“He exemplified how top instrumentalists can adapt to a remarkable range of styles and settings”: Steel guitarist Pete Finney – who performed with Vince Gill, Reba McEntire and the Monkees – dies aged 70

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Steel guitarist Pete Finney, the Nashville-based musician who has toured with the likes of Vince Gill, the Judds, Reba McEntire, the Chicks, and the Monkees, has died at the age of 70.

The news was announced by Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “Steel guitarist Pete Finney, who died Saturday at age seventy, was a widely admired Nashville musician,” reads the statement. “He exemplified how top instrumentalists can adapt to a remarkable range of styles and settings, whether in a recording studio, a concert stage, or the corner of a small nightclub.

“On America’s biggest stages, Finney backed the Chicks, Vince Gill, the Judds, Reba McEntire, and Patty Loveless, among others. He toured with Loveless for more than twenty years. He was touring with McEntire when eight members of her band and two crew members lost their lives in a plane crash in 1991; Finney survived because he flew on a second plane, with another musician and crew members.”

Born in Maryland in 1955, Finney played his first shows in Washington, D.C. with singer-songwriter Liz Meyer, before relocating to the Netherlands in the mid-’80s. Upon his return to the States in the late ’70s, the steel guitarist moved to Austin, Texas, and then Nashville in the mid-'80s, where he made a huge mark on the local scene and beyond.

Upon his Nashville debut, Finney toured with Foster & Lloyd, and later, in Washington, D.C. Along the way, he recorded and performed with a myriad of artists, including Beck, Jon Byrd, Shemekia Copeland, Justin Townes Earle, and Jon Langford.

Alongside his session career, he also gained a reputation for his extensive knowledge of American music history, so much so that he co-curated the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's exhibition, “Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City,” between 2015 and 2018.

The book that accompanied the exhibition was also co-written by Finney and won the Chet Flippo Award for excellence in country music journalism from the International Country Music Conference.

“So many good memories with Pete back in the ’80s,” Vince Gill tells the Nashville Scene. “He played in my band, and he played with Radney [Foster] and Bill [Lloyd]. This was before he started doing [the Patty Loveless] gig.

“He came out with me whenever I’d get a band and go travel. The consummate road dog, you know, and a good hang. He was just one of those people who would always put a smile on your face, and you were glad to see.”