Bandits on the Run have a new song for anyone who has ever tried to hold on to love while everything around them feels like it’s falling apart. The New York trio just released “Dance Through The End Of Days,” a theatrical bonus track recorded during the sessions for their sophomore album Rough Magic.
Adrian Blake Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd and Regina Strayhorn trade instruments and lead vocals, and this one leans into the band’s stranger, more playful side. Shepherd points to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, David Lynch, tarot and the Bible among its inspirations — with a stylophone, zombie imagery and a love story at the center.
There’s a second reason to keep an eye on the group: they’re developing a stage adaptation of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, planned for MCC Theater off-Broadway in June 2027. This is a band building something beyond a typical album cycle.
Official Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 30, 2026
(New York, NY) Between their innovative arrangements, instrument swapping, scope of emotions and experiences conveyed in their songwriting, and an eclectic group of old friends and collaborators, NYC-based trio Bandits on the Run have truly lived up to what they call their “ethos of artmaking” on their new album, Rough Magic, and subsequent tour, which has taken them all the way from New England to Alaska and across festival stages such as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Americanafest, and Kerrville Folk Festival. Now, Bandits on the Run are releasing a bonus track from the Rough Magic recording, “Dance Through The End Of Days.” LISTEN HERE.
With rotating lead vocals and varied instrumentation, the trio of Adrian Blake Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn evoke the 60s and 70s spirit of bands like Fleetwood Mac, The Mamas and the Papas, and The Velvet Underground while also carrying the sonic inventiveness of the modern folk power pop acts like First Aid Kit, Bonnie Light Horsemen, and Lucius. They swim in the same lyrical waves as I’m With Her, Folk Bitch Trio, The Staves, and other trios featuring impeccable harmonies and elevated songwriting so good they make the balancing act seem simple.
The band’s sophomore full-length, Rough Magic, is about friends — how we connect with them (or fail to), how we fight with them, and most importantly, how we love them. It’s a testament and a celebration of what’s possible when making something from nothing with your nearest and dearest. Relationships, old and new, are the heart of this LP, which is at times cinematic, lush, and sprawling, and at other times so intimate, raw, and pulled back you can practically feel the sweaters hanging in the closet that the Bandits converted into a vocal booth.
“’Dance Through The End Of Days’ was written at a time when we felt the world was ending, which could truly be any point in recent memory,” Shepherd says. “For this tune, we didn’t shy away from leaning into our camp sensibilities, and the song was inspired by several things including but not limited to: Rocky Horror Picture Show, David Lynch, the Tarot, and the Bible. The song was recorded during our Rough Magic album sessions, and so it fits in with that throughline of maintaining connection with those you hold dear through adversity, but in a more raucous, messy, tongue-in-cheek way. A special shout to Dan Holodak on drums, and Sam D’Agostino on bass, and hell, a special shoutout to myself for eschewing my usual cello for a stylophone sent to me in the mail by a childhood bestie (shoutout to Anne).”
“At its heart, though, it is an earnest love song, one in which love perseveres through the darkest of end times… Zombie Elvis + Zombie Nancy Sinatra and a Televangelist just happen to be the vessels of the message.”
Never far from their theatrical roots, Bandits on the Run are also developing several original musicals, including an adaptation of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, co-written with actor-musician-longtime-friend Christopher Sears and newfound friend Academy Award Nominee Peter Hedges, who wrote the original novel and screenplay. Enscoe, Shepherd, Strayhorn, and Sears also star and perform in the show’s pit band.
Ahead of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape opening off-Broadway at MCC Theater in June of 2027, Bandits on the Run will take to the sea, performing alongside Jeff Tweedy, The Punch Brothers, Molly Tuttle, and more on the Cayamo Cruise.
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