Known for their vivacious performance style, genre-defying sound, soaring harmonies, and ability to make music-magic happen everywhere from subway platforms to concert halls, Bandits on the Run kick off a tour with the release of “Radio” and an appearance at Milwaukee Summerfest, opening for Deer Tick and The Avett Brothers.
Formed upon a chance encounter while busking in the subways of New York City, Bandits on the Run have become modern troubadours, the flower children of the digital age. The Brooklyn-based indie-pop-Americana trio is anchored by three-part harmonies and eclectic instrumentation, including accordion, cello, melodica, and a suitcase-kick-drum. Since their first release, 2017’s, The Criminal Record, they’ve received accolades from NPR Music’s All Songs Considered, American Songwriter, NPR Weekend Edition, and the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project. Their most recent EP, 2021’s Now Is The Time, was produced by Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers). This year has seen a new phase in Banditry, with band members Adrian Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn jointly producing their own recordings for the first time.
I was dealing with intense feelings of anxiety, dissociation, and dread about the state of the world and the state of my place in it. Many songwriters talk about songwriting as therapy, and I suppose that’s true in this case, though it felt a bit more like expelling demons — and does simultaneously reveling and revolting in your own inner world of absurdity count as a coping mechanism? Who’s to say? I do know the bones of this song poured out of me all at once, and afterward, I felt lighter, freer,” Shepherd says. “I shared it with Adrian and Regina the very day it was born, and their brilliant care and thoughts and arrangements crafted it into the beautiful wild entity it is today. We’ve performed this song out many times (after I got over the weirdness of singing a Bandits song without a cello in my hand), and many folks have come up to us after shows and expressed a kinship with this song, and gratitude for giving a safe space to work out some darkness and dance with their own skeletons.”
When it came time to shoot the video, Bandits on the Run worked with director/actor Josh Gelb at Theater in Quarantine, a theatrical space created in Gelb’s closet during the height of the pandemic. Gelb shot and edited the video and is also the man inside the monster suit.
“We wanted to create a surrealist world inhabited by a nuclear family, with the small space of the closet theater highlighting the claustrophobia, anxiety, and absurdity of the inner world of a child who is puzzled, enchanted, and terrorized by the blurring of the ‘real world’ and his own very active imagination,” the band explains. “Sometimes it’s hard to fully understand all the scary stuff that’s facing us out in the real world when we’re getting it through a limited perspective — whether it’s through the tiny window in your room, a broadcast on the radio, or the distorted visions of the world we see reflected in our phones — like the one you will probably use to watch this video. This piece is a rumination on the nature of that mystery.”
| The song and video feature various creatives who regularly collaborate with the Bandits, including live painting by musician/artist Christopher Sears. “It took hours to film the initial painting of the walls — as well as the outro, which required Sydney to sit completely still for an unbelievable length of time as Christopher painted out the rainbow mural,” they share. Other members of the NYC indie music/theater community also appear as characters in the video, such as Brass Queens (who also play horns on the track), Eric Farber (who also plays drums on the track), “Garth,” Brizzo Torres, Sienna Sears, composer Alex Weston, actors Rachel Worthington and Tim Rogan, model Lauren Karaman, TV producer Chris Weihert, and Ilona Sala (who owned a wine bar that both Enscoe and Sears waited tables at for years). Costumer Lizzie Donelan was an invaluable collaborator in both crafting the tone of the piece and obtaining costumes that perfectly matched the off-kilter post-war Americana vibe.Immediately following the release of “Radio,” Bandits on the Run will kick off their summer tour. In a fun twist of kismet, on Friday, June 23rd, they’ll hit the stage of the BMO Pavilion at Milwaukee’s legendary Summerfest, opening for Deer Tick and The Avett Brothers, the latter of which lent their music to Swept Away, which Enscoe starred in the world premiere of at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The tour will take them to a variety of venues across the US, including select performances with Tony Award winner John Gallagher Jr. (another star of Swept Away) and additional festivals such as Musikfest. Tickets to all shows can be purchased HERE. |
