The title ‘Gas Money‘ may be hint enough that Chatham Rabbits don’t come from the Kentish town on the Medway. Nope, these Chatham Rabbits are from North Carolina where the wife and husband duo of Sarah and Austin McCombie make their own brand of indie-folk. ‘Gas Money‘ comes from the upcoming release ‘Be Real With Me‘ the duo’s first since ‘If You See Me Riding By’ which was put out in 2022. ‘Be Real With Me‘ is due out February 14th, so that’s the romantic musical gift taken care of.
The new album is something of an emotional growth spurt for the band, as Sarah McCombie explains: “We’ve grown up together and getting to reveal this album feels like our collective coming of age. We got married so young – we are simply not the same people we once were because playing music for a living has consumed and transformed us. This lifestyle has presented us with exhausting tour schedules, vulnerable songs that force us to talk about our marriage, difficult business decisions, and the ever-complicated dilemma of mixing art and money and friends and employees.”
Austin McCombie adds: “We’ve never been a bluegrass band, but being from NC we cannot ignore the regional influences all around us. We sampled organic tones and manipulated them into synth pads and percussive elements on this record. It feels like a natural progression because the foundational components of our music are still there, we’ve just added to it.”
Speaking directly about ‘Gas Money’, Sarah told Americana UK that: “The chorus for this song came from one of our fans, an 86-year old woman from Virginia named Eve. Eve and I have been penpals for six years, ever since she started coming to our very tiny coffee shop shows way back in 2018. We send each other snail mail and sometimes she’ll tuck in a $20 bill for me to “treat myself.” Most recently, she wrote to me and included a crisp bill with a sticky note reading ‘gas money for the long road home.’ I knew that I wanted that line in a song. It all came together when I was lamenting on the particular heartbreak I was feeling when I realized I had little to give someone except wishing them well and a little gas money to get them home. This song also encompasses the recklessness of youth that I thought I lost, but found again in my early thirties. It’s freeing and terrifying, and I’m ultimately a better person for having lived it.”