The Steel Wheels

americana · folk rock · roots

The Steel Wheels are an Americana and roots band from Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley at the edge of the Blue Ridge. The group formed in 2005 among students at Eastern Mennonite University and began as an acoustic string band gathered around a single microphone, drawing on the mountain music of the surrounding region. Trent Wagler sings lead and writes most of the material, playing banjo and guitar; Eric Brubaker plays fiddle and Jay Lapp mandolin and guitar, both singing. Kevin Garcia joined in 2017 on drums, percussion and keyboards, widening the band well past its string-band frame, and Jeremy Darrow now plays bass in place of founding bassist Brian Dickel, who left to become a co-owner of the guitar maker Huss & Dalton. The catalog runs to more than a dozen studio albums, among them Leave Some Things Behind (2015), Wild As We Came Here (2017), Over the Trees (2019), Everyone a Song Volume One (2020) and Volume Two (2021), Sideways (2024) and a self-titled record in 2025. Sam Kassirer produced both Wild As We Came Here and Sideways, the latter released on the band's Big Ring Records on February 9, 2024, and written around loss, mental health and endurance. Across the records the band's string-band and gospel foundation has taken in bluegrass, blues, country, pop and rock. Since 2013 the Steel Wheels have hosted the Red Wing Roots Music Festival, a late-June weekend at Natural Chimneys park in Mt. Solon, Virginia, whose lineups have included Old Crow Medicine Show, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and Lake Street Dive.

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