he exerted with his hands left them spent, he’d switch to violent footwork, his legs bouncing like a hyperactive child’s, even more so than the punk drummers who’d play later. The performance concluded with waves of rich feedback, the guitar pressed against the Tolex as though surrendering to its fate. Though not nearly as loud as the bands who’d follow, Wenc’s set was endlessly surprising and delighting, irreverent as hell, full of actual hairpin turns, extended techniques and gestures that were gnarly and at times laugh-out-loud funny, like watching a python kill an alligator, looking ridiculous while swallowing it whole.
I was enthralled, not bored in the slightest. Wenc picked up the guitar long before he started playing the pedal steel; I asked him after his set if returning to the six-string live was due to needing a pedal-steel break, for whatever reason. “Yeah, I suppose so – I mean, I don’t think I’ll stop cold-turkey with pedal steel stuff, but in order to keep things fresh, I need to put ‘em away from time to time. Come back with some enthusiasm for it, like I feel with guitar right now.” That enthusiasm showed, without a doubt. Nothing beats a fresh meal.
