Backyard Band, one of Washington’s most enduring go-go groups, will celebrate 35 years together with a concert billed as an “All White Party” on Saturday, July 25, at The Theater at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
The show starts at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7. The performance caps more than three decades for a band that began by beating on plastic buckets on D.C. street corners and grew into a fixture of the city’s homegrown sound.
Known to fans as BYB, the band formed around 1991 in Washington. Its founders included lead talker Anwan “Big G” Glover, who remains the group’s front man. Early on, the young musicians drew guidance from Chuck Brown, the guitarist and bandleader widely called the godfather of go-go.
That mentorship helped shape a career that has spanned five studio albums. The band’s 1997 release, “Hood Related,” debuted at No. 69 on the Billboard R&B albums chart. Other records include “We Like It Raw” (1995), “Skillet” (1999) and “Street Antidote” (2016).
Backyard Band’s reach has extended well beyond the D.C. area. In 2018, the group toured Ghana, carrying go-go to West Africa, and recorded with rapper Snoop Dogg the same year. Glover has also built a screen career, best known for playing Slim Charles on the HBO drama “The Wire.”
The concert arrives as go-go continues to hold a distinct place in the region’s culture. The genre is a subgenre of funk that emerged in Washington between the mid-1960s and late 1970s. It is defined by syncopated, percussion-heavy rhythms and live call-and-response between the band and the crowd, a format that keeps one song rolling into the next.
Go-go earned formal recognition in February 2020, when the D.C. Council voted unanimously to name it the official music of Washington. The decision followed a public campaign to protect the sound as parts of the city changed. Alongside Backyard Band, the genre’s foundational acts include Chuck Brown, Rare Essence, E.U. and Trouble Funk.
Backyard Band has long counted itself among the city’s top go-go groups. Glover has attributed the band’s longevity to a stable lineup and a consistent sound, noting that the members chose not to swap players in and out over the years, a practice he said protected the group’s chemistry.
For many in the Washington metropolitan area, the anniversary show represents both a milestone for the band and a marker for a musical tradition rooted in the District. The performance places a homegrown act on one of the region’s larger stages, drawing a genre born on street corners into a marquee venue just across the D.C. line.
Tickets for the 35th anniversary concert are available through Ticketmaster.
