{"id":33763,"date":"2017-06-14T14:18:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T18:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=33763"},"modified":"2017-10-17T08:40:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T12:40:56","slug":"emus-steel-wheels-headline-centennial-festivities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2017\/emus-steel-wheels-headline-centennial-festivities\/","title":{"rendered":"The Steel Wheels &#8212; with deep EMU roots &#8212; to headline Centennial festivities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesteelwheels.com\/\">Steel Wheels<\/a>, the nationally recognized\u00a0Shenandoah Valley-based roots music band consisting of Eastern Mennonite University alumni <strong>Trent Wagler \u201902<\/strong>, <strong>Eric Brubaker \u201901<\/strong>, and <strong>Brian Dickel \u201998<\/strong>, as well as bandmate Jay Lapp, will join to headline the\u00a0celebration of the university&#8217;s centennial at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/centennial\">Homecoming and Family Weekend<\/a> this October.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, Oct. 14, at 4 p.m., the band will play a concert of its bluegrass- and folk-infused repertoire on the front lawn of the Harrisonburg campus.<\/p>\n<p>The concert is the premier event scheduled during the afternoon Fall Festival on the front lawn, which also includes the Li\u2019l Royals Zone, with kids\u2019 games and inflatables, food trucks, and plenty of lawn space to set out blankets and lawn chairs.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"highlight highlight-right\">Learn more about EMU&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/centennial\">Centennial celebration<\/a>.<\/aside>\n<p>Tickets are required to enter the concert venue. Adult admission is $15 in advance, or $20 on-site. Students are admitted for $5 with an EMU identification card. Concert-goers ages 12 and under are admitted free.<\/p>\n<p>Tickets may be ordered through the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/box-office\/\">EMU Box Office<\/a> in the Campus Center starting Aug. 1. For more information, call 540-432-4582 or visit the box office Monday-Friday, 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., starting Sept. 1.<\/p>\n<h3>Cross-cultural leaves indelible mark<\/h3>\n<p>The Steel Wheels are currently on a 40-city tour, following the May release of their new album <em>Wild As We Came Here<\/em>. The album has been warmly praised, with one reviewer describing it as \u201cten singularly brilliant songs that form a cohesive document of life in western Virginia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Interviewed from the road, Wagler, the band\u2019s lead singer and writer of most of its material, says his EMU education had enormous importance in his development as a performing artist, and specifically as a songwriter.<\/p>\n<p>Referring to the university&#8217;s program of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/crosscultural\/\">cross-cultural study<\/a>, a staple of its core curriculum for more than 30 years, Wagler said, \u201cit had a huge impact on me, and is one of the biggest things I point to when I try to explain what&#8217;s distinctive about EMU.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said the universality of the cross-cultural experience is key to understanding its significance for EMU undergraduates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone on campus is either preparing for, or coming back from, an experience like that,\u201d Wagler said.<\/p>\n<p>In his own case, fulfillment of this requirement took the form of a year-long internship at a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip dividing Egypt and Israel. It was arranged through the Mennonite Central Committee\u2019s Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program.<\/p>\n<p>While overseas, Wagler gave guitar lessons to a young Palestinian, who in return showed him how to play a traditional stringed instrument of the Middle East called an \u201coud.\u201d In the process, Wagler discovered a strong affinity for the region&#8217;s folk music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI couldn&#8217;t read the billboards or speak the language that well, so what I was listening to wasn\u2019t filtered through what was popular or what other people were listening to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>These experiences led Wagler, once he returned to Virginia, to begin exploring his own musical heritage \u2013 including Appalachian music and the music of the great singer-songwriters of the \u1fbd70s and \u1fbd80s \u2013 and to begin seriously mining the rich vein of Americana to which he has devoted himself since then.<\/p>\n<h3>Artistic influences found in theater and music professors<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/h3>\n<p>Wagler, who pursued a double major in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/theater\/\">theater<\/a> and peace, justice, and conflict studies (now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/peacebuilding\/\">peacebuilding and development<\/a>) at EMU, listed former theater professors Barbra Graber and Ingrid De Sanctis among his other important influences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBarb urged her students to see that everyone has the potential to be an artist,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Ingrid was the first to encourage me to take my art seriously \u2013 to treat it as a discipline, and really work at it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wagler cited De Sanctis\u2019s play <em>Torba<\/em>, based on the stories of refugees from the civil war that raged in the Balkans during the 1990s, as an early source of inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTelling real and honest stories, and trying to put drama and art around that, was something that really clicked for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Another EMU professor who made a deep impression was Ken Nafziger, who r<a href=\"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2017\/05\/singing-ken-j-nafziger-faculty-former-students-gather-retirement-send-off\/\">ecently retired<\/a> after 39 years on the music faculty. Wagler and Steel Wheels bandmate Eric Brubaker both sang under Nafziger as members of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emu.edu\/music\/ensemble\/\">Chamber Singers<\/a>, a select student choir.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe didn&#8217;t limit himself or his choirs to only learning and singing music from one particular place,\u201d said Wagler. \u201cHe really pushed us to leave behind our familiar environment and comfortable habits, and that definitely had an influence on me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to their Oct. 14 appearance at the EMU Fall Festival, Wagler and The Steel Wheels will also be back in the Valley July 14-16 to host the fifth annual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redwingroots.com\/\">Red Wing Roots Music Festival<\/a>. The popular three-day event is staged at Natural Chimneys Park, located about 20 miles south of EMU in Mount Solon. EMU is among the event sponsors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Steel Wheels, the nationally recognized\u00a0Shenandoah Valley-based roots music band consisting of Eastern Mennonite University alumni Trent Wagler \u201902, Eric Brubaker \u201901, and Brian Dickel \u201998, as well as bandmate <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2017\/emus-steel-wheels-headline-centennial-festivities\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about The Steel Wheels &#8212; with deep EMU roots &#8212; to headline Centennial festivities<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,7931,17562,8845,60,5183,14145,5147],"tags":[11321],"feature":[17427,17426,17241],"class_list":["post-33763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-arts","category-digest","category-emu-at-lancaster","category-homecoming","category-music","category-peacebuilding-and-development","category-theater","tag-events","feature-emu-home-page-feature","feature-myemu-feature","feature-news-feature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - 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