NEDERLAND -- Daniel C. Jones has always been drawn to pedal steel guitar. In the early 1970s, he fell in love with the country rock scene at the time. What stuck out to him, though, wasn’t the Nashville country scene – it was the alternative country scene.
Jones loved the sound of performers such as Jerry Garcia, his project New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Peter E. Kleinow (or “Sneaky Pete”). In 1971, Jones’s brother took him to see a performance of Garcia’s most well-known band, The Grateful Dead. Waylon Jennings opened that night, joined by Ralph Mooney, pedal steel guitar player for Jennings’s group the Waylors.
Jones says the instrument called to him because its sound instantly captivated him. Throughout the 1970s, he steadily performed on the road full-time, but by the 1980s, he prioritized his education. He earned a BA in Music from Sonoma State University in California, an MM in Musicology/Music Theory at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder in 1984, and a Ph.D in Musicology at CU Boulder in 1991.
Jones taught musicology at CU Boulder for over twenty years before retiring after the fall 2019 semester. Throughout that time, he performed pedal steel guitar on the side, both by himself and with the instrumental group Standard Deviations.
Now, Jones focuses entirely on playing, particularly embracing standards from the Great American Songbook. His original compositions and arrangements are all instrumental, so for him, it’s important to find pieces that lie well in the instrument’s range.
For the most part, Jones’s teaching career and performing life stayed separate, but he occasionally found ways to weave them together. He found ways to integrate pedal steel guitar into his teaching, such as in lessons about American popular music, and in collaboration with another pedal steel guitarist, he edited a music theory textbook focusing on the instrument.
Jones has loved embracing songs outside of country music, as he loves being able to perform the music that resonates most with him and that breaks the stereotypical image of a pedal steel guitar serving as a country instrument. He loves entertaining an audience, and he hopes that in some way, the music he plays speaks to his audiences.
You can see Daniel C. Jones playing at the Nederland location of Very Nice Brewing Company, located at 20 E. Lakeview Drive #112 in the Caribou Village Shopping Center, on Saturday, March 29, 2025, starting at 5 p.m.
You can watch videos of Jones performing in Standard Deviations on the YouTube channel tekweenie. You can also learn about his musical and academic efforts by going to his CU Experts profile at https://experts.colorado.edu/display/fisid_105705.
