Asleep At The Wheel

If you play an Asleep at the Wheel song on Spotify via your smart TV the picture that fills the screen shows bandleader Ray Benson at the centre of a collage of nearly 50 musicians. These are the players who had already passed through the band from its formation in 1970 to the year when that image was put together.

Asleep at the Wheel, Joshua Hedley and Brennen Leigh Showcase Country's Past, Present and Future at The Dakota

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Granted, it did not look like Asleep at the Wheel was reaching a new audience. Most of the audience at City Winery looked like they had been following the band for all of its 50 years.

Faded Love, Route 66, Bob Wills Is Still The King, Take Me Back to Tulsa, Milk Cow Blues and Miles and Miles of Texas. Just the titles alone paint a vivid picture and tell fabulous stories.

Asleep at the Wheel keeps rolling; City Winery Boston, Boston, July 1, 2019

And the band -- well, leader Ray Benson, anyway -- provides one of the few visible direct links to the cosmic cowboy scene of '70s Austin.