The Amish Outlaws | |
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 The Amish Outlaws Live at Musicfest Cafe | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Genres |
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| Years active | 2002-present |
| Members |
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| Website | amishoutlaws |
The Amish Outlaws are an American cover band from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The band was formed in 2002 and is composed of three ex-Amish and three "honorary Amish" musicians.
The Amish Outlaws began in 2002. [1] Three of the founding members, Ezekiel, Amos Def, and Hezekiah X moved to New York City after leaving the Amish community. They originally began playing in a band for fun and eventually decided to become The Amish Outlaws to make a living from it. [2] Three of the six members [3] are from the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, specifically from the Old Order Amish. [4] The band wanted to play popular culture rock music that was not typical of their traditional Amish upbringing. The band plays renditions of songs by contemporary composers and talk about their rumspringa experience as ex-members of the Amish community. They primarily tour the East Coast of the United States. [1] [5] (Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.) 
They have performed in Las Vegas. [6] at Bally’s Casino and at FreedomFest at Paris Resort. [7] The band has also performed two cruises to Bermuda in 2013 and 2014. [8] The band performs at the annual concert series Musikfest. [9] held in Bethlehem, PA.
The band members are known for their movement style where they, in the words of writer Simon J. Bronner, "frenetically jump and gyrate on stage in Amish garb." [5] Band member Ezekiel has stated that they use the clothing as a gimmick, but not in a disrespectful manner. [6] Growing up, the band members did not have much exposure to music outside the Amish community. They sang to Ausbund and heard bits and pieces of music from cars passing through their community. [10] The band performs songs across several genres including pop, rock, rhythm and blues, reggae, dance, country, and heavy metal. [11] The band is constantly changing and updating their musical set list.
Brother Amos Def plays the keyboard, guitar, banjo, and vocals. [3] He was raised Amish.
Lead vocalist Big Daddy Abel was not raised Amish. [6] He is from New Jersey and he joined the band in 2007. After college, he worked as a school teacher for several years and then as a chemist for several years after that. He also worked as an actor in television shows such as the HBO series Oz, [12] where he portrayed a biker inmate for several seasons. He was also in multiple episodes of Law & Order , Guiding Light , As the World Turns and such movies as School of Rock , Men in Black II , Spider-Man 2 , The Guru , and Across the Universe . Big Daddy Abel also composes original music, which can be heard at ReverbNation.com and iTunes. “BDA” is also the author of Open Your Mind, Open This Book: Open Mic, which can be found at Amazon.com (All profits from book sales are donated to research to help find a cure for breast cancer.)
Brother Eazy Ezekiel plays the bass and vocals. [3] [13] He is one of the founders of the band. He was raised in the Amish community until the age of 16. [14] During his rumspringa, Ezekiel moved to New York and earned his GED. He attended Pace University. On hearing the albums Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [6] and The Wall , Ezekiel reported that "hearing those two albums for the first time really got me into music." He stated that he still goes back to visit his family at home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he is not shunned because he has not been baptized yet. [9] Some of his brothers have been to a performance of the band, but the rest of his family has not. [6]
Brother Snoop Job is a guitarist and vocalist [15] He was not raised Amish.
Brother Hezekiah X is a lead on vocals. [3] He grew up near Reading, Pennsylvania. [11] He has one brother and one sister. He has stated that some of his family have left the Amish community. [6] The Atlantic City Weekly reported that Hezekiah "had been fantasizing about performing music since he was young, took that big chance leaving family, friends and a way of life behind and he couldn't be happier about it." [11]
Brother Jakob the Pipe Player is a drummer. [3] He was not raised Amish. [6] Jakob joined the band after meeting the members through a mutual friend. [12]
Brother Ishmael L Cool J was a guitarist for the band. [6]
Authors Donald Kraybill, Karen Johnson-Weiner, and Steven Nolt wrote in their book, The Amish, that some youth members of the community rebel and participate in "activities that are offensive to their birthright culture." They cite The Amish Outlaws as an example. [1]
Plain people are Christian groups characterized by separation from the world and by simple living, including plain dressing in modest clothing. Many Plain people have an Anabaptist background. These denominations are largely of German, Swiss German and Dutch ancestry, though people of diverse backgrounds have been incorporated into them. Conservative Friends are traditional Quakers who are also considered plain people; they come from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds.
The Old Order River Brethren are a River Brethren denomination of Anabaptist Christianity with roots in the Radical Pietist movement. As their name indicates, they are Old Order Anabaptists.
Old Order Mennonites form a branch of the Mennonite tradition. Old Order are those Mennonite groups of Swiss German and south German heritage who practice a lifestyle without some elements of modern technology, who still drive a horse and buggy rather than cars, wear very conservative and modest dress plainly and who have retained the old forms of worship, baptism and communion.
Rumspringa, also spelled Rumschpringe or Rumshpringa, is a rite of passage during adolescence, translated from originally Palatine German and other Southwest German dialects to English as "jumping or hopping around", used in some Amish communities. The Amish, a subsect of the Anabaptist Christian movement, intentionally segregate themselves from other communities as a part of their faith. For Amish youth, the Rumspringa normally begins at age 16 and ends when a youth chooses either to be baptized in the Amish church or to leave the community. For Wenger Mennonites, Rumspringa occurs mostly between ages of 17 and 21.
The New Order Amish are a subgroup of Amish that split away from the Old Order Amish in the 1960s for a variety of reasons, which included a desire for "clean" youth courting standards, meaning they do not condone the practice of bundling, or non-sexually lying in bed together, during courtship. Tobacco and alcohol are also not allowed. They also wished to incorporate more evangelical elements into the church, including Sunday school and mission work. Some scholars see the group best characterized as a subgroup of Old Order Amish, despite the name.
Donald B. Kraybill is an American author, lecturer, and educator on Anabaptist faiths and culture. Kraybill is widely recognized for his studies on Anabaptist groups and in particular the Amish. He has researched and written extensively on Anabaptist culture. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and Senior Fellow Emeritus at Elizabethtown's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostages and shot ten girls, killing five, before committing suicide in the schoolhouse. The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the Amish community's response was widely discussed by the national media. The West Nickel Mines School was later demolished, and a new one-room schoolhouse, the New Hope School, was built at another location.
The Troyer Amish or Stutzman-Troyer Amish are a conservative subgroup of Old Order Amish.
The Beachy Amish Mennonites, also known as the Beachy Mennonites, are an Anabaptist group of churches in the Conservative Mennonite tradition that have Amish roots. Although they have retained the name "Amish" they are quite different from the Old Order Amish: they do not use horse and buggy for transportation, with a few exceptions they do not speak Pennsylvania German anymore, nor do they have restrictions on technology except for radio and television. In the years 1946 to 1977 a majority was transformed into an evangelical revivalist denomination. The traditionalists who wanted to preserve the old Beachy Amish ways then withdrew and formed their own congregations. Today they are known as Midwest Beachy Amish Mennonites or Old Beachy Amish.
Steven M. Nolt is an American scholar who serves as Senior Scholar and Professor of History and Anabaptist Studies at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. The author of fifteen books, most of which focus on Amish and Mennonite history and culture, Nolt is a frequent source for journalists and other researching Anabaptist groups. He was often quoted in the aftermath of the 2006 West Nickel Mines School shooting at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.
The Groffdale Conference Mennonite Church, also called Wenger Mennonites, is the largest Old Order Mennonite group to use horse-drawn carriages for transportation. Along with the automobile, they reject many modern conveniences, while allowing electricity in their homes and steel-wheeled tractors to till the fields. Initially concentrated in eastern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, their numbers had grown to 22,305 people resided in eight other states as of 2015. They share the pulpit with the Ontario Mennonite Conference but have some differences in Ordnung.
The Amish, formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches, another Anabaptist denomination. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, Christian pacifism, and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor replace face-to-face conversations whenever possible, and a view to maintain self-sufficiency. The Amish value rural life, manual labor, humility and Gelassenheit.
The Swartzentruber Amish are the best-known and one of the largest and most conservative subgroups of Old Order Amish. Swartzentruber Amish are considered a subgroup of the Old Order Amish, although they do not fellowship or intermarry with more liberal Old Order Amish. They speak Pennsylvania German as their mother tongue as well as English.
Amish believe large families are a blessing from God. Amish rules allow marrying only between members of the Amish Church. The elderly do not go to a retirement facility; they remain at home. As time has passed, the Amish have felt pressures from the modern world; their traditional rural way of life is becoming more different from the modern society. Isolated groups of Amish populations may have genetic disorders or other problems of closed communities. Amish make decisions about health, education, relationships based on their Biblical interpretation. Amish life has influenced some things in popular culture.
Subgroups of Amish developed over the years, as Amish churches have divided many times over doctrinal disputes. The 'Old Order' Amish, a conservative faction that withdrew from fellowship with the wider body of Amish in the 1860s, are those that have most emphasized traditional practices and beliefs. There are many different subgroups of Amish with most belonging, in ascending order of conservatism, to the Beachy Amish, New Order, Old Order, or Swartzentruber Amish groups.
The Lancaster Amish affiliation is the largest affiliation among the Old Order Amish and as such a subgroup of Amish. Its origin and largest settlement is Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. The settlement in Lancaster County, founded in 1760 near Churchtown is the oldest Amish settlement that is still in existence.
A Seeker is a person likely to join an Old Order Anabaptist community, like the Amish, the Old Order Mennonites, the Hutterites, the Old Order Schwarzenau Brethren or the Old Order River Brethren. Among the 500,000 members of such communities in the United States there are only an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 outsiders who have joined them.
The Byler Amish, also called Alt Gemee, are a small conservative subgroup of the Amish. They are known for the yellow color of their buggies, which earned them the nickname "yellow-toppers" and for wearing only one suspender. They are the oldest Old Order Amish affiliation that separated for doctrinal and not for geographical reasons.
The Swiss Amish are a subgroup of the Amish that emigrated to the United States mostly in the middle of the 19th century directly from Switzerland and Alsace, after the 18th-century emigration of most Amish via the Palatinate. They do not speak Pennsylvania German, but either a form of Bernese German or a Low Alemannic Alsatian dialect. Their main settlements are in Adams County, Indiana and in Allen County, Indiana. They form two distinct Amish affiliations.
Old Order Anabaptism encompasses those groups which have preserved the old ways of Anabaptist Christian religion and lifestyle.