Asleep at the Wheel logging miles at the Quick Center for the Arts March 5 | Press Releases

The famed nine-time Grammy® Award-winning western-swing, boogie and roots-music outfit, Asleep at the Wheel, has been rolling down the road for 40 years and it screeches to a halt at Fairfield University's Quick Center for the Arts on Saturday, March 5 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $40, $35. Asleep at the Wheel is an Arts & Minds presentation.

The Wheel, as the group is sometimes known, has 25 plus albums to its credit and as front man Ray Benson says, they continue to play an unrelenting schedule of one-nighters that would "make a vaudevillian dizzy." The band has grown and changed over the years and they recently welcomed new vocalist Elizabeth McQueen, who invites comparison with the classic female vocalists of the band's earlier era and fiddler-singer Jason Roberts who gives the band a second male lead voice to complement Benson's immediately identifiable baritone.

The Wheel's new look is also spotlighted in several new discs - the first called, appropriately enough, "Reinventing the Wheel." The 12-cut celebration of American - particularly Southwestern - music features guest appearances by gospel's Blind Boys of Alabama and banjoist Rolf Sleker, along with lead vocals by McQueen and Roberts as well as Benson, whose voice has been synonymous with Asleep at the Wheel for decades.

According to Benson, he started the Wheel 41 years ago and, while the personnel has come and gone, "the focus hasn't changed from the 70s." The band's original concept was "as a revue kind of deal," and with McQueen in the driver's seat as vocalist and Roberts on fiddle and rounding out the voices, David Sanger (drums), David Miller (bass), Dan Walton (piano) and Eddie Rivers (steel guitar), this hot band keeps its genre-busting musical standards high and continues to please the crowds.

Tickets are available at fairfield.edu/quick or by calling the Box Office at (203) 254-4010. The toll free number is 1-877-ARTS-396. Special offers and discounts are available through the Quick Center's e-mail list. Join, by contacting boxoffice@quickcenter.com . Become a fan of the Quick Center for the Arts on Facebook and keep up-to-date with the latest performance news, plus special offers and discounts. Find the Quick Center at www.facebook.com/FairfieldQuickCenter.

Directions: Fairfield University is located off I-95, exit 22 at 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824. Access to the Quick Center for the Arts is through the Barlow Road gate at 200 Barlow Road. Special note: From Oct. 4, 2010 through June 30, 2012, the southern end of North Benson Road (Rt. 135) will be closed to traffic on nights and weekends. Round Hill Road intersects with Barlow and provides access to the Quick Center for the Arts.