Q&A: Durand Bernarr set to bring 'Gangsta Musical Theater' to Athens

If you're among the more than a million people who have watched Duran Bernarr's "NPR Tiny Desk Concert" on YouTube, it's a safe guess that you've already bought your ticket for his Saturday, Sept. 9 performance at the Georgia Theatre.

For those who have never heard of the Los Angeles-based entertainer, there's a good chance you'll want to consider attending after seeing the video.

In this interview with Banner-Herald arts and culture reporter Andrew Shearer, Bernarr shared details regarding his teenage experience touring with R&B legends Earth, Wind & Fire, his first arena gig singing backup for pop star Erykah Badu, and how his unique, high-energy solo show came to be described as "Gangsta Musical Theater."

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Andrew Shearer: The second half of the tour for your new album "Wanderlust" will bring you through Athens for the first time, but it's far from being your first time out on the road. I read that you started when you were 16.

Durand Bernarr: My first gig on the road was a production assistant with Earth, Wind & Fire. My dad had been touring with them for a few years, and by that time he was an audio engineer. My dad would work either FOH or monitors on stage. It wasn't just the production assistant work that I was doing. I was also working in the merch booth, I would ice up the tour buses at the end of the show, replenish and take people's orders for whatever. They really put me to work, and I was a part of "the hive" as I call it, working behind the stage to make the show run smoothly. I'm glad that I had that as my introduction, because the production manager Tony Bullock ran a tight ship. If the show started at 8 o'clock, the band was in place at 7:58 ready. I definitely enjoyed being in the environment, and I wasn't just around other adults. The band had their children out there as well, so there was a whole community of people that worked with one another for years.

Shearer: So when you landed the gig singing with Erykah Badu, you were pretty much familiar with life on the road.

Bernarr: Oh yeah. They're two totally different worlds, but it's still an environment that I feel comfortable in and free to be myself. I'm surrounded by people who have my back and I have theirs. I've been with Badu for 12 years now. Recently I haven't been able to make it to all of the gigs because I was playing at Afro Punk, or I was at the tail end of my tour, but I was able to bounce back and forth doing background for her summer tour. It's her first arena tour, which was also the first arena tour I've ever been on. I would be flying out to do my gigs and then flying back to do hers. It's her biggest show, but it was also the easiest that I've ever done. Arenas have a whole staff that takes care of everything for you, so thankfully I was able to sleep a lot and stay rested.

Shearer: Is the band you played with on "Tiny Desk" the same one that's currently touring with you?

Bernarr: I've performed with a band ever since my first tour back in 2016, but I was always just using bands that were in the cities where the concerts were happening. It didn't allow for me to have as much freedom onstage as I do now, because this band has time to relax and rehearse. We already know how things are, as opposed to me being at the mercy of other people having to learn the music at at every tour stop. The way I was doing it before, the bands would have to learn the material before I got there, so it was always kind of like a coin flip whether they were going to really be locked in. What you saw on "Tiny Desk" is what it looks like when the band has more than just rehearsed with me. At that point we'd been on the road for the past three weeks. We popped right in to "Tiny Desk" and we knew it was going to be sharp.

Shearer: I've seen your music described as "Gangsta Musical Theater." What's the story behind that?

Bernarr: A dear friend of mine who is an amazing artist, Qveen Herby, was in a group back in the day. They kicked off on YouTube under the original name Karmin. She contacted me through a (direct message), and a year or so later, she came by and we hung out. I was playing her some of the new stuff that I was working on for a project before "Wanderlust," and keep in mind, she's coming from the viewpoint of a white woman from Nebraska, right? So she's like, "Oh my God, like, this is Gangster Musical Theater!" It just clicked. I loved how she worded that because she was exactly right. So she coined the term for the genre, or the moment, or the era of "Gangsta Musical Theater," which expresses my love for theater, having been a theater kid. But it also expresses my love for voices like Rick James and Nate Dogg. It's animated, it's fun, it's all these different things intertwined to create an audible roller coaster.

The Georgia Theatre is located at 215 N. Lumpkin St. For tickets to Durand Bernarr's show with supporting act ,JaRonelle, visit axs.com/events/489306/durand-bernarr-tickets.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Q&A: Durand Bernarr will bring 'Gangsta Musical Theater' to Athens