Steelism

Jeremy Fetzer on guitar and Spencer Cullum on pedal steel make up the instrumental duo Steelism, two longtime Nashville session players whose sound fuses country twang, jazzy swing, blues, and R&B punch together with throwback surf guitar and Ennio Morricone-like movie soundtrack washes into a wholly distinctive 21st-century mixture. Fetzer, raised in Canton, Ohio, and Cullum, raised in Essex, England, first crossed paths while both were on the road in the U.K. with Nashville singer Caitlin Rose’s band. During soundchecks they began trading spontaneous instrumental ideas, and from those exchanges the project Steelism emerged. Their debut EP, The Intoxicating Sounds of Pedal Steel and Guitar, earned swift praise from critics, after which the pair—supported by Nashville drummer Jon Radford and bassist Michael Rinne—issued the 2014 full-length 615 to FAME on Single Lock Records, with half the sessions recorded at the historic FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals and the title nodding to the duo’s Nashville area code. They followed with the 2015 EP The Drawing Room, Vol. 1, then returned in summer 2017 with the album Ism.