On today’s edition of THE INTERVUE we are going to be talking to a trio who is getting ready to make their appearance in Takoma Park, Maryland on July 28th. Our guests today are an indie-folk pop Americana outfit, (try saying that three times fast) consisting of three singers, a guitarist, a cellist, and a suitcase drum & accordionist, and a variety of toy instruments. They hailed from Brooklyn, and are known for their vivacious performance, style, genre defined sound soaring harmonies and ability to make music magic happen everywhere from Subway platforms, to concert halls.
And once again, if you’re going to be in it’s a Takoma Park area on July 28 at the Square in the Circle, you get to meet them just like me. My friends of the DMV let’s say “Hey” to the Bandits on the Run. We have Adrian Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd and Regina Strayhorn.
Welcome to THE INTERVUE, all! I’m glad to be talking with you.
Sydney Shepherd (cellist): It’s so lovely to be here. Thanks for having us.
Excellent. Yeah, good to be here, too. So the first question I want to ask, I’m sorry.
Regina Strayhorn (accordionist) I was gonna say I think you’ll be on the show.
All right. Yeah, I would not be in the show. I’ll be a part I’ll be watching from the stage. Well, you know what I mean? (everyone laughs) Oh, great, this interview is going to craziness right now. But I’m glad it is. The first question I want to ask you guys is you’re from Brooklyn, New York. And I wanted to know about your origins. How did you come up with the name of the group. And I understand that you have persona names for the band, because one is Roy Dodger. Then we have Bonanza Jellyfish, which I may adopt as my stage name down the road after it’s been used for a while, and we have Clarissa so tell us about your story.
Adrian Enscoe (guitarist): Well, so we, well I met Sydney a while ago, while I was busking in the subway. That was actually the first place that we all played as a group Sydney and Regina had been playing together for a while and writing songs together.
Sydney: Yeah, Regina and I go way back. We met our senior year of high school. So, and we went to college together and we all went to drama school actually, we all went to acting school. Adrian went to different school. Regina and I would just write songs for fun every once in a while, at school, and we never really thought it would sort of take off as a band but when I met Adrian on subway, we started playing music together.
And then shortly Regina moved to New York, and we were all playing together. Adrian was like “We’re a band, we got it!” Yet kind of organically happened that way. And when we were playing like we went have our bandit names in the subway. And it felt almost like a mask or like a persona to put on. Sometimes it’s a vulnerable thing. And we found that like, people were super warm, and they were seeing our music and our bandit names became personas that are very fluid full characters on stage. And sometimes we’re more just Adrian & Regina. If we you know if we want to or need to, and it’s really fun to play around with.
Adrian: We kind of conceived of as like a guerrilla theater project where we would like to have musical stickups on the train, kinda like in the old west, but no one was in danger. We were just playing songs and trying to steal hearts. I think we brighten a couple of people’s days, some hardened New Yorkers. Sometimes you get them to be able to smile for a second. And that was always a really rewarding experience. As time has gone on, we have gone from just subway busking, to touring the world and venues. So now we’re still writing, dealing with theatrical projects, in different ways in different venues.
And that’s a great transition to my next question, because what I’ve read, you described your musical style as a theatrical piece. Do you all feel that your performances on stage are truly theatrical, as well as it helps build upon your stage personas that you’ve developed over these years?
Sydney: I feel like for us, it’s theatrical in the sense that we’re not afraid to connect with people and be storytellers. I wouldn’t say theatrical in the sense that we are. I don’t know if you have to have an interesting word, because it can be a little bit alienating, right? You don’t want people to think for putting on a show for them. It all comes from a very honest place. I think we’re also not afraid to make things a party or to have a theme for our show or ask people to participate. It’s like sort of telling stories in a way where we’re not afraid to be big. And I think it helps people I don’t know. Be more open to feeling a wide range of things.
Adrian: Yeah, one of our stated mission is to find magic in unexpected places. Simply platform for a venue in New York City or a house concert.
I love that and your unique styles. Now I want to talk about a couple of your music videos. The first one I talked about was one that was just released a couple of weeks ago, “Radio” which I love the concept on love the music video. It was quirky, it was fun. I want you to talk about that concept. And I understand at the end it was you worked with Theater in Quarantine. Is that correct?
Adrian: Well, Theater in Quarantine is a kind of a one-man act. And that was created during the pandemic by our friend Josh Bell. During the early days of the shutdown, decided that he was going to continue making theater from his closet in the East Village. He painted closet white. And he did all of this incredible automation to make these live streams that were critically acclaimed ended up getting right up to the New York Times…
Regina: Yes like really innovative stuff like kind of like old school clown work and theater.
Adrian: And about a year ago, he was like, “Well, if you ever want to make a music video in the closet?”
Regina: And we’re thinking about our concept of the “Radio” music video. It was kind of like a natural fit. We wanted this sort of feeling of claustrophobia, melding two dimensional and three-dimensional worlds. And how can you transform the space and transform this sort of video in one shot, basically like one camera, the camera never changes position. It’s all about the people. And about this area, like old school stage magic, like we don’t do any sort of like CGI or anything funky, it’s all very like old school camera theater tricks, which Josh was very instrumental in helping us execute.
And we really want to produce a video that was showcasing a lot of our friends like everyone in the video, they’re not random Joe Schmo has gone off street. They’re the guy playing the painter, Christopher Sears. He’s one of our nearest and dearest collaborators. Yes, everyone else in the video or, are various models, actors, musicians.
Adrian: If you watch our videos throughout, you’ll see some of them. They’re not just certain characters.
Regina: They’re part of the Bandits cinematic universe. The guy in the top hat is also in our “Spellbound” music video and directed one of our videos and is a musician in his own right.
I love it. That’s amazing. And thank you for telling us a story because I feel very excited, especially that it all took place in a closet. So that is a unique concept. And I hope you do it again one of these days. Another music video I enjoyed watching was “Maya Angelou”, who, let’s just say it, one of the best poets in the universe. And this video should be watched by kids all over. I want you to talk about creating this dedication to such an amazing woman because not only the video was amazing, but the lyrics itself were very touching. It felt like you were learning about Maya Angelou and a bit of James Baldwin in the process.
Regina: I love that. Thank you so much for watching. Yeah, we also feel that she is one of the best poets of all time!
Adrian: Here, here!
Regina: We wrote that song and t was commissioned by TheatreWorks USA. They approached us and said “we would love a song from you about a female icon and it’s up to you to choose” and we chose Maya Angelou because she’s pretty influential in my particular life in all of our sort of artistic influences. She’s a figure that’s meant a lot. I think she is this embodiment of freedom of radical joy, intellect. And just was this consummate artist. It was our pleasure to make a song.
I was just gonna say it was really cool to make a piece like geared towards kids too. As we’ve heard a lot of fun, like the children’s music where we have a few friends in that sphere. And they’re like,” Yeah, I didn’t know the best children’s music is like family music that anyone would want to listen to it like parents do.” And so that was a cool sort of experience. We’re just making a Bandits song, but it happens to also be like, for kids and about a really cool woman that everyone should know about.
Adrian: It turns out she’ll know that not that different from adults. We love dancing. Those are the elements of any good, good music video. We had a great time working with our videographers and dancing on a playground that was literally like right behind our house. It was it was kind of depending on when we put it up on YouTube video channel because it was initially behind a paywall for this TheatreWorks USA. How enthusiastically our entire audience who’s going to do it? With people like sending videos or doing the dance!
Well, that is sensational, since TheatreWorksUSA approached you to do a video and you chose such a powerful woman. And speaking of which, I want to tie this up to the video that there was a quote at the end of the video from Angelou which really hits home, “That there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” And I want to know from the three of you with that quote in that video from Maya Angelou, how does that quote speak to you personally?
Regina: Well, you know, it, someone you know, in so many levels, what’s coming up for me right now is that I think that as humans, we have to share, we’re built for connection. And, and it’s so important to share like your particular values and stories. I think like the greatest agony is feeling alone. And a lot of the time, we can help each other out by encouraging each other to speak, creating spaces where we can really connect with each other in a way that feels warm and nourishing and safe. And at its best, also fun and artistic and wacky, right?
It’s important to get it to give them out to commune. When you really think about it, it’s like in ourselves to be together and to find ways to each other, and we need it. And it’s important for art to exist so that it can make that community and that community easier. You have to tell each other stories.
That’s a great answer. I love that answer!
Sydney Yes, Regina said it for all of us!
I hear that there is a new self-produced EP on the horizon which features various and sundry band of friends explores the tensions of a world has been broken open but putting yourself back together. And it’s slated for early 2024. Can you give us more details right now by this EP or not yet?
Adrian: Well, it is our first self-produced EP. We’ve been we’ve had the pleasure of working with some incredible producers over the years. When we were when we started working on “Maya Angelou” during the pandemic, we realized that we had access to a studio and we had enough experience in the studio, that we could start guiding ourselves through the recording process. This is a big step for us as a band. And I would say each of the three of us make significant contributions to production, and the decisions that we’re making because we’re producing. It has allowed us to be the most experimental out of all.
Sydney: And I think there’s something! it’ll definitely be a bit of a different sound for us, it was funny of a friend of ours at one show. I think it was last year, we played a few new songs. And, they were like, “you know, it’s funny when you guys been a busking band for so long, that you’ve been so focused on grabbing people’s attention. And now we’re seeing what you do when you already have that attention.” I feel like there’s a lot more introspective sort of songs, there are songs that are maybe a little softer. There are songs where we are not so heavily doing the three-part harmony. There are songs where more of our voices come out individually, with never had before. And there’s a lot more. There are fewer sounds in there that are a lot more personal. I think we’re allowing ourselves to not, I mean, we’ve always done this, but we were learning. One thing to sort of be very broad, the kinds of sounds that we’re making.
Adrian: What we mean is that we are, we are conscientiously open people, we really want to make people lucid. We want to like facilitate friendships, and an openness and so that in real life has materialized like crossing the country in a van and making friends along the way, which is a real thing that happened to us in 2020 during the pandemic. Socially distance, but we’re still friends. Honestly, all it takes is putting yourself out there making friends in the form of music and festivities. I feel like you’re already there.
When I was doing my research for this piece for the last few days, and when went onto your YouTube channel, the description read, “Now we’re children of the digital age”. Now I got to ask you, what does it take to be that because for all I know, I could be a flower child of the digital age?
Sydney: In like a wave less deep way. I feel like people always know our band even if they don’t.
Regina: Our wardrobes are very bright and fun and kind of crazy. We have the New York stereotype of we all left for school. I feel like sometimes indie bands can be like, “Oh, you’re so cool!”
I’m looking forward to your concert at the Square in the Circle house. What can my fellow Washingtonians expect of this concert coming up?
Adrian: Oh, my God, I love that you ask. We try to do something different for every concert. Recently, we’ve been writing kind of like these storybooks. We’re gonna have little chapters of stories for anyone comes. We will play some hokey tunes, classic antigens, but we’re workshopping. And so that’s exciting.
I’m really excited to show you and your fellow Washingtonians what we’ve been working on it’s honestly, so excited about these new tunes that we have. We have some songs that are based on Shakespeare that are like folk Americana Shakespeare. I think that its total boss. I can say that because I didn’t write all of them. Seriously, I’m really excited for a little story hours.
And it’s your this is your first time as a trio traveling to the DC metropolitan area?
Adrian: Yeah, it’s been a long time coming but we have because we have done shows up and down the Atlantic East Coast, but I think this is the perfect alternative. I love house concerts. We love how close they let us get to an audience & say hi to people afterwards, and I don’t think there’s any better venue for that. You’re looking to make friends. So come prepared.
Dean on the Scene is always prepared! One of the best interviews of the years and you can see the band on July 28th. For more information on Bandits on the Run, go to
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