The Steel Wheels

The Virginia-based folk rock band The Steel Wheels has spent almost 20 years writing, recording, and touring while honing a changing and evolving brand of American roots music. From the start, The Steels Wheels musicians played exclusively on acoustic instruments, around one mic, drawing inspiration from the mountain music and string band traditions of their Virginia home. However, the band was never content to stay in one place musically. In 2017, the album Wild as We Come Here added sonic textures and pushed the boundaries of what the band’s sound could be. For lead singer and songwriter Trent Wagler, this was a natural evolution, captured in the band’s latest album, 2024’s Sideways.

“We’re more than a string band,” he said. “What we do has fundamentally changed from four guys around a mic. This was clearest to me when we were writing Sideways. I realized we were being influenced by so much other music - psychedelic rock, pop, jam, you name it - just overall paying attention to a broader palette of sound, not so focused on our own little world.”

The Steel Wheels, made up of Wagler, Jay Lapp, and Eric Brubaker, was formed in 2005 and adopted its name in 2010 for their album, Red Wing. The band quickly staked a claim as an independent upstart in the burgeoning Americana scene. The Steel Wheels added three more self-produced albums in the next five years and added drummer Kevin Garcia and Jeremy Darrow to round out the rhythm section. They joined up with producer Sam Kassirer and continued to explore deeply rooted, yet fresh, folk rock sounds.

The band hosts its own Red Wing Roots Music Festival, a week-long celebration of music, community, and their beloved Shenandoah Valley. The festival gives the band a chance to shine, from its high-energy Saturday night main stage set to the afternoon showcase with young Red Wing Academy students. At Sunday’s gospel hour, you are as likely to hear Steel Wheels original music or Warren Zevon covers as you are to hear traditional gospel fare. The weekend is rounded out by the beloved tribute set, in which the band collaborates with a cadre of fellow artists to honor an influential figure in American music. Past tributes have honored Dolly Parton and John Prine.

For the recording of Sideways, a post-pandemic reunion and the band’s most ambitious outing to date, the group holed up together at the Great North Sound Society in Parsonsfield, Maine, moving into the studio for a week, cooking meals together around a wood stove in a farmhouse and, most importantly, playing all together again for the first time in two years.

The result is a powerful, sometimes joyous and contemplative reflection on our shared human experience, while exploring the personal and the universal experiences we share. We hear the image of resolve and strength despite what life throws at us and we are reminded that we are still here, pushed and bent, but still standing.

Trent Wagler explained it this way: “It’s beautiful and crushing to be alive sometimes,” he said. “We aren’t here to sing songs that only cut one way - but if they do, they’ll cut sideways.”