The Steel Wheels will roll into town tonight for a show at the Mill
"Conventional" is not a word many would use to describe Americana band the Steel Wheels. It's not quite thinking inside the box when a band decides to do concert tours using only bicycles as transportation, but that's what band leader Trent Wagler and the guys have done the last two years.
"It started out as a joke," Wagler said. " 'If we just biked everywhere, we wouldn't have to burn any fuel at all.' The idea just kind of sparked from there."
Bassist Brian Dickel hopes that the bike tour will prompt some fans to make similar green decisions.
"It's a bit of an inspiration for people at our show," he said. "… We're trying to promote bicycling as a viable transportation option … People may look at how far we had to bike to a show and think, 'Well, maybe I can bike the 4 miles to work.' "
While the Steel Wheels will not bike to Iowa City, the band will put on a show today at the Mill, 120 E. Burlington St. The concert will begin at 7 p.m.; admission will be $10.
In addition to atypical touring transportation, the group also formed in an unusual manner: a string of spur-of-the-moment decisions
"I was doing some solo stuff, and Jay Lapp, who's now our mandolin player, was playing in a band that I was opening for," Wagler said. "I knew Jay was a great musician, so before the show I said, 'I know I'm playing solo, but if you want to hop up on stage, I can just call out the keys to you.' … So we played a set together, had a great time, and that night we agreed to do a recording together."
Fast-forward to 2010 — the Steel Wheels is a four-piece outfit touring to promote its latest album, Red Wing, which was released in March. On the new record, the band tries to preserve a raw sound in order to capture the feeling of creating the music.
"We try hard to get a live sound, and we did a better job of that with this album," Wagler said. "We did most of the album by recording everything at once … There's this different energy we get when we record that way that's so much better even if it's not as polished."
Onstage, the band also likes to emphasize the process of making music.
"We like to play around a single mike," Wagler said. "Because we're all playing around one mike, [the audience] is watching as we mix the sound ourselves. We're coming up to the mike to boost sound and going away from the mike [to lower it]. We can really take the sound to a lot of different levels, and that's what I think is unique about what we do."
The Steel Wheels caters its shows to the fans while trying to bring a unique twist to every performance.
"We are fairly versatile, and we try to gauge the live show based on our audience," Dickel said. "We've played everything from major crowd festivals to intimate house concerts. Generally, it's a fairly energetic, high-energy show … We're into making it fresh for ourselves as well [for as the audience]."
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