Gangstagrass 

Over the past 15 years, Gangstagrass has made its name as a band that unites: Black musicians and white musicians. Hip-hop and bluegrass. All four judges on the popular TV show “America’s Got Talent,” who gave the quintet a standing ovation in 2021.

They even reference this idea in the official bio: “Gangstagrass brings together two kinds of American music and creates a third, greater than the sum of the parts.”

So perhaps it’s no surprise that the band — which initially developed as a studio project by Brooklyn-based producer Rench and developed into a five-headed collision of big beats, banjos, rapped rhymes and honeyed vocal harmonies — chose to respond to GO! Magazine’s interview questions as one entity, straight from a tour van as it hurtled through the Rockies.

That van will bring Gangstagrass and its vibrant string-band-hip-hop to Bend’s Tower Theatre this weekend. Here’s our conversation with Gangstagrass, edited for clarity and space.

GO! Magazine: What was the inspiration for starting Gangstagrass?

Gangstagrass: Rench heard the sound of twang and high lonesome harmonies in bluegrass and honky-tonk songs, and heard dope rhymes over block-rocking beats in hip-hop songs, and there was never any question that these should be in the same track together. How could it not work?

GO!: How much work did you all have to do in the past to overcome skepticism? Do you still encounter skeptics these days?

Gangstagrass: The skepticism has been minor honestly. Once people encounter what we do and what we’re about, it connects with them fairly quickly. There will always be naysayers, but they’re few and far between and have no impact on how we do what we do. So we don’t have to do anything to overcome skepticism, we just do our thing and the skeptics can miss the party.

What’s maybe more important than dealing with skeptics is making sure we stay true to ourselves and to the love of the music. We do what we do because we earnestly love those genres, so as long as we don’t lose that love, we’re OK and people will get what we’re about.

GO!: What’s the funniest comment you’ve heard from a Gangstagrass convert after a show?

Gangstagrass: We do encounter people after the show that let us know they felt like they were rolling the dice coming to see this weird thing and it turned out to be amazing. We always get a kick out of the comments like the one on YouTube: “I came here to see the trainwreck and now I have bought four albums.”

It was pretty cool when Howie Mandel stood up immediately after we finished playing on “America’s Got Talent” and said we are the recipe America has been looking for.

GO!: Musically speaking, what is it that makes hip-hop and bluegrass work so well together?

Gangstagrass: Both genres were created — only a few decades apart — from a fusion of multiple influences, sparked by modern innovations in sound technology. So there’s a shared 20th century attitude of exploration that actually makes bluegrass and hip-hop appropriate for experimentation and collaboration.

It’s less about the sonic or musical aspects and more about the musical agreement we make as band mates to communicate with each other openly and honestly to find a common language in the sound. The conversation is what you hear.

GO!: In terms of lyrical themes, cultural importance, societal origins and so on, do hip-hop and bluegrass have more in common than we think?

Gangstagrass: When we talk about musical or cultural contrast, we can make the mistake of using euphemisms for our racial divide. It can sound like asking if black people and white people have more in common than you think.

People have common struggles; there are lots of songs in both bluegrass and hip-hop about being broke, for example. Hip-hop has a reputation for being violent but bluegrass has an entire subgenre of “murder ballads.”

These sounds work together because they come from the common roots we have in this country. This is American music. Our shows are what happens when we all party together.

It just seems unexpected because without enough communication across differences like skin color or where you grew up those differences start to feel like barriers. Again, it’s less about the sound and more about the avenue of communication we open and the experience of everyone getting together at our live shows. And the sound is super dope, too.

What: Gangstagrass

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, doors open 6:30 p.m.

Where: Tower Theatre, 835 NW Wall Street, Bend

Cost: $30-$60

Contact: towertheatre.org