Banditos with Special Guest

Banditos
“Everything we write is from the point of view of the every person. We’re all in it together. I think the undertone of most of the music we write is inclusivity. Everyone can relate to it. Everyone can feel it.”

That’s Mary Beth Richardson, lead vocalist of the beloved roots rock outfit Banditos. She’s talking about the song “On My Way,” a standout track off the band’s genre-defying new album Right On, on Egghunt Records. But she gets at the core of what makes Banditos so special, the secret sauce that built a rabid following for the Nashville-based, Birmingham, AL-born quintet, who first burst on the scene with their acclaimed self-titled Bloodshot Records debut in 2015. 

Right On is the third studio album from Banditos, following 2017’s ambitious, kaleidoscopic Visionland, an album that signaled a greater well of potential from Banditos and their chameleonic, ever-evolving sound. In a way, Right On is the final piece of one hell of an introductory trilogy, one that shows just how far the band has come since forming while signaling a dynamic, exciting future.

The band — Mary Beth Richardson (vocals), Corey Parsons (vocals, guitar), Randy Wade (drums), Jeffery Salter (guitar) and Stephen Pierce (vocals, banjo, bass) — wrote and recorded Right On with producer Jordan Lehning (Caitlin Rose, Joshua Hedley) in late 2019, wrapping up the project barely a month before the COVID-19 pandemic ground the music industry to a screeching halt. It’s been a long time for the prolific, energetic band to sit on new material, but that passing time has only served to underscore just how special this music is. “We're excited about getting her out there,” Richardson says of Right On. “She's been ready.”

Taking a communal approach to writing songs, the band first began work on Right On in 2018, doing much of their writing and brainstorming in Salter’s garage. “We came up with a lot of the ideas with riffs. The guys hammered out ideas that they had [on guitar] and then slowly started putting together a song. Then me or one of the lyric writers put lyrics over it that we felt fit.”

The first tune they came up with was “Deep End,” a party song with cosmic origins. The song, which would feel just at home at a festival as it would a honky-tonk, was inspired by the photograph of Earth known as the “Pale Blue Dot,” taken 3.7 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 in 1990. 

“These lyrics came from thinking about being a very small in the middle of space, and coming to grips with it,” Richardson explains. “And how things aren't as big as you feel like they are. Because we're all nothing and everything. We’re just little specks in space. We’re not insignificant, but everything is connected. That song is realism meets a mushroom trip.”

There’s something for everyone on Right On, whether it’s the swaggering rhythm of “Said and Done,” the painful honesty of “Easy” or, more likely, both. While only Banditos could make such an album, this music is for everyone. Richardson said it best: “Everyone can feel it.”

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