‘Hip-hop music is folk music’
Last June when Gangstagrass took to the stage on America’s Got Talent, it put their music and message in front of more than seven million people. The band formed in New York back in 2006 and over the course of six albums have honed their unique blend of bluegrass and hip-hop – preaching a message of finding common ground, strength in diversity and that ‘we’re better together’.
Before this the band were best-known beyond their fanbase for providing the theme song, Long Hard Times to Come, to the hit TV show Justified.
Guitarist/producer and the band’s founder Rench admits it was an unusual step for them.
‘That was a case of us trying to figure out how to have a “good” pandemic. It's not something I think we would have done in normal years.
‘But seeing all of our tours get cancelled, and losing the ability to go out and play for people, which is so meaningful for us, and also our prime way of promoting and connecting with fans…
‘We got a message from their scouts that they would be interested in having us come on the show. We were very sceptical, but as opposed to most years, it was: “Well, this would actually be a chance to play for millions of people, and right now we can't play to anyone.”
‘So that really opened the door for us to say: “Let's see what they have to say”.
‘We went into some serious discussions with them to make sure they get what we're trying to say and we would be presented as ourselves without anyone trying to change the message.
‘We want to go out there and be us and say our message and get that out to people, and not have that diluted or messed with – and they were on board with that.’
Their audition even impressed Simon Cowell and earned them a clean-sweep of ‘yes’ votes from the judges.
They were knocked out at the quarter-final stage, but as Rench says: ‘The further rounds you go into require more contractual obligations – so this was the perfect round for us.
‘We got two national TV appearances and a whole bunch of new fans out of it, and then we could go on our way without any further obligations.’
When the pandemic hit, the five-piece had just begun work on what became album six: No Time For Enemies. Being together in the studio was replaced by working remotely – recording their parts in their respective home and sending them to Rench in Brooklyn in New York, who mixed it all together.
The process inadvertently became a metaphor for the theme of the album: ‘There were some hurdles, but it was really an album of five people who are trying to make something about people coming together over our divisions, literally having to figure out how to come together over our divisions and being physically separated.
‘I think that imbued the album with a little something special.’
Of course, the band had intended to work more closely in the studio – capturing the energy of their live performances, but they found new ways of working together, even though they were apart.
‘A lot of the songs had been written already, but there is one song on the album specifically
which came out of the pandemic experience.
‘We had started live-streaming, but you can't play together over Zoom because of the lag, so it's a complete mess.
‘So we figured out something we could do called “kick the can”, where one person would live-stream putting down a part they thought of, and then the next person would livestream themselves adding something else, and then the next person...
‘We built several songs through that method and there was one that became the song Do Better. We all said, this really belongs on the album, so let's polish it up and put it on there.
‘That one was started by BE Farrow putting down a bassline he thought of and Danjo [Dan Whitener] adding some banjo parts to it and then me laying some guitar and coming up with a hook and some beats, and then the MCs putting their parts on, all virtually in sequence. And we ended up with a great track out of it.’
The final track of the album is a cover of Woody Guthrie’s classic This Land is Your Land – a song almost considered an alternate national anthem in some circles.
Explaining how that came about, Rench says: ‘That's a wonderful, exciting story for us,
‘The Woody Guthrie Center was putting on a big concert in New York to celebrate the 80th anniversary of This Land is Your Land, and invited us to be part of it, sort of kicking off the start of the night by doing a version of the song. They ended the night with Jeff Tweedy from Wilco leading a different version of the song.
‘They paired us with an Oklahoma artist – the Woody Guthrie Center is in Oklahoma and they have artists there they work with – a singer named Branjae, who's just fantastic.
‘We did some remote stuff, back and forth to figure out how we wanted to do our own take on that song, and then Branjae flew out to New York for the concert.
‘We performed this new version of the song, but the reaction was really strong and we were really happy with what came out of it, so we wanted to lay that down and put it on the
record. ‘The Woody Guthrie Center folk have been super-supportive and encouraging. ‘We've added rap verses that allow us to put the more contemporary contextualisation of recognising that white people can say: “this land is your land, this land is my land”, but there are some other voices that want to say: “Hey, maybe it was somebody else’s to begin with...!”’
While most of the band’s material is original songs, they are happy to play around with cover versions. The Guide was given a listen to a hugely entertaining mixtape, Let The Cypher Be Unbroken, where they tackle rap classics.
‘We've released five or six of the tracks from that – at some point we're going to drop the whole thing proper mixtape style where you have to download it from wherever.
‘We are interpolating stuff which would need to be licensed... the whole deal with mixtapes is that you don't put it out as an official thing.
‘The crowd have been really responding to some of the tracks we've been doing like that. We've been doing our version of (MOP’s) Ante Up at the live shows, and our twist on (Tupac Shakur’s) California Love, making it Appalachia Love. People are really excited when we play those.’
But it’s important to the band that they give these covers their own stamp.
‘I would never want to do a cover that's just replicating something. I love covers where someone takes a song and really makes it their own – that's something we have a really unique opportunity to do in terms of our ability to take folk forms and combine them with hip-hop, which is also a form of folk music.
‘We put out to the world that hip-hop music is folk music, and we're able to integrate these things in a way that reflects a more modern sensibility.’
When Rench started the project there was a revolving cast of musicians, but in recent years it’s settled on the current lineup where he is joined by Whitener on banjo/vocals, Farrow on fiddle/vocals and the MCs R-Son The Voice of Reason and Dolio The Sleuth.
Rench says that stability has ‘opened up a lot of growth and evolution in terms of having settled on the right crew to be doing this and people who really embody the project.
‘There's now a lot more of a collaborative team effort to it and I think especially with the latest album we've seen the result of a lot more collaborative songwriting and ideas coming from everybody in the group.
‘And that does change the nature of it, where we can expand into more voices and more styles – it's always been true that combining different genres, there's infinite ways you can do it. There's no need for us to make the same album over and over again. Bringing people who are now able to say: “I get this, I've been doing this, here's a new idea for something we can do,” is great.’
‘There's now a lot more of a team effort to it’