Ian Stewart’s falsetto on “Lovesick Blues” drew particular notice during a June 2026 stop on the Riding High Tour — pulled from a 90-minute set that a reviewer characterized as running with “the precision you normally associate with a tight studio recording session.” This from a band more than five decades in, still on the road, still playing Western swing the way it was meant to be played. Asleep at the Wheel brings that set to the Paramount Theatre in Rutland on Saturday, October 17.
About the Show
The Riding High Tour supports Riding High In Texas, the band’s 32nd studio album and first new release since 2021’s anniversary project Half A Hundred Years. The 10-song record is a sustained love letter to the Texas their founder and bandleader Ray Benson has called home since the mid-1970s, when the ensemble (established in Paw Paw, West Virginia in 1970) settled in Austin and built a residency that now spans 50 years. “Austin was and has been everything I could have ever wished for and more,” Benson has said. The album includes guest appearances from Billy Strings and Lyle Lovett, moving through material from “T For Texas (Blue Yodel No. 1)” to George Strait’s “All My Exes (Live in Texas).”
Central to the current lineup is Ian Stewart, who grew up in Austin and now serves as co-lead vocalist and fiddler alongside Benson. Stewart has described the role as “an invaluable education working with a team that brings a fresh twist to the traditional music,” a phrase that captures something essential about what Asleep at the Wheel has always done. Over more than five decades, with 10 Grammy Awards and more than 100 musicians cycling through the ensemble, the band has kept the Western swing and honky-tonk tradition alive without freezing it in amber. Live sets on this tour draw on Bob Wills classics, Hank Williams material, and Willie Nelson compositions, performed by a current ensemble (Stewart on fiddle, Curtis Clogston on steel guitar, and a full horn section) that recent reviewers say plays at “a seriously high level” with no signs of slowing.
Venue & Logistics
The Paramount Theatre is a historic theater in Rutland, Vermont — at 838 seats, a room where the horns have somewhere to land and the fiddle can fill the air without straining. It sits in the north-country corridor, a natural fall stop for a touring band making its way through New England.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Buy tickets