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The SteelDrivers Hit the City Winery in New York City

By: Feb. 26, 2020
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The SteelDrivers Hit the City Winery in New York City  Image

GRAMMY® award-winning band, The SteelDrivers will perform at the City Winery in New York City on Friday, April 17, 2020 as part of their Bad For You U.S. tour. The band will bring their unique bluegrass sound to fans around the country following the release of their fifth studio album, Bad For You.

The City Winery is located at 155 Varick Street, New York, NY. 10013. Ticket prices are: Stage Premier $45.00; Balcony Premier $42.00; Premier $40.00; Orchestra $38.00; High Top $35.00 plus applicable fees and taxes. Doors open at 9:15 p.m. and the show starts at 10:15 p.m. Tickets are available at www.citywinery.com/newyork

Bad For You, is the follow-up to their GRAMMY®-winning 2015 release The Muscle Shoals Recordings. The eagerly awaited album features eleven new songs, ten of which were co-written by Tammy Rogers, whose spirited and soulful voice and fiddle playing have been a hallmark of the band's hard-driving sound throughout its existence. It also marks the band's debut recording with lead singer Kelvin Damrell, who joined the band in early 2018.

Bad For You arrives after a period of triumph and adaptation. Shortly after their GRAMMY® win in 2016, guitarist and lead singer Gary Nichols decided to go his own way. The band momentarily hit pause while they considered their options, but ultimately decided this setback was not insurmountable, and they launched the search for a lead singer. In a stroke of remarkable good fortune, Rogers' daughter came across Damrell - a rock singer from Berea, Kentucky - on YouTube, and soon, he joined Rogers and longtime bandmates and friends Richard Bailey (banjo), Mike Fleming (bass) and Brent Truitt (mandolin) as the newest member of the group.

"I was pretty fresh to bluegrass," Damrell says. "The only bluegrass I'd heard was couch pickin' at my grandparents' house, and I wasn't into it, to be completely honest. I was a rocker. Cinderella was my favorite band before I met these guys." But that kind of angular perspective was more in tune with The Steeldrivers than he could have known, and his initiation into bluegrass infused a convert's zeal into his performances. "Everybody in the band was virtuosos," he says. "And I'd never seen that side of bluegrass. I thought it was just that old foot-stomping traditional stuff, so I was surprised to hear this. And I knew I had a lot of work to do to keep up."

That a quintet could sound so consistent over time, while adding new repertoire and even new lead singers, is a testament to the SteelDrivers' mettle and resilience. As Rogers says with a shrug, "We all still love the music and wanted to continue, so what else were we to do but keep SteelDrivin'?"

Few bands are as aptly named as the SteelDrivers: steel is known for its remarkable strength, but also for its resilience, and the same is certainly true of the SteelDrivers, as they have proven time and again.

"Our dedication and determination remain intact," says Rogers. "I liken us to what the Rolling Stones would sound like if they played banjos, fiddles, and mandolins - it's that rock-n-roll edge played on traditional instruments and our shows continue to reflect that high-level energy and fun."



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