Evan Felker

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Arts, Performing Arts, Music

5.0 • 596 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on Wheels Off, Rhett welcomes longtime friend, collaborator, and Turnpike Troubadours frontman Evan Felker. Evan joins Rhett from his ranch in Oklahoma for a candid conversation about the Troubadours’ resurgence, his creative process, and why stepping away from the road made the band even more popular. The two dig into songwriting—where ideas come from, the discipline it takes to finish them, and why sometimes the best songs start with a line overheard in passing. Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer Kirsten Cluthe. Editing by Matt Dwyer. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, The Milk Carton Kids, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.
0:04.9	I'm Rhett Miller.
0:06.5	That's when it got wheels off.
0:09.6	We started up and we ain't going to starve.
0:12.6	I like you.
0:13.6	I could not.
0:15.1	That's when they got wheels off.
0:19.3	Where to start?
0:21.1	Evan Felker is the lead singer of a band called Turnpike Tributors from Oklahoma.
0:25.7	He's one of my favorite people in the world.
0:28.4	I've co-written a lot of songs with him.
0:31.3	I've been lucky enough to share the stage with him many times.
0:36.2	He's kind of a big deal, which is so sweet.
0:41.0	It makes me so happy to see him and the troubadours do so well.
0:46.6	You know, I've seen them play in front of giant arenas, stadia.
0:51.9	The other day, I got an opportunity to go to Willie Nelson's Outlaw Country Festival in
0:58.2	Atlanta, and I saw Turnpike play second support right before Bob Dylan and then Willie. It was
1:05.0	pretty great. I kept laughing because Evan was up there playing harmonica in the same spot where
1:09.9	an hour later Bob Dylan would be playing harmonica, and an hour after that, Willie Nelson, would have his longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, standing next to him playing harmonica.
1:20.7	And I have no responsibility for his success, but it does make me so proud and happy to see Evan succeed
1:30.4	like he has. And I'm a giant fan. So it's really fun to get a chance to talk to him for
1:37.4	wheels off. It's especially fun considering that the week that this drops as an interview is the same week my record label
	...

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