Wheatland and The Gasoline Gypsies
Any story about The Gasoline Gypsies must include The Wheatland Music Festival. It begins with a three year old Caleb Malooley, riding his fathers shoulders at the festival, and that annual family retreat become the basis for his love of music. It would tell of a 16 year old Caleb, left out of that trip one year, for being perhaps a bit rebellious, and defiantly finding a way to Wheatland that year “on his own” with his music friends. It would talk about his high school friendship with Steve Briere, Caleb’s first “Wheatie,” and band mate in The Gasoline Gypsies today, and another yearly attendee ever since.
Local Spins Michigan Mondays 2019
As The Gasoline Gypsies shaped and formed over the past decade, Wheatland has not only been the essential yearly band pilgrimage, but through campsite jams the guys have become volunteers on the grounds through Ben and Marilyn Reese, pulled shifts at CACC with Connie Beauvais and Cam Harwell, and performed onstage at Winter Wheat at the invite of Marilyn Hummel, whom they’d met earlier, working grounds. Other Wheatland faithfuls, like Kurt Fiegel, have invited the band to play other festival projects as well.
“The history of The Gasoline Gypsies is inextricably entangled with Wheatland”
The Gasoline Gypsies have toured nationally, gaining regular rotation airplay in radio markets in Port Huron, Northern Michigan, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. Their multiple Detroit Music Awards include honors in the Americana category. The influence of Wheatland, the festival that Caleb proudly calls “the reason I play music,” can be heard in all of their work. The band’s range, wide because of that influence, can tailor shows that can rock the house or tune into those rootsy influences to thrill Americana and Bluegrass fans, as well. In a year end review, John Sinkevics of Michigan’s Local Spins, called their unplugged acoustic set at The Listening Room in Grand Rapids “one of his 15 best musical experiences” of that year.
The history of The Gasoline Gypsies is inextricably entangled with Wheatland, and their musical work ethic is a direct nod to the efforts of the amazing folks who make Wheatland happen. Being chosen to stand on the Wheatland stage, would be a Gasoline Gypsy dream come true.