NASH VIL LE CATS

YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW THE NAMES Kenny Greenberg, Russ Pahl and Derek Wells, but if you’ve been anywhere near a radio — particularly one tuned to a country music station — sometime during the past 30 years, you’re probably familiar with their work. The three are considered among the upper-crust of Nashville’s first-call session guitarists, and even a cursory view at their combined (and sometimes shared) credits is nothing short of breathtaking: Taylor Swift, Kacey Musgraves, Blake Shelton, Toby Keith, Jewel, Kenny Chesney, Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Eric Church, Miranda Lambert, Florida Georgia Line. And that’s just to name but a few people.

“It would be an understatement to say Nashville is the place to be if you make music,” Greenberg says. Originally from Ohio, Greenberg cut his teeth playing in high school rock bands in Louisville, Kentucky (“I was way into Hendrix and the Stones”), before moving to Nashville and entering the studio scene at 21. “It’s kind of funny how a lot of rock guitarists have moved here and found work in the country market. Country is so diverse these days; there’s still traditional country, but there’s underground country, outlaw country, alternative country, the East Nashville Americana scene, the Christian music scene. It’s pretty wide open.”

Hailing from Minneapolis, Pahl is a 30-year veteran of the Nashville scene. His non-traditional — and now signature — approach to the pedal steel guitar (heavy on effects and atmospherics) has been featured on numerous Number 1 country hits, and over the past few years he’s enjoyed a steady collaboration with one of the town’s recent transplants, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. “It’s always exciting when somebody new comes here and shakes things up a bit,” he says, “and I’m always looking to get in a room with them to see what we can do.”

Noting that Nashville hasn’t been inured to the changing economics that have affected the entire music business, Pahl says, “Things have tightened up a bit.