Bandits on the Run Storm Broadway and Beyond

You can't accuse Bandits on the Run of hibernating for the winter. Adrian Blake Enscoe (they/them/he/him) had a starring role in the Avett Brothers-penned musical Swept Away. Bandits had initially planned for 2025 to be a year of incubation, with Sydney Shepherd (she/her) and Regina Strayhorn (she/her) collaborating on two separate musicals. However, Swept Away closed only a few weeks into its run, forcing the band to pivot. We discuss their new plans for 2025, and the marriage between theater, folk music, and their new/old single "Back Home."

Rachel: Before we started recording, you started to talk about how you've changed your plans for the band because Adrian was in Swept Away, but then the show was cancelled. Regina and Sydney, you're also working on musicals as well. What does that mean for the band?

Regina: Well, I feel like our whole ethos has always been as long as we have a certain capacity for chaos, we believe that everything feeds into each other.

Post-pandemic, we've really leaned into that philosophy. We're really sad about the show closing because it's so beautiful and Adrian's so fantastic in it. Hopefully the energy that would have gone towards supporting Adrian and the fans that would have come through that show will go into more music and tour dates.

Adrian: We don't have to hope. It's already happening. Our ethos is that we try to be artists in as many different ways as possible. Our projects end up affecting each other and bring in people from other things. There are a lot of people that are diehard fans of Swept Away that have become fans of Bandits.

They just bring such love and positivity. When you're an artist and you're doing the work of authentically placing yourself in your art, then people can't help but want to see how that will be reflected in another thing.

Sydney: We started this band wanting an outlet for our own self-expression, because we all come from an acting background. We didn't want to wait for permission to make art.

So because we come from that ethos, we very much also support each other as individual artists. Being a flexible and fluid entity that supports one another in our different endeavors is important, because a lot of times, people get curious and they circle back to the band. We've found a lot of very cool new fans that way.

Rachel: One of the interesting contradictions of roots music is that there's a focus on self-expression, but also, at the same time, you are building a little bit of a character on stage. Does writing or performing in musicals for the stage use different muscles than when you're writing for Bandits?

Adrian: It definitely challenges me. For me, what I found working on Swept Away is I got to explore a part of my voice that was activated through the Avett Brothers' music. Leaning into certain qualities in my voice through that music also affected my conception of the character.

And then coming back to Bandits, it was like spending a couple months stretching. As a band, we've always tried not to be super definitive about who and what we are, or limit what we do to a certain sound.

Sydney: We're working on two different projects. We're working on the stage adaptation of What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and we're also focusing on this other musical that is an original story of Black prospectors in the Yukon. We're coming at this theater writing muscle from the folk music world. The feedback on that has been really positive.

The power of repetition and really strong choruses and hooks is something that I've sensed lately has been lost a little bit in musical theater. And so people are like, "Oh, there is a way to incorporate what music sounds like today and that timeless folk thing into something that is an active storytelling tool."

That's been really cool because it feels like we're kind of secret double agents where we know what it's like to be inside a character's head and how to specifically write from a specific point of view as actors. But we also have this folk music DIY background.

Regina: The flexibility of writing from our perspective versus writing for a character's point of view, it really is a somatic experience and we really are tuned into if it's fun for us to perform, then likely it's going to be fun for an actor to do.

And so, we're really tuned in for the three of us. Cause we have this like little mini political system of the three of us. We all have to like something if it's not going to be abandoned. And then that kind of easily translates to musicals. 'Cause it's like, you know, if it feels active within us, then when you're passing it along to an amazing actor to explore it, you want to make sure that you're passing them something that's juicy and there's a lot of lots of stuff for them to play around in.

Rachel: You have a residency for the next couple of months at the Bowery Electric. What are you most excited for having this one place where you're going to be for at least a couple of months?

Regina: I'm really excited to connect deeply with our New York fans again, because a lot of growing as a band is touring and being outside of your hometown. Whenever we do shows in New York, it is so delightful, because it's very much our home.I'm excited to have a consistent show in New York and connect with our people here.

Adrian: When you do a show at a certain slot, you have to challenge yourself to figure out what's different. You don't want to do the same thing every night.

We've challenged ourselves to do an entirely different show every time and invite people to come back because it will be different.

Rachel: I heard the band has a very sweet origin story.

Adrian: Something that I love about Bandits is that it predates Bandits. Sydney and Regina went to the same high school and college. They were collaborating on songs every year and I just kind of got to interlope. I stumbled into it and was like, "this is great. Let's go. Can I be a part of this? Can we make a band?"

Regina: But you interloped in a very specific way. You were in the subway. – It's your romance. [Gestures to Adrian and Sydney.]

Adrian: I want you to tell the story.

Regina: OK. So, Sydney and I were making music for a while in college and in a very organic, super fun way. And And Sydney moved to New York because she was in a Broadway show.

Adrian was busking on the L train and Sydney came by and started listening then they started chatting. Then they both got on the train and the L train and it got delayed.And now they're married. So the MTA is good for one thing!

Rachel: And you just released an updated version of your song "Back Home"?

Adrian: It's from not long after Sydney and I met, maybe like a year or two afterwards. Sydney was doing a contract in Seattle and you were away for three or four months. I lived in this loft apartment space in Bushwick, the stairways were all concrete, wide stairways. I would go out with a guitar and I, I remember writing that, writing the beginnings of that song in the stairway. And then when Sydney came back, I showed it to her and she kind helped finish the lyrics to the song. It's funny to get to return to it years later

Sydney: We kind of tacked it on to our first album. In spite of that, people have asked us to play it more. It means a lot to me. It's cool to revisit something and and give it a new energy.

Bandits on the Run join the Wood Brothers on tour in the Southeast in February. Click here for tour dates. Meanwhile, the cast of Swept Away have launched a monthly jam session to benefit breast cancer research.

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