If you don’t like the Steel Wheels track you’re listening to, just wait a few minutes. Shapeshifting seems to be a hobby of this Virginia-based group that started life as an acoustic stringband, adding instruments and members along the way to reach their current five-piece format. The band plays whack-a-mole with bluegrass, gospel, blues, pop, country, and rock, bopping those varmints upside the head every time they pop up till they all lie down together peacefully.
The trio of Trent Wagler (vocals/guitar/banjo), Jay Lapp (guitar/mandolin/vocals), and Eric Brubaker (fiddle/vocals) have been together since 2005, nameless until 2010, when they officially became The Steel Wheels. The group expanded their sound in 2017 with the addition of percussionist/mallet keyboardist Kevin Garcia and a bass player, now Jeremy Darrow.
“Wait on You,” the opening track on their latest offering, Sideways, comes across like an updated, more percussive version of The Byrds. Take out the cluckin’ banjo and you’ve got a harder-edged sound, like The Mavericks with an Appalachian accent.
“Baby Gone,” an exploration of parenting and life’s transitions, sounds transplanted from Mississippi’s Hill Country, with a stop along the way to graze on some shroomz and pick up a Béla Fleck clone.
“Easy On Your Way” takes a run at the venerable country cry-in-your-beer, my-baby’s-gone-and-left-me jukebox staple with some witty upgrades, including “Life is hard, it makes no sense / You need a bridge, they build a fence,” and “If words could do anything / I’d go and face the day.” Bluegrass and gospel cross the aisle, mingling with some rock flashes and flirting with some old-school country licks as well.
The title track, “Sideways,” has a pop aura, a Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” feel about it. It’s a song about being knocked for a loop and unmasked: “Give me life without the makeup / I’m gonna be exactly what you see,” Wagler sings.
You can’t put a label on any of this stuff, or this band, because each time you think you’ve got ’em pinned down, they wriggle away and come atcha from another angle. But they do it so well it doesn’t feel like they’re running away, but rather headed toward something that’s mutually satisfying, a lasting product that performs well time after time. – Jason Felton