Elizabeth McQueen is a trooper. After two weeks on the road and dearly in need of sleep, the Asleep at the Wheel vocalist spent some time on the phone with me last night just catching up.

McQueen’s last release was the fab Happy Doing What They’re Doing, released in 2005, and she hasn’t had any solo gigs around town in a quite awhile. About eight months ago, she and her husband, Wheel drummer David Sanger, had their first child, a daughter Lisel. Six weeks later, she was back on the road with the band and a baby on board.

“We drive separately from the band,” McQueen explains. “We have our own little bus that we call the baby bus and we drive. Before we’d just show up and get on the bus and go. She’s great, very laid back, and she travels really well. We didn’t know if our experiment with having a baby out on the road was going to work at all, but it’s really worked out better than we expected it would. The coolest thing is that we have the best of both worlds; we get to play music and be out on the road, which we love. It’s really vital to our souls. But we also get to be together with our family. Both Dave and I get to watch our baby grow up. We get itchy if we stay in one place for too long. I don’t think it would be easier for us to stay at home.”

So, understandably, her solo work has been on hold for a while, but that might change sometime soon. “When I was pregnant, I did some recording,” she relates. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that stuff. After the baby came, between the Asleep at the Wheel schedule and her I had no desire to play any other gigs. But now, she’s getting a little bigger and I’m feeling the need to start working on something. The next step is to start writing and trying to get a record together. It’ll probably be more jazz- and swing-oriented rather than [her band] Firebrands-oriented. I will be doing things on my own again in the near future. I feel that pull again.”

Catch Asleep at the Wheel Friday, Sept. 11, at Tim’s Porch at the Backyard.

This article appears in September 4 • 2009.

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