Pete Finney, a prominent steel guitarist and fixture of Nashville’s country music community, died on Saturday (Feb. 7). He was 70 years old.
The Country Music Hall of Fame shared news of his death in a social media post, describing Finney as a “widely admired” musician who “exemplified how top instrumentalists can adapt to a range of styles and settings, whether in a recording studio, a concert stage, or the corner of a small nightclub.”
Over the course of his career, Finney played for country luminaries like Patty Loveless, Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, the Judds and the Chicks.
He was also a diverse performer who worked with acts outside the genre, such as Beck and Shemekia Copeland.
Who Was Steel Guitarist Pete Finney?
A Maryland native who began his country music career in Austin, Texas, in the late 1970s, Pete Finney moved to Nashville in the following decade and began touring and performing with a wide array of artists.
Per the Hall of Fame’s remembrance, he was touring with Reba McEntire at the time of the tragic 1991 plane crash that claimed the lives of eight of her band members.Finney survived because he flew on a second plane, along with some other members of the band and crew.
Read More: Remembering the Tragedy That Killed Reba McEntire’s Band Members
He also spent 20 years touring with Patty Loveless, and performed with a wide array of other Nashville mainstays, including Jim Lauderdale and Allison Moorer.
Moorer remembered Finney in a social media post after his death, writing, “He was kind, smart and incredibly talented. Nashville won’t be the same without him.”
Locals could often find Finney performing with Chris Scruggs at the now-defunct West Nashville hub The Stone Fox. That rotating cast of country traditionalists, dubbed Chris Scruggs and the Stone Fox Five, continued to hold Sunday night performances after the Stone Fox closed at Skinny Dennis Nashville.
The Country Music Hall of Fame also notes that Finney co-curated its “Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City” exhibit, which opened in 2015.
Finney co-wrote an exhibit book that won the Chet Flippo Award for excellence in country music journalism. The museum states that the idea for the exhibit stemmed from Finney’s research on out-of-genre artists who came to Nashville to record and work with its studio musicians in the 1960s and 1970s.
No information about Finney’s cause of death or funeral information was immediately available.
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Gallery Credit: Carena Liptak