WONDERFUL story on the Steel Wheels in the York Daily Record!

Thanks to Mike Angento of the York Daily Record for the WONDERFUL story on the Steel Wheels! Take a read and then come to see them Sunday, April 6th at the Appalachian Brewery in Harrisburg!
http://www.flipsidepa.com/concerts/ci_25475125/steel-wheels-is-not-your-average-folk-mennonite

The Steel Wheels Live in Harrisburg on April 6th!

Selling out coast-to-coast and appearing at many top music festivals, The Steel Wheels come to Harrisburg for a Susquehanna Folk Music Society matinee concert on Sunday, April 6, 2014, at 4 p.m., at the Appalachian Brewing Company Abbey Bar, 50 N. Cameron Street, Harrisburg.

Based in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, The Steel Wheels have captured audiences across the county with their heady brew of original soulful mountain music and their deep commitment to roots and community. This dynamic four-piece string band marries old-time musical traditions with their own innovative sound and lifestyle.

The group is known for their raw energy and chemistry on stage, where they often cluster tightly around a single microphone to support Trent Wagler’s unmistakable tenor with four-part harmonies inspired by their Mennonite heritage.

Concert tickets are $22 General Admission, $18 for SFMS members, and $10 for students ages 3-22. Advance tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets at (800) 838-3006 or online at www.BrownPaperTickets.com.

Following is an interview with the band’s leader Trent Wagler.
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FOLKMAMA: I’ve actually never seen the band, but I’ve seen a lot of your You Tube Clips and I really love what I see. I know that you toured with Red Molly and I asked them about you and they said that you were really good.

TRENT: Aw, that’s nice!

FOLKMAMA: So, you did a small tour with them so there must have been something about both of your groups that made you good companions.

TRENT: We’ve know Red Molly for a little while. We’ve played at a lot of the same venues and a lot of the same festivals. We were backstage at a festival in Vermont a couple of years ago and we were just talking about touring and we were joking around and someone was talking about how they were a super group of all females with three great lead singers and great harmonies and great songs and us being all male we joked that their audience must be all middle aged men looking to come see them and our audience must be all middle aged women and that we should get together for a Valentine’s Day tour. So that was the original impetus for doing the tour. We had such a great experience and I would say that the similarities are many. We definitely did connect with that band.

We are cut from a very similar cloth in terms of the kinds of music that we try to bridge. We bridge the mountain music with singer/songwriter sounds and original songs that are important to us. In our band we share, kind of by accident, a Mennonite heritage, we all grew up Mennonite in different parts of the country and we found that that common heritage has a lot to do with our harmony singing.   That’s a big part of the heritage of the Mennonites because they didn’t always have a lot of musical instruments so singing became their instrument. So we sing a lot of harmonies. That’s a lot of what we enjoy bringing to the stage.

FOLKMAMA: So in your music I hear a lot of gospel, but I don’t necessarily think of it as religious music. Sometimes I think there is a really division between modern Christian music and gospel music. Do you feel that your music is Christian, or are you just interested in following the gospel traditions?

TRENT: Where drawing from the environments that we grew up in, but we definitely don’t think of our music as Christian. Some of the themes and language and biblical imagery is Christian music is definitely in what we do and some of the forms of gospel music–particularly some of the a capella songs that we do–but I usually try in the lyrics to open it slightly so that it’s different in form and function than a bible beating gospel but instead trying to turn a lyric more towards an open audience.

FOLKMAMA: So are you the main songwriter or do you write together?

TRENT: We write together to a certain extent. I’ve been the primary songwriter and lyrically speaking I’ve written everything. And then always the band is extremely important to the arrangement and in some cases to the final rewrites of the song. They’ve always been a very helpful part of that. So in some extent there’s been a workshoping of songs that brings everybody into the writing process.

FOLKMAMA: So have you played in Harrisburg before?

TRENT: We played at the Appalachian Brewery a couple of years ago, and we’ve certainly played a lot of shows in the Philadelphia area. We’ve played at the Steel Stacks in Bethlehem as well as Musikfest and we’ve played at the bluegrass festival in Gettysburg.

FOLKMAMA: I see that you release your recordings in CD form and also on vinyl. Have you had a lot of call for the records?

TRENT: Yeah. The whole interesting in renewing vinyl recordings is such an interesting thing to watch. For some of our fans and some of the folk crowd, we say that we released it on vinyl and go get the record and they look at us like they think we’re crazy, “We threw away our vinyl 10 years ago!” But then there is a population of primarily young people who are really getting into this music and who love to hear it in this older way. It seems like there is something really special about people seeing the value in some of the older ways. I think that’s why we keep on playing these traditional melodies and playing these old songs because there is value in it. It’s not just out of responsibility, feeling like we have to keep the old songs alive.

The intentionality of putting on a record, and listening to one side, a really thinking about why this band or artists decided to put these songs in this order and then you turn it over and you have another mini set. You have to pay attention because that record is going to stop, and then you have to turn it over and put it on again. All these things are things that we’ve lost with digital music.