Evento

Steel Wheels - Live at the Rives

Steel Wheels
Sat., April 9
Doors 8 pm, Music 9 pm
Tickets $20 adv / $25 doors
An Artisan Cafe event
http://www.thesteelwheels.com/home

Some things come to be in their own time, of their own accord. Such has been the case with The Steel Wheels. In the beginning, it was simply a matter of four young men whod happened to cross paths at a formative moment in each of their lives reveling in the shared experience of plucking acoustic instruments and blending their voices. But over the years, what had begun organically as a pure lark evolved into a mission: to fuse the personal with the universal, the deeply rooted past with the joys and sorrows of everyday existence.

These thematic and stylistic vectors intersect powerfully on Leave Some Things Behind (released April 14 on the bands own Big Ring label), a deeply human, emotionally authentic work that interweaves timely songs with timeless sounds. On the album, co-produced and engineered by Ben Surratt, the four band memberslead singer/guitarist/banjo player Trent Wagler, standup bass player Brian Dickel, fiddler Eric Brubaker and mandolin player Jay Lappare joined on various tracks by rootsmusic luminary Tim OBrien, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Sarah Siskind (who co-wrote two songs and sang on another), drummer Travis Whitmore and Hammond B3 player Ethan Ballinger. Together, theyve wrought a work that is musically intricate and conceptually resonant, the sounds serving the songs at every moment.

Memorable original tunes like the sorrowful Heaven Dont Come by Here, the anxious End of the World Again, the a cappella tour de force Promised Land, the indigenously metaphorical Find Your Mountain, the autobiographical Rescue Me, Virginia and the climactic Every Song Is a Love Song are bound by a plainspoken eloquence and an unforced urgency, while the dual kickers Weve Got a Fire and Warm Wool, Soft Leather seem tailor-made for the Grand Ole Opry stage circa 1968as if intimating some of those precious things weve left behind.