Wheeler Brothers will perform at Ray Wylie Hubbard's Grit 'n Groove Festival on April 6, 2013 at Whitewater Amphitheater in New Braunfels, TX. Click here for more details.
Nolan, Tyler and Patrick Wheeler grew up just a few miles north of Austin in Round Rock, TX. They did not grow up in a home with musical parents, although their mother did play the cello before the boys were born, and their father would take them for regular trips to 7 Eleven for snacks and Slurpees while silently feeding them a healthy diet of "oldies" tunes on 103.5fm in Austin back in the 80's and 90's which at the time would have been KEYI "Oldies 103". Prior to operating as Oldies 103, the station was partially owned by Lyndon Johnson's family and was known as "Key 103" and played adult contemporary. Austin radio history is interesting, but lets get back to the Wheelers!
In 2010 while Travis and multi-instrumentalist A.J. Molyneaux were still in college, lead guitarist Danny was driving back and forth between his job in Houston and home in Austin, and Tyler and Patrick were still working construction with their father; they all began writing songs together regularly and ended up with enough songs to easily put together an entire album. They ended up forming the band, playing regular gigs in Austin. Nolan plays guitar, keys, glockenspiel, harp and lead vocals, Tyler plays bass and Patrick plays drums. They recorded and released their first album Portraits in 2011. They then hit the road and toured heavily, performing and promoting Portraits as much as they could.
After a year and a half on the road, the guys sat down one day in a hotel room in Wichita, KS and started working on some new songs. This laid the groundwork for what would eventually become the bands second full length album Gold Boots Glitter. Aside from the hotel in Wichita, the rest of the songs were written and/or finished in the studio. Austin singer/songwriter Drew Smith produced Gold Boots Glitter, and was a huge help by making the album become a single unit rather than a bunch of random thoughts shoved together. They highly recommend you check out Drew at a show! To stir up a little buzz about Gold Boots Glitter during SXSW, the guys picked up a pair of mismatched boots for a really good deal, painted them, glittered them and attached them together by a rope. The boots were left hanging on high lines in Austin and people were encouraged to find them and post pictures of them on Twitter. This worked pretty well, I saw quite a few of the responses.
Gold Boots Glitter's official release (buy now on iTunes) is today (April 2nd) and they are spending release day visiting Ray Wylie Hubbard as part of his weekly live radio show Roots and Branches of Americana on 92.1 KNBT FM New Braunfels (knbt.fm). Uncle Lucius is also a guest on the show with Wheelers and both bands are part of the Grit 'N' Groove bill for Saturday, April 6 at Whitewater Amphitheater in New Braunfels.
bonus content:
This is a music video from "Sleep When I'm Dead" which is included on Gold Boots Glitter. This video was shot on a mountain top in Tarpley, TX.
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