Joe Goldmark
Joe Goldmark is a San Francisco pedal steel guitarist who has made a series of instrumental albums since 1977, taking the steel into rock, pop and soul material. He has also recorded with Laurie Lewis, David Byrne and the Bay Area collective the Usual Suspects.
He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where he played cello from the age of nine and guitar in garage bands, and moved to San Francisco as a teenager. In the late 1960s he played bass in soul bands there. He took up the steel in 1970, drawn by the country-rock sound of the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and named Lloyd Green as his first influence. He started on an old Fender 400 and switched a year later to a double-neck ZB, and within a few years he was making a living from local gigs. He left college to play steel full time, which he did for about fifteen years.
In the late 1970s he joined the Billy C. Farlow Band, led by the former Commander Cody singer, touring the West Coast and playing as far as the Armadillo in Austin. In the early 1980s he played around the Bay Area with the Texas Chainsaw Band. His first three albums, all LPs, were Pickin’ My Pleasures (1977), Vertigo (1978) and Rockin’ It (1981). He is the steel player on part of Laurie Lewis’s Restless Rambling Heart, recorded in San Francisco and released by Flying Fish in 1986, with Tim O’Brien on guitar and mandolin.
From the mid-1980s he took a day job, first in the pizza business and later as a partner in the record store Amoeba Music, but he kept playing and recording. All Over the Road came out in 1994, and The Goldmark Round-Up (1996) gathered twenty tracks from the three early LPs. Later albums include Steelin’ the Beatles (1997), All Hat – No Cattle (1999), Strong Like Bull… But Sensitive Like Squirrel (HighTone, 2001), Seducing the ’60s (2007), The Wham of That Steel Man (2012) and Blue Steel (Lo-Ball, 2018). In the late 1990s he made three albums with Jim Campilongo and the 10 Gallon Cats. He played on nine albums by the Usual Suspects, and has backed Taj Mahal, Maria Muldaur, Peter Rowan and Norton Buffalo. He also compiled and published The International Steel Guitar and Dobro Discography.
