In their 13 years together, The Steel Wheels have risen to the pinnacle of the Americana and Bluegrass scenes with a sound that is drawn from tradition but crackles with contemporary passion and intensity. Like so many modern Bluegrass practitioners, guitarist Trent Wagler and bassist Brian Dickel started their musical journeys in Punk and Alternative bands before hearing the siren’s call of acoustic music in 2004. Those visceral roots brought an amazing urgency to their subsequent musical direction.
In the beginning, Wagler and Dickel played as a duo but expanded to a trio with the addition of fiddler Eric Brubaker. After gaining a reputation in and around the Blue Ridge Mountain Folk scene in Virginia, mandolinist Jay Lapp offered his services and the quartet was complete. Not long after, the collective was dubbed The Steel Wheels and the real work began.
Early incarnations of the band had produced various studio recordings but sparks flew when the newly minted Steel Wheels documented their initial sessions. The first official Steel Wheels albums, Uncloudy Day and Red Wing, both released in 2010, earned the band seven Independent Music Award nominations and a Best Country Song win for “Nothing You Can’t Lose.” Red Wing in particular fared well with critics, fans and radio programmers, eventually making the Americana Music Association’s Top 100 albums of the year. The year before their dual releases, the Wheels embarked on their first SpokeSongs tour, a handful of dates within a 500-mile area that allowed them to reach all of the venues by bicycle, with their gear strapped to their backs (seems like upright bassist Dickel got the worst of that decision).
After independently releasing two more studio sets, The Steel Wheels signed with Big Ring for 2015’s Leave Some Things Behind, and followed that triumphant album with perhaps their best work to date, the recently released Wild as We Came Here. Produced by Josh Ritter’s keyboardist Sam Kassirer at his Maine studio, Wild is a sublime mixture of heartfelt love songs, protest anthems and odes to a simple country life, fleshed out for the first time with the addition of keyboards and drums. At least part of that dynamism has been added to the Steel Wheels current tour, with former Duhks drummer Kevin Garcia laying down the driving Americana beat.
Click here for tickets/more show info.
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2017.