GANTSTAGRASS w/Special Guests THE HIGHBALLERS January 26, 2013

“A mixture of bluegrass and hip-hop that might repel some purists on either side of the country-and-rap divide, but will knock the socks off just about everybody else.”
– The Wall Street Journal

BLENDING bluegrass and hip-hop seems like an unlikely recipe for success, but don’t tell that to Rench, the mastermind behind the highly successful rap’n’grass project Gangstagrass. When he was going to grade school, recess was a time of breakdancing on cardboard to RUN-DMC. But at home, the records on the stereo were Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. That musical mash up made a lasting impression and sent Rench on a cross-country journey to play country-flavored hip-hop in dive bars. Gangstagrass performed an original soundtrack for FX’s western crime series, Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant. Their songs are a common soundtrack in the TV series.

LIKE THEIR HOME TURF, the nation’s capital, the Highballers are as sharp dressed as any modern country act—but go down more like Jim Beam rather than the Diet Pepsi flowing through today’s tame, corporate country scene. In the tradition of outlaws like Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, not to mention mystics like Gram Parsons and the Knitters, the Highballers spin a web of country gold rooted the in the diverse backgrounds of their members and the free-spirited abandon of the fiercest gunslinger in the Wild West.