Dustbowl Revival & The Steel Wheels

How do you describe genre-defying roots music adventurers Dustbowl Revival? Even tireless founder and lead songwriter Z. Lupetin would agree you have to come to a show to find out. Going strong into their second decade after starting from a humble Craigslist ad posted in bohemian Venice Beach, some would say Dustbowl’s ever-evolving collective plays a spicy cocktail of folky-funk and booty-shaking jangly rock n’ soul: expertly mixing their New Orleans-tinted brass section with their signature Laurel Canyon harmonies and fearless lyrics.

Dustbowl Revival is a testament to building a fanbase and their own sound the
old-fashioned way, with hard work and deeply moving songs that stick to your bones when you leave the concert. There’s a reason they continue to get written up in Rolling Stone and Billboard and get played on AAA radio 16 years after they set sail.

After releasing seven acclaimed albums starting in 2008, including their beloved live record With A Lampshade On (2015) recorded mostly at their LA homebase the famed Troubadour, and their charting self-titled record (2017) produced by Grammy-winner Ted Hutt (Flogging Molly, Old Crow Medicine Show), perhaps their magnum opus is 2020’s deeply personal Is It You, Is It Me - produced by Sam Kassirer (Lake Street Dive, Josh Ritter). It showcases their penchant for orchestral brass and intricate string work with politically-charged story-songs that unfold like mini-movies. It’s not surprising that Z.
Lupetin was an award-winning playwright and moved to LA from Chicago to be a
screenwriter before music took the reins. “Get Rid Of You”, an ode to the courageous kids in Parkland, FL who stood up to demand common-sense control laws be passed is a heart-wrenching staple of each show and “Get Right” - a new stomp blues that will be a part of their upcoming 2025 record, confronts the vigilante justice that exists throughout our country head on. Their newest single “The Truth” dares to take on the overturning of Roe V. Wade by the Supreme Court.

While staying proudly independent, the band has garnered over ten million streams and counting - with romantic jams like “Honey, I Love You” (featuring bluesmaster Keb’ Mo’) and fan favorites like “Sonic Boom” and “Debtors Prison” leading the charge. Many first learned about the band after the now 98-year old legend (and fan of the group) Dick Van Dyke let the gang shoot a music video with him dancing in his signature straw hat at his house - and of course the quirky jam to “Never Had To Go” went viral, being seen over five million times, while being featured on an HBO documentary about aging with joy.

It hasn’t always been easy - being a 7-8 piece band during the upheaval caused by the pandemic did make some in the band move on - but it also brought in a new
supercharged group of amazing players - such as Lashon Halley and more recently
Alex Nester on vocals, Chad Richard on electric guitar and Nick Phakpiseth on bass, while still featuring longtime brass players like Ulf Bjorlin, Vikram Devasthali, Ricky Lucchese, Austin Drake, Mike Jones, Max O’leary, and original drummer Josh
Heffernan and special guest Michael Villiers to round out the band. Even their original lady singer Caitlin Doyle, who joined after one of the original Craigslist ads went live all those years ago - is back in the fold behind the mic.

After throwing five of own Sway At Home Festivals during the pandemic to keep the joy going, and creating their own in person gathering Sonic Boom Fest in the hills above Malibu, 2022 and 2023 brought fresh music with their Set Me Free EP and
highly-playlisted folk singles “Beside You” and “The Exception” which features
Grammy-nominated The Secret Sisters from Muscle Shoals and quickly gained over two million streams. Life has continued to spill into the music along the way: Lupetin became a dad and nearly lost his wife to a harrowing medical incident - and the track “Be (For July)” and its emotional music video brought in new listeners from around the globe.

Long known for their knock-out festival performances which often spill off the stage into the crowd - recent notable appearances at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, Rhythm N Roots in Rhode Island, Waterfront Blues in Portland, The Cambridge Folk

Fest in England and Tonder Festival in Denmark highlight a few of their favorite stops - not to mention their state-department tour of China which prompted a funny mini documentary on Youtube.

In 2019 the group completed a successful run of performing art centers paying homage to their heroes in The Band (Robbie Robertson even sent a signed vinyl as a thank you) and in 2025 Dustbowl embarked on a new run of theaters and festivals showcasing the music of LA’s Laurel Canyon. A brassy Beatles cover of “Oh! Darling” came out featuring New Orleans keys hero Ivan Neville to preview a new record of originals slated for early 2026 - recorded in cabin studio in Wisconsin with noted engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens). A new concept show where Dustbowl plays the classic songs of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson is on the way too.

However you sip their sound, Dustbowl Revival has become a beloved fixture of the
Americana community - from playing tiny speakeasies and pubs around their southern California base, to headlining thousands of shows in ten countries and counting. Indeed, founder Z. Lupetin’s quixotic Craigslist ad hoping to find like-minded music-makers to play songs inspired equally by Wilco, Bob Dylan and Springsteen as Nina Simone, Fleetwood Mac and Bill Withers may seem confusing, but somehow it’s worked.

“Maybe we don’t know where this journey will take us or how long it will last,”
acknowledges Lupetin, “That’s my take on the importance of what we try to do. Music elevates us, lifts us up, makes us change our minds, takes us out of our comfort zones. If just one person can be moved by just one song, that’s enough.”

Virginia-based folk-rock band The Steel Wheels have spent almost twenty years writing, recording, and touring, all the while constantly honing their evolving brand of American roots music. Additionally they are the founders and hosts of the Red Wing Roots Music Festival, a beloved staple of the Shenandoah Valley. Through the years, The Steel Wheels have drawn on both traditional form and modern sounds to capture the beauty in all of life’s varied trials and triumphs. Their new album, Sideways, which releases on February 9, 2024 via Big Ring Records, is a meditation on resilience and survival. Trent Wagler, the band’s lead singer and primary songwriter, penned many of the songs in response to loss, and the uncertainty that comes with facing what we can’t control.

Sideways begins with “Wait On You,” bounding out of the gates with a fervor carried by The Steel Wheels’ signature close harmonies and propulsive mountain energy. Through a seemingly simple story of the naivety of youth, the belief that we can skate by without being prepared for misfortune and the unexpected, the album kicks off with a kind of emboldening invitation in the face of an unavoidable truth. The world doesn’t wait on us—it’s our responsibility to shore ourselves up, to show up, to be ready to be a part of it all.

This year hit like a hurricane.
The winds they knocked me over
…
All the books you read were just a wish,
If you don’t show up, then you’re finished

-from “Wait on You”

In 2019, The Steel Wheels were blindsided by the death of fiddle player and vocalist Eric Brubaker’s young daughter to a sudden illness. This incredible weight inspired some of the lines of “Easy on Your Way”, an almost hymn-like anthem that speaks to the desire to find something to say or give in the middle of heartache. But in spite of the weight at the heart of the song, it still rollicks with energy like a barn dance dirge—it’s a call to just be in your grief and pain while holding on to hope that we are in it all together.

I don’t have a song to sing,
There is no song to sing.
If words could do anything
I’d go and face the day.
…
Lift your voice when I am gone,
Lift your voice when I am gone.
If you ever have to sing this song,
Easy on your way.

-from “Easy on Your Way”

In addition to finding resolve in loss, many of the songs on Sideways heavily grapple with the experience of watching the suffering of those we love, but feeling unequipped and helpless to know what to do—or if there is even anything we can do. In the depths of a pandemic, mostly isolated and sequestered from the rest of the world, Wagler’s own child faced a serious mental health crisis and needed immediate treatment. Thankfully they were able to find a program to receive the help they needed. Still the complicated, unending journey of mental health, experienced from the inside and as a spectator, was at the front of mind as the songs for Sideways were written. 

“We all cast ourselves in the leading role of our story. I wrote the song ‘Hero’ in the midst of trying to help my child, and needing to be okay with it being their story. The refrain ‘I thought I was the hero’ is poking fun at myself for thinking I should or could fix anything. I had to take a backseat to listen and understand exactly what they were needing in that moment. Many of the songs on Sideways, including the title track, were a reflection of my own emotional confusion and processing.”

-Trent Wagler

What will I do without the mask on?
Can it be true and still a love song?
Does anybody want to sing with me?
…
Is it something I can locate?
Do I have enough to give away?
Is it even under our control?
Some feelings grow sideways.

-from “Sideways”

Sonically, Sideways encapsulates the band’s most ambitious outing to date. At their inception, The Steel Wheels played exclusively on acoustic instruments, around one mic, drawing inspiration from the mountain music and string band traditions of Virginia, where the band was formed. But 2017’s Wild As We Came Here represented an evolution in the band’s sound. It was then they first collaborated with producer Sam Kassirer (Lake Street Dive, Langhorne Slim, Josh Ritter), adding sonic textures and pushing the boundaries of what the band’s sound could be. This same chapter also saw the addition of Kevin Garcia (drums, percussion, and keys) to the band.

“We’re more than a string band, what we do has fundamentally changed from four guys around a mic. This was clearest to me when we were writing Sideways. I realized we were being influenced by so much other music—psychedelic rock, pop, jam, you name it—just overall paying attention to a broader palette of sound, not so focused on our own little world.”

-Trent Wagler

For the recording of Sideways in 2022, The Steel Wheels once again tapped Kassirer to help them bring the album to life. The band holed up together at the Great North Sound Society in Parsonsfield, ME, moving into the studio for a week, cooking their meals together around a woodstove in a farmhouse, and, most importantly, playing all together again—for the first time in over two years.  

The result is at-once a powerful, anthemic, at-times joyous, and contemplative reflection on our shared human experience—both tapping into the personal and reaching for something universal. And all throughout Sideways, we hear and see the image of resilience, resolve, and strength despite the trials. We are reminded that we are all still here… pushed and bent by the wind, yes, but still standing.

As Wagler says, “It’s beautiful and crushing to be alive sometimes. We aren’t here to sing songs that only cut one way—but if they do, they’ll cut sideways.”