Elmore Magazine March/April 2013

CINDY CASHDOLLAR
B Y

S C O T T
P E A V L E R
March/April 2013 | Elmore
24-28_FEA2.indd 26
2/19/13 12:11 PM
Elmore | March/April 2013
24-28_FEA2.indd 27

2/19/13 12:11 PM
Learn more
about Cindy
Cashdollar’s
guitars at
elmoremagazine.com

During her time with Redbone, Cashdollar discovered
just how unusual female resonator guitar players were
and how many preconceptions and prejudices still lingered in the music world. “I did not see any female resonator players, even though there were a couple of active ones
around,” Cashdollar said. “At the time, I did not know that
Barbara Mandrell had played steel, since I didn’t research
it that much before jumping into it. Audience members
just seemed to assume that the chick in the band was married to one of the other band members. When I was playing with Leon Redbone, there were multiple instances in
which I would be getting my stuff into the venue and the
door would be locked for sound check, and I had to beat on
the door and explain that I was in the band.”
Today, Cashdollar has no such troubles. Recently, over
the span of a few days, Cindy Cashdollar performed with
Asleep at the Wheel along with Ruthie Foster, Willie Nelson, Robert Earl Keen and Pat Green at the Austin City
Limits’ Moody Theatre before heading to New York City
to join Jorma Kaukonen and Hot Tuna for their annual
two night visit to the NYC Beacon theatre, then immediately headed to Los Angeles to begin recording with Ryan
Adams and appear with him on Conan.
Such is the life of Cindy Cashdollar, the Austinbased musician who has proven herself to be the go-to Dobro/steel player. Having performed and recorded with a
who’s who of the music world ranging from Rod Stewart
to Van Morrison to Paul Butterfield to Bob Dylan, she’s
traversed blues, bluegrass, Cajun, folk, western swing,
country-rock, alt-roots and more. She’s one busy gal.
“Cindy Cashdollar is the most versatile slide guitarist
around,” says acclaimed blues veteran Johnny Nicholas.
“She hits every note perfectly. But what distinguishes
her in my mind is that she also has the soul to play the
blues—which is really rare.”
Herb Remington—himself a legendary steel guitar
player, composer and manufacturer of custom steels—
also notes Cashdollar’s versatility while finding yet another rare quality in her: “Cindy has a very good musical ear; that is very rare for a steel player. She is always
working on new techniques to use with whatever music
style she is playing and exploring both the tunings and
hardware to enhance her sound.”
“Cindy is a great musician, very melodic and very
imaginative, and while she is associated mostly with
western swing, she can play virtually any style and is
always willing to try new things,” agrees Americana
legend Dave Alvin. When Alvin began to recruit an allfemale band for a series of live performances, Cashdollar
was one of the first to be signed.
Cashdollar’s role certainly does change depending on
the assignment, and she adapts to the work, whether it’s
on a tour or a recording session. Her remarkable musical versatility on several instruments also creates some
unique challenges, however. “It gets complicated,” Cashdollar said. “At a recent show in Austin, I played five different guitars, and sometimes—just for a split second—
I’ll grab a guitar and realize that the key of A is not on
the second fret on this guitar, but it’s on the seventh
fret. There is a cost consideration with the airlines charging so much extra for all your gear.”
Before airlines and tours and five different guitars,
Cashdollar (really her birth name) spent her early years
in Woodstock, NY, where her grandparents had a dairy
farm, and her dad handled the deliveries. Here, her versatility was born. The area afforded her exposure to a variety of music styles played by local musicians as well as
by the touring musicians, who had a tendency to stop by
the friendly, bucolic and musically historic area before or
after gigs in New York City. Her dad liked country music, while her mom had much broader musical interests
coupled with a huge record collection. At age 11, she saw
her first concert: Van Morrison, John Hammond Jr. and
Odetta. It was also at this time that she got her first guitar
PR EV IOUS PAGE : ROB B UC K ; N EX T PAG E: CH UC K HO LL EY
fter hearing that Leon Redbone was in the market for a
resonator/Dobro player, Cindy Cashdollar quickly drove
across three counties to meet Redbone and his band
before a performance. After sitting in for sound check
and the show, she was hired on the spot. Two days later, she left on the first tour of what became five years
of performing and recording with Redbone.
March/April 2013 | Elmore
24-28_FEA2.indd 28
2/19/13 12:12 PM
with Redbone and indicative of the unique sort of musician she is, once Cashdollar realized that the band was in
town and scheduled to appear on a local TV station, she
simply waited for their bus to arrive. As it unloaded, she
asked who the steel player was. When he was identified,
Cashdollar asked him if it was true that he was leaving,
and when he said yes, she handed him her demo tape.
When frontman Ray Benson invited her to Austin for an
audition and realized she was only just learning the instrument, he offered her a six-month trial gig. She relocated to
Austin for the job and has been there ever since. “Thank
God Ray Benson is a patient man. It was like western swing
boot camp, and I kind of had to learn steel for real since it
wasn’t just a fun little hobby anymore,” Cashdollar said. “So
I took lessons from Herb Remington in Houston and Maurice Anderson in Fort Worth—both of whom played with
Bob Wills—and also from John Ely, who had previously
been with Asleep at the Wheel.” The six-month probation
period became an eight-and-a-half-year tour that earned
her five Grammy awards. In 2001, when she finally went
to Benson to say she was “burned out,” his response was, “I
can’t imagine what took you so long.”
At Marcia Ball’s
rehearsal studio
in Austin, TX
PR EV IOUS PAG E: ROB B UC K ; N EX T PAG E : C HUCK H OL L EY
and began learning basic techniques from Billy Faier, a
pioneer banjo player and folk singer.
Cashdollar’s first professional gig came playing bluegrass with the John Herald Band along with the Woodstock Mountain Revue. Her other early excursions in the
fertile soil of Woodstock included stints with blues great
Paul Butterfield and with Levon Helm and Rick Danko
of the Band—they would eventually morph into a larger
group called the Woodstock All-Stars.
During this time, she also heard Mike Auldridge’s
Eight String Swing, which led her to the lap steel and
eventually to a Fender double-neck, non-pedal steel guitar. “I tried pedal steel, but because I took up steel so
late in life as a hobby, I found it to require more linear
thinking as compared to the more intuitive, by-ear type
of person I am. So maybe when I retire, I’ll get a simple
little single neck pedal steel—three pedals and one knee
lever,” Cashdollar said.
Soon after taking up the steel, she moved to Nashville
for the myriad of music opportunities there, and soon
after arriving, she heard that Asleep at the Wheel was
looking for a steel player. In a move echoing her break-in
Elmore | March/April 2013
24-28_FEA2.indd 29

2/19/13 12:12 PM

Now a freelance artist, she finally had an opportunity
to work on a long-delayed solo album, Slide Show, which
illustrates the various musical styles she had experienced
over the years, showcases her versatility and brings together the cast of luminaries that, through charmed upbringing and her unique brand of gumption, had informed
her career—legendary players like Remington, Auldridge,
Redd Volkaert, Sonny Landreth, Steve James, Marcia Ball,
Lucky Oceans, John Sebastian and Johnny Nicholas. Fittingly for an album so tied up in Cashdollar’s history and
singularity as a musician, Slide Show closes with “Locust
Grove,” an original composition named after her grandparents’ dairy farm in Woodstock.
According to Jorma Kaukonen, another one of Slide
Show’s brilliant collaborators, “If you think of the instrument that she has chosen to become a master of, starting
on Dobro and winding up on steel, these instruments are
not lightly undertaken, and she has become a master, in
her case, a mistress of them.” Observing not just the unique
nature of her musical path, Kaukonen also notes the exceptional collaborative spirit that has allowed her to achieve
her one-of-a-kind status in the music world: “Besides her
instrumental prowess, she is one of these people who is so
fine-tuned when it comes to playing with other people, depending on what is required of her in terms of lead or support, her musical taste is literally unassailable.”
“There are not many guys that can hang in there with
her,” Kaukonen adds. From the ranks of all those with
whom she’s worked throughout her career, there’s a veritable chorus putting to rest the gender prejudice she faced
all those years ago, a prejudice she of course helped overturn. “It is always an honor to be on the stage with her
because she has kicked ass with every guy she ever played
with,” Dave Alvin agrees. “When you’re playing in a band
with Cindy Cashdollar,” said famed slide guitarist Steve
James, “you realize that she’s the heaviest cat in the band.”
“She can hold her own with anybody and can kick ass
when she needs to,” says legendary Telecaster master
Redd Volkaert. These days, in the few moments when
she’s not touring or recording, she often plays with
Volkaert in various Austin venues. Volkaert sees what
Kaukonen and so many others before them have seen:
“She is excellent at knowing what is needed musically in
a given situation. When we play with each other, it is like
having a conversation with our banter going back and
forth. We are bouncing off of each other and stimulating
the other person so that that the process is great fun for
us and better music for the listener.”
Cashdollar champions her atypical instruments. In
addition to developing four instructional DVDs for Dobro and steel guitar (via Homespun Tapes) and providing exposure to both sounds in her guest appearances on
Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (broadcast on National Public Radio), Cashdollar teaches at
Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch music camp in Pomeroy,
Ohio and participates in workshops in conjunction with
various guitar festivals.
Cindy Cashdollar transcends her status as a performer, saving Dobro and steel for American music. “Steel
guitar and Dobro are an odd corner of the universe and
that is one of the things that makes Cindy so special,”
Kaukonen says. “She has taught at our Fur Peace Ranch
several times, and over the years, people who have taken
her classes talk about her class as a musically defining
moment in their lives.”
DAV E A LVIN AN D T HE G UILT Y WOM EN : Y EP ROC ; CIN DY CA SH DO LL AR : ROB BUC K
8Yfm\, with Dave
Alvin and the
Guilty Women.
Right, on stage
with her National
Reso-Phonic.
March/April 2013 | Elmore
24-28_FEA2.indd 30
2/19/13 1:35 PM