Grammy Award-winning band performing Thursday

Asleep at the Wheel will be rolling into Fairfield with its unique blend of Western swing, boogie and folk for a performance at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts.

Asleep at the Wheel was founded in 1970 by Ray Benson and Lucky Oceans. The band has since released 26 albums while playing a schedule that would make a vaudevillian dizzy. The group has not only been entertaining audiences with its own genre-busting music for four decades, but also has never been afraid to try something new.

As the wheel rolls on, the reinvention continues. New vocalist Elizabeth McQueen invites comparison to the classic female vocalists of the band?s earlier era, and fiddler-singer Jason Roberts gives the band a male lead voice to complement Benson?s baritone vocals.

The Austin, Texas-based band has had more than 80 members to date ? united under Benson?s crusade to carry the torch of big band Western swing music into the 21st century.

?My whole intent was to bring the music back in to my generation.? Benson said of founding the band more than 40 years ago.

The band has won nine Grammy Awards. Their highest charted single, ?The Letter That Johnny Walker Read,? peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard country music charts in 1975, and they have charted more than 20 singles.

Tickets are $25-$29 for adults, while children 18 years old and younger will be admitted for $12. Groups of 10 or more will receive a 20 percent discount. Tickets are available at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center ticket office, by calling 472-2787 and online at www.fairfieldacc.com.

Asleep at the Wheel at the Sondheim center is presented by Pat and Barb McMahon and LISCO. In addition to the McMahons and LISCO, the 2011-12 Sondheim artist series is sponsored by Foss, Kuiken, Gookin and Cochran P.C., Traffix Devices Inc., Cambridge Investment Research and John Deere Ottumwa Works.