Minneapolis’ The Gated Community’s latest album, The Honor and The Glory, was born through fire — literally. Frontman Sumanth Gopinath and his partner Beth Hartman (vocals, percussion) lived blocks away from the 3rd Precinct, which was burned in the unrest following George Floyd’s Murder. The studio at which the band recorded The Honor and The Glory had an electrical failure causing the studio’s hard drives to fail and the loss of the band’s music. Amidst these emotions, the band had a renewed resolve to use Americana to fight fascism.
Born in Chicago, Sumanth’s family relocated to Slidell, Louisiana when he was nine. “At first, my brother and I hated the place. We consciously decided not to adopt southern accents, but we were of course surrounded by them, and by contemporary country music,” he recalls. Later, as a grad student at Yale he fell under the musical mentorship of fellow graduate student and Chapel Hill, North Carolina country/bluegrass veteran Rob Slifkin, who introduced him to the music of classic Americana artists. Sumanth’s songwriting quickly blossomed in country music—a genre he’d shunned since his days in Slidell. “Playing a form of country and getting to ‘play southern’ became a form of therapy, a way of dealing with all of the unpleasant bullying, racism, and social dislocation that I experienced while growing up in Louisiana.”
In keeping with The Gated Community’s radical nature, Gopinath, Hartman, and Rosie Harris (vocals, cello), Paul Hatlelid (vocals, drums, acoustic guitar), Cody Johnson (bass), and Nate Knutson (vocals, guitars, mandolin) all took turns responding to interview questions. This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Who are some of your musical influences?
Rosie: I’ve always been drawn to music made by rebellious women. Some important artists for me are Joni Mitchell, Lucinda Williams, Fiona Apple, Billie Holiday, Jacqueline du Pré, Brandi Carlile, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Rasputina, The Chicks, and Mary Gauthier. I was the quiet kid on the school bus listening to my Discman, being teased by other middle schoolers for listening to music by “lesbians.”
In terms of playing the banjo, I studied Scruggs-style with Bill Hinkley, a Minneapolis legend, genius, and really sweet person. Then later I learned clawhammer banjo mainly by studying Mike Iverson’s blogs. Pete Seeger and Old Man Luedecke inspired my interest in clawhammer; Kendl Winter is doing really cool stuff with that style these days.
Beth: I grew up in rural Montana surrounded by country music, but I never really identified with it. I always loved singing and playing the piano, though, and, through my early thirties, I pursued a career in Western classical music. It wasn’t until I joined this band that I came to connect with and fully appreciate the incredible depth of country and Americana music. So, I would say that some of my biggest influences are actually my bandmates—I’ve learned so much from listening to them and seeing what they do and how they do it. (I feel a little self-conscious saying this, but it’s true.)
Other artists who have helped me continue to find my country/Americana voice include greats like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Gillian Welch. Joni Mitchell is also a big inspiration—it’s so great to see her back onstage. Oh, and Aretha Franklin—I would never try to approximate what she did, but she was such an extraordinary singer.
Nate: If you had asked me at age 12 what kind of music I liked, I would have said “anything but rap and country,” which over the years has become most of what I listen to as a DJ and guitar player in a country band. When I first started learning guitar from one of my sister’s friends, he taught me how to play blues songs that I loved (Me and the Devil Blues by Robert Johnson was probably the first full song I ever learned). For a while I was heavily influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and any other guitar hero they played on “classic rock” radio.
When I got to high school, I was obsessed with Incubus and, later on when the metalcore wave hit our town, I became a fan of bands like Every Time I Die and Misery Signals, the latter of which I took a lot of inspiration from for a guitar part on our latest album, funnily enough. I got to college and my new obsession was hip hop and R&B, and I ended up performing music by J Dilla and D’Angelo at my senior recital. The last decade or so has been my country music education, which started when I first subbed with The Gated Community and a local Johnny Cash tribute. I still DJ when the opportunity presents itself, and it’s fun to try to tie all of these things together in a set in a way that makes sense. MF DOOM and Waylon Jennings have more in common than people think.
Name a perfect song and tell us why you feel that way.
Sumanth: I’ll pick a song that we do live (which Paul sings): Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” It is such a famous country song, it’s surely a cliché to think of it as “perfect,” but it has it all. The guitar playing is beautiful: both the fingerpicked dobro at the opening by James Burton and the unforgettable electric guitar lines and solo by Roy Nichols. The bluesy, chicken-picked ending of the solo is probably what Haggard later referred to as “a little Batman lick.” Haggard’s singing is forceful but plaintive, and the backing vocals on the chorus by Bonnie Owens and Glen Campbell are wonderful. Stylistically it has an appealing blend of folk revival and hard country elements, just as Haggard himself said: “somewhere in between Peter, Paul & Mary and Johnny Cash.”
The lyrics are a model of efficiency (as is the song, clocking in at under 2:15), and aside from the one obvious moment of artistic license (“doing life without parole”) it’s an accurate autobiographical account of his early life and state of mind. David Cantwell has a smart take on the song: “After all these years, those indelible ascending shouts—they may speak of regret, but they sing like victory—strike me less like pangs of a guilty conscience and more and more like a boast. Everyone tried to change his mind, to set him straight, but no one could. Not even his mother.” I love the way Paul sings it, and singing some of the harmony vocals and playing bass on that song is incredibly satisfying. It makes me want to play in a Merle Haggard cover band! (I do feel lucky that Beth and I got to hear Haggard live, in 2013 at the State Theater in Minneapolis, just a few years before he died.)
What is your vision for a more just music industry?
Sumanth: This is a tough one. The music industry is so profoundly unjust in so many ways, and certainly not just for queer and BIPOC artists. (The entire US media industry is economically unjust; the book Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow describes this injustice in lucid detail.) Indeed, because of this, nearly every musician of any identity who is trying to make it to some degree in their local music scenes and beyond will feel the pain of what it takes to get a booking person to pay attention to your inquiries, to ask people to listen to your recordings, and to get paid half-decently if you manage to be successful in getting a gig or album/track plays.
That said, in my experience the edge that white artists receive in the Americana world is formidable, and I suspect a lot of that has to do with the fact that the music is racialized as white. When a booking person sees my (to them) strange name, I suspect that the first thing they think, whether consciously or not, is that this name doesn’t go with that music. If they happen to listen and give our materials a chance, things often do change, and some are surely attracted by the novelty of a nonwhite person and even South Asian doing music like this—indeed, that irony or juxtaposition is one of many that we do thematize to a degree in our recordings and performances.
And, I bet that this is less of an issue now than it used to be when I first started making music like this, over twenty years ago. I guess I have such little hope for the music business becoming just—for that, we’d need a lot more federal, state, and regional funding supporting musicians, and probably the nationalization of the recording industry and streaming services and a major transformation of the current copyright regime, for starters. I keep thinking about what musicians’ unions and cooperatives can do to help and would make a plea for those in some relative position of power within the Americana world to take a chance on artists of diverse identities. I also know I have a lot to learn within the business and keep my eyes and ears open for resources, to try to do it all better.
Beth: I’ve seen some pretty cool data collection online lately that, I hope, will contribute to a more just music industry, or, at the very least, more thoughtful booking practices. Book More Women, for example, continues to draw attention to gender-related festival disparities in the U.S. (they compile data on trans and nonbinary artists, too, and approach the category of “woman” inclusively). They note that, as of 2024, “less than 25% of the musicians on stage at major US music festivals are women. They also name—and tag—individual festivals, presumably so that festival organizers will see that “Book More Women” has looked into their event. There is no guarantee that organizers *will* change what they do, but it provides an opening. And to Sumanth’s point about the whiteness of Americana, it seems like a similar approach could be beneficial in relation to race/ethnicity and other vectors of identity (and maybe there are people out there doing that work already—I hope so!).
I worry, too, about our elders, and what happens when younger working musicians today become elders. The lack of social safety nets in the U.S. is appalling, and those who are the most vulnerable and marginalized among us are the ones who are hit the hardest. We desperately need more support for the arts and artists in this country and more social services for everyone. More socialism, less capitalism. That’s my vision.
Where have you found joy in the country/Americana world?
Sumanth: There are so many! The rise of a new crop of Black country/Americana musicians, including Rhiannon Giddens, Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen, and numerous others, is incredibly heartening. Seeing Nashville have to deal with Lil Nas X’s fantastic song “Old Town Road” was both dispiriting but also empowering, particularly when the version with Billy Ray Cyrus became a #1 pop hit. Luke Combs’s #1 country hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s masterpiece “Fast Car” (and their recent duo performance at the Grammy Awards ceremony) has made me both appreciate how powerful the original song is and how country music audiences are increasingly, if unevenly embracing a new world in which Blackness and Black musicians are seen as central to the genre (even if it was always the case and unacknowledged or repressed). Beyoncé’s new #1 country hit “Texas Hold ’Em” blends country and R&B in provocative and compelling ways. It’s really cool that roots/folk artists like Bhi Bhiman are out there, representing a South Asian presence in this musical orbit at a high level. Likewise, Giri and Uma Peters have been making old-time music for several years and sound great doing it. It all makes me feel like there’s a place for me in Americana music after all.
That said, the greatest joy I find is when I hear a song or a performance that really floors me. Usually it is on classic recordings, by people like Dolly Parton or Waylon Jennings. But about a year ago, Beth and I were able to hear Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band live in Austin, Texas, when Allen was 79 years old. He is still writing incredible songs and still sounds amazing as a singer and keyboardist. We also heard Willie Nelson live last summer, sounding terrific at 90 years old. Or, to take someone who is less famous, I first learned about trans country musician Namoli Brennett in Shana Goldin-Perschbacher’s book Queer Country (which includes many great quotes by you, Rachel!). While digging around online, I found this song by her called “Rough Enough,” performed live by her trio, and it’s really powerful and moving. Mary Gauthier’s “Rifles and Rosary Beads”—also discussed in Queer Country—is another stunning song, recorded beautifully on her 2018 album of the same title. It seems crucial to savor those moments when music is so meaningful, particularly at a time when we are saturated with an unfathomable amount of recorded music immediately available at one’s fingertips.
Rosie: I’m a big fan of Brandi Carlile, obviously for her voice and songwriting but also because she’s both queer and a mom, like me, and I also lived in the Pacific Northwest for a bit. So I connect with a lot of her words. The first time I saw her play live in 2018 she announced she was going to sing a cover of her favorite song, “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell. Blue is my favorite record, and I was immediately transported to a memory of me as a teenager, singing and playing that same song on my banjo to this girl I loved. I know that’s super specific but when you get to see parts of yourself in someone successful who you respect and admire, it feels like maybe you belong somewhere. Which of course is the whole point of increasing representation in Americana music. She also sings with such candor and compassion about grief and loss and addiction, which kind of lifts a weight and permits others to be open about that stuff too. So many people are losing friends and family to opioids and it can be a huge relief to hear others’ experiences. We lost our bandmate, my partner Johnny Becker, in 2017 to fentanyl poisoning. Songs like “Sugartooth” have inspired me in terms of embracing all the complicated facets of people and their memory, which is important in finding your way back toward joy after such a monumental loss.
Beth: As a middle-aged introvert, I sometimes find it hard to navigate the music scene (or any social scene, to be honest), which appears to be getting younger and younger as I continue getting older and older. But, I have to say, the kids are alright. I’m particularly inspired by young Americana musicians, especially in our local midwestern communities, who not only embrace who they are but proudly tell you who they are. That is no small thing, given the political leanings of some country/Americana music fans. I’m so moved by that.