THE STEEL WHEELS - Winter Tour 2026
Folk / Americana / Bluegrass
Doors 7pm / Show 8pmĀ *See venue bag policy*
18+ Valid ID required for entry into venue / Under 18 permitted with parent (Accepted forms of ID: State Issued ID or Driver's License, Military ID, Passport.)
THE STEEL WHEELS
20 years is a long time to spend doing anything at all. Itās an age for any group of people to sustain a collective effort. For a band on the road, 20 years can be more than a lifetime. Yet, after 2 decades of making music together in living rooms, listening rooms, clubs, theaters, and festival stages, The Steel Wheels are still growing, still pushing, still at it, and theyāre marking the occasion with the release of their 9th studio album, āThe Steel Wheelsā.
Following the release of āSidewaysā in 2024, their 3rd record with producer Sam Kassirer at his Great North Sound Society studio in interior Maine, the band felt it was time for a change of scene. As the group began to select songs for a new album, they also had to find an answer to the question of where they would get down to the work of record-making. They didnāt know that answer was going to knock on their back door.
At the bandās 2024 Red Wing Roots festival, held each summer near the groupās home base of Harrisonburg, VA, banjo player and songwriter Trent Wagler spied producer and engineer D. James Goodwin (Goose, Bonny Light Horseman, Iām With Her) in the crowd and later reached out to learn what he was doing so far from his home turf of New York. It happened that Goodwin, who mixed the bandās 2019 album āOver The Treesā, had just pulled up stakes for the Shenandoah Valley and was setting up a new studio on the bandās doorstep. Several months and one video call later, Wagler, fiddler Eric Brubaker, multi-instrumentalist Jay Lapp, drummer/percussionist Kevin Garcia, and bass player Jeremy Darrow gathered in the new space, The Isokon, snug against the snowy Virginia winter, to begin recording their next album.
The process that Goodwin cultivated was fluid and swift. Demo listening in the morning flowed into tracking the whole band live in one room. The session was punctuated by peals of laughter and occasional tears as the group kept themselves in the moment, leaning into every emotion and embracing that vulnerability. As they worked, the music took shape in the moment, right in front of the microphones, each participant listening and responding as the songs flickered to life. By dinner time, the songs of the day were complete, and talk moved to the next dayās work.
The album that resulted from this process captures the multifaceted band in full flight, pivoting effortlessly between the folk rock band theyāve grown into over 20 years and the harmony-centric acoustic ensemble that theyāve been since the beginning. The band puts their impressive range on display throughout āThe Steel Wheelsā; energy, insight, and humor balance with tender, highly personal moments of masterful restraint and expression as the album unfolds. As ever, the band challenges themselves to find new ways through the music, using space and, at moments, reinventing their approach to the string band format.
As usual, Waglerās keen lyrics provide insight by posing big questions. At first blush, āEasyā sounds like the song of the summer, but a deeper listen asks the audience to consider whether itās worth the cost to have the world waiting for us on the other side of our screens. āEverything is easyā, but is it really?
Beyond our glowing devices, āGo Backā studies the complexity of our relationships and the time we spend with those close to us. Itās easy to say that we must take the bad with the good, itās a challenge to seek to understand how our joy and sadness are entwined; that they are not opposing feelings, but sibling emotions.
āKeep On Dancingā offers the listener a greater challenge: to take a step back from distraction and our self-imposed tasks, to look beyond the static of the day, and to see the beauty all around us. The song gently implores us to take a breath and be still so that we can glimpse the things that are actually important.
The Steel Wheels have kept their stride for longer than most bands survive. After 20 years hard at work, āThe Steel Wheelsā is an album of creative maturity with a restless sense of adventure. Hereās to 20 more.