“Gangstagrass fuses string instruments with hip-hop artists, resulting in arguably the best argument yet for a rap and country music marriage.” - Rolling Stone
“Gangstagrass may blend bars and banjos, but their music also feels a little rock n’roll, a little rebellious.” - Vice
Experience the Sounds of Bluegrass and Hip-hop Fused Together with “Gangstagrass” at the Adler Theatre on September 12, 2025
A true example of the belief that we are better together, Gangstagrass combines great American traditions of bluegrass, hip-hop, and beyond to create a whole new musical genre that is more than the sum of its parts.
DAVENPORT – SEPTEMBER 9 – Gangstagrass is a multi-racial collective of musicians who demolish every preconception you have about country music and hip-hop music, and they are coming to the Adler Theatre on Friday, September 12 at 7:00 PM. Gangstagrass will be presented by the Adler Theatre, as well as through a partnership with Quad City Arts and their unique school outreach program.
These string pickers and MCs that make up Gangstagrass create a shared cultural space for dialogue and connection between folks that usually never intersect. The boundaries are gone and Gangstagrass is out there doing things nobody thought would work but when you hear it you know, down in your soul, that it does work. Gangstagrass is here to help us party together with an irresistible blend of America's rural and urban music traditions.
Tickets for the Alder Theatre can be purchased beginning September 13th at 10 AM in person at the Box Office located at 136 E 3rd Street, Davenport, which is open Monday through Friday from 10 AM until 5 PM, or online at the official site of the Adler Theatre, www.davenportlive.com, or at www.ticketmaster.com. Ticket prices will be $18, $30, and $45 (plus applicable fees).
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About Gangstagrass
Integrating banjo and fiddle with hip-hop beats and rapping may be something Gangstagrass does for the love of the music, but it has led them to face a history of racialized genres and deeply ingrained sense of cultural incompatibility. Creating music that turns what some would consider opposite musical styles into a rollicking party that suddenly makes sense, they found a byproduct of their disregard for traditional sense of genre was that they got people who normally would consider themselves to have nothing in common dancing to the same beat. Forget everything you thought you knew about our cultural divisions: when Gangstagrass starts playing, those preconceptions are relegated to the dustbin of history. Banjo and fiddle seamlessly meet verbal acrobatics from skilled MCs. High lonesome harmonies flow over block-rockin’ beats.
“There are a lot more people out there with Jay-Z and Johnny Cash on their playlists than you think,” says Gangstagrass Mastermind Rench, who had previously made a name for himself as an in-demand Brooklyn country and hip-hop producer and singer/songwriter. He should know – he’s toured the country and abroad with a band of bluegrass pickers and hip-hop MCs to the delight of standing-room crowds everywhere. Initially known for the Emmy-nominated theme song to the hit FX Network show “Justified”, the band has become a formidable force in live performance, touring extensively in the USA, Canada, and Europe.
When the band’s fifth studio album No Time For Enemies was released in 2020, Americana Highways proclaimed Gangstagrass “America’s Band” because they take so much of what’s amazing about this country -- the ingenuity, creativity, the strength and struggles of such different people to forge a path into the unknown -- and distill it into a message of common ground and unity across differences. The album quickly rose to #1 on the Billboard bluegrass chart, the first time in history that hip-hop MCs achieved that top spot.
More recently, between appearances on America’s Got Talent and PBS’s The Caverns Sessions that made everyone's highlights list, and a glowing full-page article in the New York Times print edition headlined “This Is the Music America Needs,” the band is geared up to get us all dancing on common ground for their national and international tours and their forthcoming full-length album release in the summer of 2024.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Danielle Smith e. [email protected] p. 563.888.3817
