The Steel Wheels

Name: The Steel Wheels
Start: 2026-04-25T20:00:00-04:00
Location: 600 14th Street NW Washington DC 20005

Schedule

Sat, 25 Apr, 2026 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

600 14th Street NW Washington DC 20005 | Washington, DC

DOORS OPEN AT 6:30 PM | SHOW BEGINS AT 8:00 PM
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THE STEEL WHEELS
20 years is a long time to spend doing anything at all. It’s an age for any group of people to sustain a collective effort. For a band on the road, 20 years can be more than a lifetime. Yet, after 2 decades of making music together in living rooms, listening rooms, clubs, theaters, and festival stages, The Steel Wheels are still growing, still pushing, still at it, and they’re marking the occasion with the release of their 9th studio album, “The Steel Wheels”.

Following the release of “Sideways” in 2024, their 3rd record with producer Sam Kassirer at his Great North Sound Society studio in interior Maine, the band felt it was time for a change of scene. As the group began to select songs for a new album, they also had to find an answer to the question of where they would get down to the work of record-making. They didn’t know that answer was going to knock on their back door.

At the band’s 2024 Red Wing Roots festival, held each summer near the group’s home base of Harrisonburg, VA, banjo player and songwriter Trent Wagler spied producer and engineer D. James Goodwin (Goose, Bonny Light Horseman, I’m With Her) in the crowd and later reached out to learn what he was doing so far from his home turf of New York. It happened that Goodwin, who mixed the band’s 2019 album “Over The Trees”, had just pulled up stakes for the Shenandoah Valley and was setting up a new studio on the band’s doorstep. Several months and one video call later, Wagler, fiddler Eric Brubaker, multi-instrumentalist Jay Lapp, drummer/percussionist Kevin Garcia, and bass player Jeremy Darrow gathered in the new space, The Isokon, snug against the snowy Virginia winter, to begin recording their next album.

The process that Goodwin cultivated was fluid and swift. Demo listening in the morning flowed into tracking the whole band live in one room. The session was punctuated by peals of laughter and occasional tears as the group kept themselves in the moment, leaning in to every emotion and embracing that vulnerability. As they worked, the music took shape in the moment, right in front of the microphones, each participant listening and responding as the songs flickered to life. By dinner time the songs of the day were complete and talk moved to the next day’s work.
The album that resulted from this process captures the multifaceted band in full-flight, pivoting effortlessly between the folk rock band they’ve grown into over 20 years, and the harmony-centric acoustic ensemble that they’ve been since the beginning.The band puts their impressive range on display throughout “The Steel Wheels”; energy, insight, and humor, balance with tender, highly personal moments of masterful restraint and expression as the album unfolds. As ever, the band challenges themselves to find new ways through the music, using space and, at moments, reinventing their approach to the string band format.
As usual, Wagler’s keen lyrics provide insight by posing big questions. At first blush “Easy” sounds like the song of the summer, but a deeper listen asks the audience to consider whether it’s worth the cost to have the world waiting for us on the other side of our screens. “Everything is easy”, but is it really?
Beyond our glowing devices “Go Back” studies the complexity of our relationships and the time we spend with those close to us. It’s easy to say that we must take the bad with the good, it’s a challenge to seek to understand how our joy and sadness are entwined; that they are not opposing feelings, but sibling emotions.
“Keep On Dancing” offers the listener a greater challenge; to take a step back from distraction and our self-imposed tasks, to look beyond the static of the day, and to see the beauty all around us. The song gently implores us to take a breath and be still so that we can glimpse the things that are actually important.
The Steel Wheels have kept their stride for longer than most bands survive. After 20 years hard at work “The Steel Wheels” is an album of creative maturity with a restless sense of adventure. Here’s to 20 more.

MAYA DE VITRY
Originally from Lancaster, PA, Maya de Vitry is a Nashville-based artist whose music blurs the lines of folk, indie rock, and Americana. An admirer of the dedicated song craft of writers like John Prine, Gillian Welch, and Townes Van Zandt — and of the stirring vocals of artists like Bonnie Raitt and Nina Simone — Maya de Vitry’s music invites listeners into a space of openness and connection.

After a formative chapter with the roots-Americana trio The Stray Birds, she launched her solo career with the 2019 album Adaptations, earning praise from Rolling Stone Country, NPR Music, and No Depression. Since then, she has built a devoted following, drawn to both her recordings and her powerful live performances. Known for her magnetic voice and hard-won sense of purpose, Maya has toured in North America and Europe, supporting artists like The Wood Brothers, Aoife O’Donovan, John Craigie, and Mighty Poplar. Her songs have also appeared on albums by Molly Tuttle, Lindsay Lou, and Steve Poltz, and her skills as a multi-instrumentalist and harmony singer have contributed to many Nashville recordings.
Her fourth full-length release in just six years, The Only Moment, is a 10-track testament to personal reinvention and creative growth. “I’m not just making different music now. It feels like I’m breathing in a different atmosphere,” she reflects on her evolution from The Stray Birdsto her solo journey. Her sense of liberation is especially apparent in her live shows, which have become a space for spontaneity, peace, and freedom, often woven together with personal stories that connect the songs. “After the show, I just want to know if I’ve helped you feel more free,” Maya says. “That’s my unspoken agreement—to myself, my bandmates, and everyone in the audience.”

Despite a seemingly relentless creative pace, the recording of The Only Moment—produced by Maya and mixed by Grammy-winning engineer Justin Francis (Madison Cunningham)—was deliberate and unhurried. “It was like making a long-exposure photograph, but with music,” Maya explains, having allowed the songs to breathe over the course of nearly three years. “I shelved this record for months at a time, and each time I came back to it, I heard new possibilities. In today’s music industry, there’s pressure to share everything, to turn our process into ‘content.’ But I treasured keeping this record to myself and letting the songs simmer.”

For any wheelchair or ADA needs, please contact the Box Office in advance of the performance at (202)-787-1000 [tel:(202)-787-1000].
All tickets are general admission (GA). Seats cannot be reserved in advance. We recommend that you arrive early to secure your favorite seats within your section. You may hold one (1) seat for a friend arriving later. Every guest requires a ticket.