By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Chloe Wagenhauser grew up in a family that loved music.
Her parents and identical twin sister, Anna, loved classic pop and show tunes.
“Sound of Music” was a part of the soundtrack of her childhood. The family even watched reruns of “The Lawrence Welk Show.”
Young Chloe absorbed this. Then as a teen she discovered the album “Buckingham Nicks,” made before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac. “I listened to it non-stop for six months,” she said. She loved Joan Baez and Neil Young as well.
“I missed the boat,” the 26-year-old said. Wagenhauser would have loved to be the age she is now in the 1960s, the heyday of the “folk troubadour.”
Her version of that sound takes wing in Chloe and the Steel Strings.
The band in its four-piece format will perform Sunday, Dec. 17, at 6 p.m. at Grounds for Thought as part of the monthly series of free concerts, hosted by the coffeehouse and BG Independent News.
The band meshes the singer-songwriter sound with a full band, or as if “Joni Mitchell had a baby with the Flying Burrito Brothers.” Chloe and the Steel Strings features Wagenhauser on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Connor Ward, bass, Pete Rodriguez, lead acoustic guitar, and her identical twin sister, Anna Garrison, on harmony vocals and keyboards.
When Wagenhauser started songwriting, she said, “I was not considering pursuing music.” It was catharsis. She began playing at open mics at the Brew Coffeehouse near the University of Toledo campus in 2016. Ward was also on the scene. He heard her songs and told her she should find a studio and make a recording.
They worked together and produced her solo album in 2017. She wasn’t sure on a title then a friend suggested Chloe and the Steel Strings. It was good for the album, and worked as well as she and Ward developed a band around their original songs.
They are still, Wagenhauser said, the “foundational songwriters.”
With more musicians – the band sometimes performs as a sextet – the style evolved from being focused on her songs to a band concept. “From my perspective that would mean that we’ve had to create more space for more other musicians, other instruments, to live in the songs. … We started to blossom into more of Americana folk band.”
The songs now are developed from lyrical and instrumental concepts that Wagenhauser and Ward bring to the band. Those are the spark that brings out contributions of the other members to flesh out the completed song.
Chloe and the Steel Strings also engage in some country- and roots music-based jamming and play the occasional cover. These are mostly folk songs “that are important to us, that we have a special connection to,” Wagenhauser said.
The band took a a few years to follow up its namesake album, issuing “Burn Bright” in 2022.
The band is no stranger to Bowling Green. They’ve played the Music at the Museum series and at Firefly Nights. Wagenhauser said playing Grounds as a quartet is a comfortable setting, akin to the venues the band got its footing playing.
The band also loves playing at Howard’s as a six-piece, with another guitar and a drummer. “It’s sort of the last of a dying breed place, a cool dive bar that’s focused on live music.” And one that can accommodate the larger Chloe and the Steel Strings. Finding a venue for the six-piece unit has been a bit of a struggle. But Wagenhauser said that’s the direction in which Chloe and the Steel Strings is evolving.
