The Steel Woods

Shifting between swampy bar-room blues jams, lonesome country soul ballads and raw, grizzly riffs, Nashville's The Steel Woods proudly deal in glorious 1970s Southern nostalgia, while kicking outlaw, country swagger into a new era and seeking to restore pride in twanging Americana. Front man Wes Bayliss grew up in Roanoke, North Alabama and started out playing harmonica and touring with his family's gospel group when he was just nine-years-old, before later cutting his teeth as a solo artist in Mobile and heading to Nashville in 2014. His Appalachian songwriting partner Jason 'Rowdy' Cope had also worked as a session guitarist in Los Angeles before joining Jamey Johnson's band in 2007, and the pair first met after a show in Nashville and bonded over a mutual love of fishing. Together they created debut album 'Straw in the Wind' in 2017 with Jay Tooke on drums and Johnny Stanton and described their sound as a cross between AC/DC and Waylon Jennings before heading out on support tours with Dwight Yoakam, Blackberry Smoke and Miranda Lambert. On the title track of second album 'Old News' in 2019 they addressed the fraught political environment and called for people to stop pointing fingers at each other and for America to unite, before stomping out scorching cover versions of Black Sabbath's 'Changes', Townes Van Zandt's 'The Catfish Song' and Tom Petty's 'Southern Accents'.

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