“It was just a DM,” Los Angeles pedal steel musician Stephen Musselman says over the phone from Nashville on a rare off-day ahead of the Country Music Awards. “It was a music director from out in LA; he hit me up on Instagram and just said something like, ‘hey I heard you play pedal steel, are you available for this thing?’” In Los Angeles there are what are called MD groups - Music Directing Groups. They work with labels and artists to help put together bands and develop the joyful noise. They’ll put out a cattle call or invite just a few and the ambitious applicants line up with sometimes dozens of others. Could be for a reality TV show, for a celebrity singer, or maybe the next chart topping singer songwriter.

The night before Musselman was to head to this mysterious audition, he was sent the song to learn—”Vegas,” from Shaboozey’s 2024 album, Where I’ve Been Is Not Where I’m Going. He had to look up the name on social media; Stephen hadn’t heard of him.

While tuning his pedal steel in the rehearsal space the following day, Musselman catches Shaboozey’s eye. They’ve yet to meet when the rising superstar says something like, “Oh shit, my guy on the steel with the Ship John drip,” Stephen says. Ship John is an independent men’s wear brand built out of and based in Portland, OR. It’s grown a rabid following over the last decade. That the Virginia-born artist even knew what it was blew Musselman’s mind, and he believes immediately ingratiated him to his would-be boss. Stephen thought he nailed the audition. Afterward the two talked more about clothes. A few days later Musselman was taping an appearance for Late Night with Stephen Colbert.

Who knows exactly how important Ship John was to the introduction, but it’s important to have moments like these—shared moments, shared interests. It’s what builds relationships, which tend to last longer or be held in higher regard than just a gig or even a killer musician. A month or two later, Musselman got another call. Another Shaboozey gig. A few weeks later rehearsals were to begin for Summer and Fall tours. Stephen’s phone rang again.

Before the first rehearsal, Musselman remembers searching Shaboozey on Instagram and seeing his roughly 40,000 followers. His celebrity was on the up. That was January 2024, before the Beyonce record, which would help propel Shaboozey into the limelight. He featured on two tracks within her genre challenging album, which released in March. His album dropped late May. Around that time is when Musselman first heard and learned to play, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” “This sounded like it could be big,” Musselman remembers. “But no one had any idea just how big it would be.”  Before long, Shaboozey had more than 1 Million Instagram followers and the band booked Saturday Night Live. Something is happening here.

This is not where Musselman, 35, thought he’d find himself, picking and pushing his pedal steel for the breakout superstar. But his ambition to learn and to work the gigs given to him show a man with complete passion and devotion to his craft. Have guitar, will play. A talented athlete in middle school, Stephen got the guitar bug around 13, and by 16 he had quit sports and decided his life would be tied with these strings. He taught himself to read music through guitar magazines, TAB, and then eventually through jazz guitar lessons. His first teacher was an older player he met at a coffeehouse, before finding Joe Jewel at Fullerton Junior College (Stephen was still in high school). “I can’t explain it,” Stephen says. “But I knew it for sure back then. I will do this forever.” To this day, he’s never held a day job.

Well, that’s not exactly true. We have to define ‘day job’ to include steady guitar work during daylight hours. Stephen had a lot of those. This is not a rags to riches story of garage band side man turned rock star. Musselman’s was a steady growth and diet of playing most anywhere he’d get paid to play. It started at church, where he played with the choir. This introduced him to the world of Contemporary Christian Music, which offers a steady musicians circuit with good-paying gigs across Southern California. You needn’t be a believer. At the same time, while playing guitar in high school plays, Stephen found himself alongside professional musicians hired out for gigs across school districts. Once he graduated, he jumped on that bus too. He continued at Fullerton Junior College as a full-time student; he occasionally subbed in for gigs his professor couldn’t make, mostly jazz guitar or sight reading for musical shows.

Then came Disneyland. Just a short drive from his hometown of Yorba Linda, Disney hired a lot of musicians to work the park. Stephen would be one of them for almost ten years. It paid well. There’s a long line of Disneyland alum. Two great ones: Eugene Edwards (Dwight Yoakum’s lead guitar player) and Brian Whelan (Shooter Jennings band, Dwight Yoakam, among others). “I was doing tours as well,” Musselman says. “The way I look at it, I have different accounts. Ok I got a Sunday morning church gig. I have the Disneyland thing a few days a week. I have bar gigs in the evening a couple nights a week. I weathered out a living. When December and January comes, which are usually a slow time for musicians, having those different gigs to lean on was super clutch.”

One of those gigs was in San Diego at the La Jolla Playhouse and nearby Globe Theater. Eight shows a week forced his hand to move further south and drop out of school. “I mean, dude, I want that gig,” his teacher told Stephen. “You better take it.”

“It was a really big gig,” Musselman says. “It was really good money. It was through the music union. I was 22, and everyone else was in their 40s or 50s. I saw this path to being a blue collar musician, clocking in and clocking out. It felt real for the first time, and helped get my parents off my back.” He stayed on for three runs of shows, two months each, and then he ran into Burt Bacharach.

Musselman was in San Diego at the theater, performing with the orchestra for Rocky Horror Picture Show, and he sees on Facebook that famed musical director Barry Squire is holding an audition for a live celebration of Burt Bacharach’s songbook. Across the street from the theater where Stephen was working, a Burt Bacharach musical was on stage. That production called Stephen to see if he could come record a quick guitar piece for the show, so the next day he walks into the theater, and Burt Bacharach is sitting in the lobby. He looks up and says, “Stephen?” A quick introduction and Bacharach goes on and on graciously thanking Musselman for coming over. Stephen remembers saying something in disbelief like, “Hey anything for you, Burt.”

They go into a room with a studio set up. Burt writes out chord charts and melody notes and hands them to Stephen, who plays them. Stephen remembers Burt expressing surprise at this young man’s ability to sight read music. Burt then sits at a piano and plays out the orchestration of nearly every other instrument’s part, in one place improvising on the piano until he was happy with a string part he was trying to figure out. Maybe a couple hours and they were done. Walking out, Burt asked Stephen if he had a business card, in case he needed more help from the impressive young guitarist.

Musselman saw his opportunity. Handing him a card, he told Burt about the Barry Squire show and asked if he was involved or even aware of it. Burt acknowledged that indeed his friend is putting it on, and said to Stephen, “Man you’d be perfect for that. You should do it. Let me call my guy and give him your info and get you plugged in.”

“I thought I had my angle,” Musselman says. “I get a call from a musical director who is not Barry Squire, and who is all, ‘I just got off the phone with Burt Bacharach and nothing but great things to say about you.’ I’m 22-years-old and just like what the fuck is going on at this point. Then the guy is like, ‘Ok so we are casting for this show for this guy named Barry Squire, have you heard of him?’ I shrug it off like yeah I’ve heard of him. He goes on to say I’ll let him know what Burt said and give him all your details.”

Done deal. Right? Musselman hangs up the phone and thinks to himself, “I made it. I just got recommended for a Burt Bacharach gig by Burt Bacharach. I’m in.” One of those lingering dreams was to get a pop opportunity and finally move to into Los Angeles proper. But Barry Squire never called. “That was the point,” Musselman says, “where I realized that chasing all that wasn’t for me. I realized that I can be successful without chasing those kind of gigs. I can make a living and it’s going to be ok, and I just have to have faith that things are going to come, and it’s not going to be because of someone else. It’s going to be about just doing my thing consistently. I can’t control anything or anyone else. I gotta just move on.”

And that’s how he made it work for the last twenty years. Not long after the San Diego gig ended, Stephen was at Disneyland. His first real touring gig was playing lead guitar with Sam Outlaw in 2016, on top of three or four days at Disneyland; he’s also found himself on the road with Logan Ledger among others. At a festival in Amsterdam, Outlaw’s band found themselves without a pedal steel player. David Crosby was the headlining artist, and his drummer was Steve DiStanislao, who also played with David Gilmore, and oh by the way also played with Stephen at church gigs. “He’s this monster drummer,” Musselman says. “He was telling me, ‘Oh yeah, Greg Leisz’s wife plays bass with us, and if he’s not on the road playing steel with Jackson Browne, he’ll just come on our their bus and hang out.’ I told Sam he should call Greg and see if he is going to be at the show. He was, and we ended up hiring him. I couldn’t believe it; he’s a real hero. I was on stage nodding to him to solo. I went home and two days later I was working at Disneyland. That’s when hit me: This doesn’t lead to that. Being in the Disneyland band does not lead to being Greg Leisz. I quit that same day.”

Not long after some long loooong (his word) soul searching, he found it hard to play guitar. He questioned his confidence. He dreaded gigs. Then the pandemic hit. It was back in the summer of 2018 when Stephen first picked up a pedal steel, but had yet to give it the time it required. He was drawn to the sound and would attempt to replicate the string bending and volume swells on his telecaster. With the pandemic settling in, he had nothing to do but fully commit to the pedal steel just as he did as a teenager with the guitar. He added dobro and mandolin to the to-do list as well. Not that he was giving up the telecaster, but it hasn’t been a focus since. “I was so happy to not have to go to gigs,” Stephen says. “I fell out of love with the guitar, and started to fall in love with other things, like pedal steel, dobro, and mandolin.”

As the pandemic dragged on, Stephen began organizing bluegrass jams weekly in Garfield Park in LA. Word of mouth spread and the 3-hour noontime jam sessions grew among the musicians’ communities. This turned into what is now one of Stephen’s mainstay gigs, his weekly Bluegrass Night at Big Foot Lodge in LA’s Glendale neighborhood. Guests include the likes of Robbie Fulks, Chris Luquette, Leslie Stevens, and Austin McCutchen. “It’s turned into this killer community of musicians,” Stephen adds. “It’s been such a fruitful thing. In LA it is really hard to get people together to jam and hang out. There is a whole community now that helps connect dots in the music scene out here. LA can feel overwhelming, and just having a place to go is key. It’s so important for scenes to have some kind of consistent home base they can go and be a part of something. People ask how often it goes down, and I am like, yeah, every single Tuesday night.”

These new instruments are also more unique instruments and have made Stephen a more unique, he’d say better, musician, who is now in more unique demand; there certainly is not the numbers of steel players as telecaster men. Though it hasn’t been without help. Fellow Angelenos and steel men Matt Pyn and Brian Whelan were there to help with questions as they came up for Musselman, who as experienced as he was didn’t know where exactly to start. “Cool thing about the steel community,” Musselman recalls, “Anytime I asked questions, everyone is just so cool and helped so much. The whole community honestly. Matt, Brian, Eugene, Ted Russell Kamp— all of them. I loved all their stories, and those I read too. They really inspired me. More and more you realize it’s all stories of happenstance and a guy you met at a random gig recommended you for another gig, and it led to something else. I think the musician who recommended me for the Shaboozey gig was this guy I met through a mutual friend and shared a drink or two with. That was it. It’s become very apparent to me and clear it’s so important to always be kind and nice to people and on top of your shit. Being prepared musically or just on a personal level — you never know what it could lead.”

There are plenty of people who could do the gig. So it often becomes who you are beyond the music, what you’re about. It’s a vibe. Are you solid across the board? The show is only a couple hours every night. “That really is the biggest part,” Musselman continues. “It’s really, can you hang out on a bus? Can you show up on time? That’s the other big one. Be on time. Take care of yourself. Do you bring positive energy to a room? Because these tours, it’s up early and flights all the time or tons of folks packed in a van. It’s a grind. The work part of this life is that. If people are getting dark and being a drag to be around, that’s the first thing to come up before ‘Oh that person missed this note on this one song.’ The ultimate side man is a person who kills it on stage. Has a great vibe and energy. Can looks the part on stage, and then it’s stuff like, chill hang, on time, takes care of themselves. If you can tick all those boxes— Dude just being clean. That’s a huge thing on a bus being able to manage yourself and your space.”

The way Musselman remembers, it was so nonchalant the way he got here. The churches, the choirs, the shows, the plays, the days at Disney and the nights at the bars. It all just kinda happened. That’s life, right? Shaboozey hired him for one gig, then another, and then got another call from the same music director group. They had three shows booked—LA, Nashville & New York City—and asked Stephen to join. But he had a conflict with the third show and wasn’t sure about giving up a week of paid recording sessions in LA for the short road stint. When he got to the rehearsal studio, he learned they had the entire year lined up. It’s almost as if they built the system to ensure you want the gig no matter the artist, but behind that veil, Musselman almost unknowingly passed on the biggest gig of his career so far.

That was May and Musselman has been gone on the road since, as the Shaboozey train keeps climbing the music industry mountain. A Bar Song (tipsy) rode to the record books on Billboard’s charts. It took Kendrick Lamar’s GNX to topple Shaboozey off the Hot 100, where he beat Lil’ Nas X’s record-setting 19 weeks at number 1.No doubt Boozey will be back. Summer ’24 exploded into a Fall headline tour which spilled into an opening slot on the Jelly Roll tour. It’s been nonstop for Musselman, who has trouble looking back on it as much as he’s just in it. 

“With this country thing as a whole, there just is no middle,” Musselman says. “I went from being in a minivan, just me and Ledger, to now, we’re flying around, we’re playing 20,000-seat arenas with Jelly Roll. It was a big jump but the thing that stays constant is I am still playing music. I was expecting to be real nervous but that act of playing, that is very familiar, playing songs that I like with friends.” He knows that’s what he is meant to do, and now he gets to do that with Shaboozey. “The whole thing has been just happening,” he says. “I mean I still play at Big Foot Lodge on Tuesday for 50 people at my bluegrass gig, and I’ll always be itching to get back there to those 3-hour bar gigs; they’re just too much fun, but these shows and tour have been amazing too. I just like the variety that music delivers playing different songs with different people. Maybe this side man gig will work out. Let’s see where it takes us.”