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Concert starts at 7:30pm - 1:00am
Country rockin’ music mixed with a little bit of country swing and outlaw country with a whole lot of attitude! Hang on for the ride!!!Rising from the smoldering cinders of TMD comes The Hell Country Truckers with a bold new approach to the twin cities and upper midwest regions country, and country rock scene. Comprised of seasoned professional musicians each with their own musical accomplishments this band of brothers is set to take each audience on a musical adventure that will burn you if you get to close! Careful kids.
On November 28, a Wanamingo band took first place in the Treasure Island Resort & Casino’s Battle of the Bands contest. Impressive, yes, but wait till you hear this. That band, "Lost Highway", has been together for less than a year and only played their first show on the 4th of July!
Lost Highway has traveled a long way in a short time. The band, born of local musicians, plays high voltage country music fused with rock. Jesse Steberg is the front man with the microphone. Tommy Weigel is the man behind the drum set who occasionally harmonizes. Matt Schwake plays rhythm guitar and also offers vocals. Willy Weigel brings his skills on lead guitar. Josh Roberts duals on the keyboard and acoustic guitar. Mike "Skip" Helms, originally from Kansas City, plays bass guitar for Lost Highway. The fact that these musicians are all from the area is a key to their quick rise. Steberg explained, "It’s not very often that you can get four, five or six guys together from the same community and have this type of outcome this quickly."
The Battle and the glory
The contest started with twenty-eight groups. Online voting advanced six of these to play Battle of the Bands. Judges for the November 28 contest were radio jockey’s Terri Traen and Zep from the KQ Morning Show, Adam West from K102 and Weazel from 93X. The bands performed on the main event stage and were evaluated based on their musical ability, stage presence, technical ability, audience reaction and professionalism. Lost Highway won that battle to take home the $2,000 grand prize. To make the victory even sweeter, Lost Highway was voted Fan Favorite at the contest, which resulted in an extra $500. Not a shabby accomplishment for a band that has only played nine shows!
The show was an amazing opportunity for Lost Highway. Playing on a stage with state-of-the-art lights and audio was unforgettable. "It was really, really neat, a great experience, one of the best stages a band can play on," Steberg explained. Being in the event also drew a great deal of media attention to the band.
Pulling the band together
Brothers Willy and Tommy Weigal are no strangers to the stage. The Wanamingo siblings are also in the progressive metal band, Your Memorial, with Helms. So how do metal musicians make their way to a country band? Simple — a love for music. Lost Highway offered a chance to play with other local talent.
During the 2008 Kenyon Rose Fest, Steberg saw Tommy drum for a Johnny Holm show. Steberg knew Tommy was in a metal band and asked if he was interested in working with another group. Later that year, Tommy assisted Steberg at a Trinity Lutheran Church Christmas concert by playing guitar. Meanwhile, Schwake had taken up the guitar, and when Steberg found out, invited him and Tommy over to jam. That session must have gone well — Tommy then went home and, using his persuasive skills, convinced brother Willy and Helms to join this country band. In the past, the Weigels had also played in a band, From the Dust, with Roberts and they invited him to join the new group. With the musicians in place the band began practicing in April 2009. They were asked to play for July 4th in Wanamingo and needed a band name. Schwake thought of the old Hank Williams song Lost Highway and the idea stuck.
As for band goals Steberg said, "It’s a lot of fun but we’d like to be the best cover band we can be, as well as the most entertaining show." For now the group is serious about fine tuning their sound and vamping up their stage presence. But in the future Lost Highway would like to break into original song writing.
Creating a following
Lost Highway has a Facebook page with over 1400 fans. There you can see upcoming events, view a demo of their recorded shows and follow their activity. The band has a decent amount of regulars who follow them to shows — and that number is quickly growing! In fact, shirts will soon be available. The band is thankful to all the fans who voted them into the battle and who have supported them during their shows. "It makes it a lot easier to put in the extra effort when you know you’ve got a good fan following," Steberg shared. "You don’t want to disappoint [them]."
Info on Buddy Ownes coming soon... thank you for your interest!
Whether you choose to use the word as a noun or a verb, Justin McBride is best described as a quintessential American cowboy. In fact, the 30 year old is a fifth generation cowboy who represents the iconic imagery both personally and professionally.
In the traditional sense, just like his dad and grandpa, as well as another two generations of McBride´s before them, he lives on a working ranch in southwest Oklahoma with his wife and two children. Professionally speaking, McBride is a modern-day hero having won two World Championships as one of the most recognizable bull riders, and when he retired from the PBR after 11 years, he had laid claim to nearly every record in the organization´s history.
Of late, McBride has chronicled the only way of life he’s ever known as a singer, songwriter of tried-and-true cowboy music. Long before he climbed on the back of a bull he grew up in Nebraska listening to Hank Sr., and before he was even a teenager he discovered the music of Chris LeDoux. Just as he once followed the lead of heroes like Jim Sharp and Clint Branger, he´s now following in the footsteps of his earliest musical influences.
"I think what I really like about it was a lot of that stuff I grew up listening to you could see yourself in that predicament," McBride said. "It was really simple, direct, straightforward music and I still love that kind of stuff." Growing up being a cowboy wasn´t always fashionable and likewise McBride´s choice of music was never dictated by what was at the top of the charts. "A lot of the places I lived you didn´t listen to the radio, ever, because you didn´t get it," he explained. "You listened to whatever cassette tapes your parents had laying around or whatever anybody gave you."
Truth be told, his introduction to music were the country western cassette tapes his dad played while the McBride´s drove from one youth rodeo to another in an old family pickup truck, but it was a mix tape given to him by an old horse trader that, all these years later, would shape the foundation of his own storytelling. "Those were songs that you´ll never ever hear again," recalled McBride, of the tape he´s long since lost, "so when I started learning how to play it was really that type of music that I started trying to play."
To know those songs – Bluebell Bull and Permanent Address among them – is to have heard the style of material that is featured on McBride´s live album, which follows up his debut release Don´t Let Go. McBride joins a list of heralded crooners from Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard to Deryl Dodd and Jason Boland in recording a live honky tonk album at Billy Bob´s in Forth Worth, Texas. McBride recorded the album July 2 with songsmith Clint Ingersoll (LeDoux) producing in conjunction with Bob Wright. The album and its accompanying DVD feature Don´t Let Go and Beer Drinkin´ Songs from his first album as well as A Cowboy on the Radio and a cover of the LeDoux classic Cadillac Cowboy.
"I had some of his tapes when I was pretty small and a lot of them weren´t the most trendy kind of country music," said McBride, "but if you were a kid wanting to be a cowboy, bull rider or a rodeo star one day, boy, they were right down your alley." While music played an important part in McBride´s life it wasn´t until his rookie year in the PBR that he first picked up an acoustic guitar. At the time he had no aspirations to perform live, but eventually he was sitting around with fellow bull riders, the likes of which included Ty Murray, J.W. Hart and Ross Coleman, picking tunes and drinking beer as a means of distancing himself from the intensity of his first chosen profession.
"I just felt like hanging out with your buddies every cowboy ought to be able to sit around a campfire and at least halfway beat through something," McBride said. "It was fun then because they weren´t real picky. They just wanted a reason to be able to sing along." By the time McBride met Tracy Byrd (Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo), he had won his first world title and the country singer invited him to sit in and jam with him one evening, which led to his meeting songwriter Wynn Varble (Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley). The two became fast-friends and just as quickly began writing together.
After some resistance, he was eventually coaxed into cutting a couple tracks, which turned into an album´s worth of material and in the year preceding his second world title he released Don´t Let Go. After winning his second gold in November of 2007 he contemplated retirement, but in need of surgery he decided to wait until sitting out eight months before making any decisions. During that time, he put together a band and took to the road playing for crowds that had already cheered the cowboy on for more than a decade. "Then I came back and, hell, I hadn´t missed it any," said McBride, of his return to bull riding which was closely followed by the announcement that he would retire at the end of the 2008 season.
Coincidentally, it was then that he began focusing on a career in music. "I would have rather been going to play a show than going to a bull riding. "I was fortunate enough to have a career riding bulls. That´s a lot of your same audience and so I could go out and book places that other people might not be able to yet." Upon his retirement, McBride focused his attention on music the same as he once had on bull riding by going out and "getting after it." Whether it was a honky tonk filled with the odor of stale beer and day old cigarettes or in conjunction with the lifelong familiarity of a PBR event, McBride went out and played one show after another.
Within a year of focusing solely on his music career, he sang a pair of songs on the stage of the famed Grand Ole Opry, and six months later he performed in front of more than 46,000 fans at Cowboys Stadium during the intermission of the Iron Cowboy Invitational. It was there that Billy Minick, owner of Billy Bob´s Texas, first saw him perform. Within two months of that show McBride had come to an agreement with Minick and Randy Smith (Smith Music Group) for the recording of Justin McBride Live at Billy Bob´s Texas – a live recording of true-to-life cowboy songs, by a real cowboy on a stage made famous by cowboys.
"It´s a tough transition because people know you as one thing and that´s what they want to see you do," he surmised, "but I´m lucky enough that being a cowboy who rode bulls that I don´t have to change any of that. I get to stay the exact same as when I was riding and get to sing about that kind of a lifestyle."
In the late 1980s, former world champion bareback rider, turned country singer, Chris LeDoux, was preparing to throw everything into a music career, which had long played a distant second to his love of rodeo, and those bareback horses. His search for a full time touring band that could help to create his new musical vision, produced a unique group of talented musicians, which he named WESTERN UNDERGROUND.
Over the next 16 years they became the sound, and the drive, behind Chris's famed rodeo rock and roll, and they remained with him until his death in March 2005. After countless conversations, e-mails, and phone calls from fans across the country, the band decided to put together a show that would carry on the musical spirit of their mentor, and friend, and honor a great American icon. The members of WESTERN UNDERGROUND are Ned Ledoux, and KW Turnbow on drums, Bobby Jensen, keyboards, Mark Sissel, guitar, and Lyle (Pops) Evans on bass. There is one new addition to the band. Dustin Evans joins WESTERN UNDERGROUND to cover the majority of vocals. A long time friend, and frequent opening act for Chris, and the band, Dustin brings his own energy into the mix, and adds some great songs also.
The show is full of the energetic music of Chris LeDoux, and new music from WESTERN UNDERGROUND. "After sixteen years, the loyal fans have become like family", said Sissel, "And we felt like we should be out there with our family. Chris always said that the band should try and become independent so that when he retired we could go on. Now we want to carry the flag, and uphold the values that Chris so unassumingly represented, while developing our own identity. There were so many good times, and so much great music, running down the road with Chris. Now, as Dustin Evans sings in one of his own songs, it’s time to look to, "The Good ol’ Days to Come".