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Monday, July 13, 2009

Asleep at the Wheel to Receive AMA Award

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Asleep at the Wheel

July 13, 2009 — Legendary western swing band Asleep at the Wheel will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance at the 8th Annual Americana Honors & Awards ceremony, presented by the Gibson Foundation, on September 17 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
"I can't think of a more deserving outfit for this award," says Willie Nelson, himself a past award recipient of the AMA's Lifetime Achievement for Songwriting. The band's recent collaboration with Willie, Willie and the Wheel, has garnered critical acclaim and is a fixture on the Americana charts since its release earlier this year.
Click here to watch "Hesitation Blues," the new video from Willie & Asleep at the Wheel.
"Our Ray Benson will leave a mark," adds Willie. "He's been a lot of places, done a lot of things and recorded it all."
Since 1969, the Austin-based band has released over twenty-five albums, charting more than twent y Billboard singles and winning nine Grammy Awards along the way. Led by founder Ray Benson, Asleep at the Wheel is an institution: an ever-shifting lineup (over 80 members to date) of like-minded musicians united under Ray's unwavering crusade to keep alive the sound of western swing. Some of the members have gone on to perform and record with artists such as Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Van Morrison, Ryan Adams and others.
Like their musical touchstone Bob Wills, The Wheel has enthusiastically preserved and brought Western swing to the masses throughout the years touring with everyone from Hot Tuna and Alice Cooper to Emmylou Harris and George Strait.

They've been a fixture on PBS's seminal series Austin City Limits as well as appeared in movies--1978's Roadie, and 1991's Wild Texas Wind. Most recently they starred in the award-winning first-ever musical drama about Bob Wills, A Ride with Bob: The Bob Wills Musical, co-written by Ray Benson.

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