STRUT

Say what you will about communes – all that togetherness can add up to music that's positively telepathic in its tightness. Such is the case with Asheville ska/funk quintet Strut, whose members, including brothers Casey and Elijah Cramer, grew up on the famous Farm in mid-Tennessee (now described as an "intentional community"). Biko Casini, Agent Ishi and Patrick Thomas complete the band, which spent literally half of 2005 touring, setting crowds a-sway from Bonnaroo to the Virgin Islands. Latest high point: Cuts from Strut's just-released album, Non-Hostile Takeover, will score new episodes of the MTV reality series Meet the Barkers. Strut releases Non-Hostile Takeover Saturday, Jan. 28, at Stella Blue. The Afromotive opens. 10 p.m. $10. 236-2424. - Mountain Express

CD reviews
Strut, Non-Hostile Takeover:

Genre(s): Rock, funk, ska.

You'll like it if: You can deal with funk being on a leash in a studio setting.

Defining song: "Country Boy" -– Ska and hoedowns collide courtesy of guest picker Woody Wood.

"Asheville's Funkiest" could be on the threshold of "America's Funkiest." Strut performed all weekend at last year's Bonnaroo Festival, and their song "One Stop" played recently on MTV's "Meet the Barkers." The new album, Non-Hostile Takeover, shakes off the dirtiness of their live shows and cleans it up for more mainstream accessibility. That's not to say it doesn't shimmy. Their lyrics (minus some of the love serenades) are progressively conscious, and their understanding of both funk and ska are damn near scholarly. The studio doesn't yet stand up to their live sweat downs, but if making a stage show in a sound booth is impossible, this album will soothe the soul cravings.

- Mountain Express

Strut is difficult band to describe. Their sound is not limited by the boundaries of genre, as they seamlessly shift from funk to ska to punk to jam-rock at times isolating a style, other times incorporating many in a groove stew. The complexity of their sound derives in part from their eclectic musical influences (everything from Operation Ivy, the Chili Peppers, Sublime and Tribe Called Quest to The Clash, Talking Heads and Modest Mouse) as well as their background.

Each of the five members of Strut was raised on The Farm - a commune dedicated to non-violent, eco-friendly living, founded by Stephen Gaskin in 1971 in Summertown, TN. And just like The Homegrown Band Ð a.k.a. THB - before them (also from The Farm), Strut is ready for harvest.

The band - made up of brothers Casey (guitar) and Elijah Cramer (bass/vocals), Biko Casini (percussion/vocals), Agent Ishi (vocals) and Patrick Thomas (drums) - just released their second album, Non-Hostile Takeover, the long awaited follow-up to the 2003 debut, About Time. Coming off a heavy touring schedule in 2005, culminating with three sets at Bonnaroo, Strut is spreading the word from coast to coast and picking up loyal fans along the way.

Listening to Strut play live, you're immediately struck by the vitality and depth of their vocals as well as the airtight interplay of their instruments. The band believes growing up together has developed in them a near telepathic means of communication. One thing's for certain, they have the power to get you out of your seat and dancin'.
- High Times

Strut’s Non-Hostile Takeover
Asheville Band at Boone Saloon Saturday, May 6

By Jeff Eason

Summertown, Tennessee is a rural experimental community started in 1971 by, well, hippies who desired a chance to get back to our country’s agrarian roots. It’s still a thriving community today and continues to attract folks looking for a healthy vegetarian lifestyle among like-minded people.




Asheville-based funk and ska band Strut will perform at the Boone Saloon this Saturday.
If you had to imagine what a band would be like if it was comprised of five guys who were raised on The Farm in Summertown, you would probably think of folk rock, jam bands, or something in the sensitive singer-songwriter vein. The funky urban beats of ska would probably the last thing you would expect from a quintet of Summertown boys.

Strut is an Asheville ska band with its roots in Summertown. And Strut knows how to lay down a dancehall ska sound with the best of them.

Fresh off of year full of touring non-stop in 2005, Strut is getting ready to capture the imaginations of ska-loving listeners everywhere with a dynamite new album in tow. 2005 was also the year that the band played three sets at the prestigious Bonnaroo Festival.

Strut features Agent Ishi on vocals, Casey Cramer on guitar, Elijah Cramer on bass and vocals, Biko Casini on percussion and vocals and Patrick Thomas on drums.

The band’s latest opus is the new album Non-Hostile Takeover, recorded at Collapseable Studios in Asheville and mastered at Studio B in Charlotte. The album features several musical guests such as singers Allison King and Mary Ellen Bush of the band Manage on backing vocals, Chris Spies on keyboards, Jim Star on trombone, Chris Polnad on saxophone and Hollywood Red on banjo.

Non-Hostile Takeover is no ordinary ska album. It contains plenty of beats and fast-paced songs that would sound perfectly at home at a concert featuring The Specials, Madness and other classic ska bands. But it also has elements of funk, jam band, country, hip-hop and jazz fusion. On the tour de force “Speedbump” the band travels seamlessly through a number of genres always mindful of the listeners who want to boogie on the dance floor.

The sweet, soulful “Making Symphonies out of Heartbeats” the band mixes funky chunky guitar rhythms with high harmonious backing vocals from Mary Ellen Bush. The band also knows how to slow down the beat for some 70s slow dancing as on the hypnotic “Gentle Rain.”

Released in January, Non-Hostile Takeover is already getting airplay across the country and a track from the album was recently featured on the MTV reality series Meet the Barkers.

Folks in western North Carolina need to check out Strut while the band is still located in Asheville. Rumor has it that the band will be moving to Philadelphia sometime in 2006.

High Times Magazine offered this insightful bud of info into the music of Strut: “You’re immediately struck by the vitality and depth of their vocals as well as the airtight interplay of their instruments. One thing’s for certain, they have the power to get you out of your seat and dancing.”


- The Mountain Times

"Ska-Funk-Soul-Punk Body Movin Music!!"

This bit of recent press about Asheville, North Carolina’s Strut marks an intriguing if still slightly dubious claim, but one that ultimately proves rather apt. And with the unmistakable soft-pop sensibility of family tourist season in full swing in the Scenic City, Strut’s upcoming headline gig at Rhythm & Brews should dish some much-needed late-summer funk relief for Chattanooga.

It’s not difficult to see why this still relatively young band has until now (they’re relocating to Philadelphia this spring) chosen patchouli-scented Asheville as home base. The five fellows who make up Strut were all born and raised on the once world-famous commune, The Farm, still based up the road in Summertown, Tennessee.

Once an influential full-on commune, now turned “intentional community,” The Farm proved the perfect sowing ground for these poly-rhythmic funk purveyors, whose members have played music together since they were kids.

Brothers Casey and Elijah Cramer (guitar and bass, respectively) anchor a sound that calls equally on reggae and ska, a punkish sensibility and hip-hop medleys from vocalist Agent Ishi, all sprinkled with just a touch of solid jamming (an element that rears its dreadlocked head to great effect at Strut’s boogie-blitz shows).

Fresh off a trio of side-stage sets at the Bonnaroo Festival this summer, and with a follow up to their 2003 studio debut, About Time, due out this fall, Strut continue on their endless road schedule, which takes them up and down the east coast with some regularity.

“Bonnaroo was really great, and we were lucky enough to get some good time slots,” reports Elijah Cramer by phone. “We had so many folks from so many different places seeing us there, we’ve already started seeing the rewards of that.”

Indeed, love it or hate it, Bonnaroo marks a ripe launching pad for bands like Strut, primed to surpass that next level of the big band game. Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket and the KFC-powered Buckethead are but a handful of current studs whose careers benefitted measurably from stops up in Manchester.

2003’s About Time marked a summary of the band’s early years, when more instrumental jams and less hip-hop were decisive parts of the program. Rhyming remains only part of Strut’s vocal formula today (several tunes still observe more traditional vocal structures). But as tighter funk and less jam have come to dominate their sound, so have Agent Ishi’s high-energy rhymes.

Listeners will find a band that’s as tight as they come. Elijah’s bass paired with Biko Casini’s percussion and Patrick Thomas’ tubs, grounds their sound. But the secret locomotive remains lanky guitarist Casey Cramer.

Cramer’s fluid, next-generation licks make the potentially annoying genre-hopping mayhem Strut dishes out a head-turning reality. From inspired solos to subtle, driving rhythm, Casey Cramer is as gifted a young player as you’ll find working the South today.

These days, you hear too often about how this band or that crisscrosses genres with remarkable ease. It is the post-Bonnaroo cliche of not-necessarily jam bands who don’t fit the mold. Understandably, these tired descriptions of music inevitably make some eyeballs roll and even more ears shut. And especially with Strut, a band crossing ska and punk, hip-hop and funk, it’s tempting to write them off as another good reason you’ll never go to Bonnaroo.

But, for once, these funky white boys really do transcend genres to great effect––especially in live settings––and easily evade pigeonholing critics by dishing out contagious original music.

- Stuart Gaines - The Pulse