Susan Alcorn is Free Music’s Most Accomplished Pedal Steel Guitarist

Although being the best-known pedal steel guitarist in Free Music may be akin to being the best Beethoven interpreter on kazoo, Baltimore-based Susan Alcorn makes the most of it, as The City Paper’s Lee Gardner relates. Classically trained (on trumpet!), as a Blues-obsessed teenager she learned slide guitar, which eventually led to playing steel guitar in Texas Western Swing bands. However her interest in the music of Ornette Coleman, Pauline Oliveros, Albert Ayler, Morton Feldman and others led away from country music and to Baltimore’s free scene. Today she’s fulfilled playing “nuevo tango” as well as fully improvised music.