Steel Wheels
With soaring vocals and sweet harmonies, Steel Wheels bring Indie roots and Americana to St. Augustine.
The Steel Wheels kept rolling with changes in life through the pandemic, with a podcast and remote recording in home studios and yard stages. In their first post-pandemic tour, their new set list included a number of the 60 songs they had written in 2020 and 2021.
A gathering of five high-octane musicians, the Steel Wheels' sound combines their Indie roots and Americana, high powered Bluegrass, as well as familiar sounds of Gospel and Folk. The band unveils a new branch of introspection in sharing their reflections on being songwriters, isolation as a result of the pandemic, and new songs to praise life's events — in nuptials, and newborns and relocations. With soaring vocals and sweet harmonies, Steel Wheels share reflections on being separated and coming together, both tangibly and abstractly.
The band formed in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where they host their own music festival, the Red Wing Roots Music Festival every July, in association with the Red Wing Academy, which nurtures young musicians with a love of the old time sound and new indie creativity. The five band members back their vocals with mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, steel guitar, keys, drums and bass. The lineup showcases the talents of Trent Wagler, Jay Lapp, Eric Brubaker, Kevin Garcia, and Derek Kratzer.
