CHATHAM RABBITS
North Carolina is a place so identifiable by its separate regions – the mountains, the piedmont, the coast – that it has the tendency to feel indescribable, meaning one can conceptualize the state as a mashup of places rather than a single locale. The art and artists born from the state often embody that same sense of blended regions, borrowing from broad cultural traditions and plumbing the histories of others’ stories on the way to telling their own. Because of this, many North Carolina artists can call a particular region home, but their work belongs to the state because the entirety of the state has opened itself to them and they have opened themselves to it. Chatham Rabbits exemplify North Carolina’s tradition of producing artists who embrace the state’s many cultural resources and diverse musical traditions.
In their marriage and in their music, Chatham Rabbits’ Austin and Sarah McCombie also blend their own histories into a shared musical experience. Sarah first took the stage as part of a trio known as the South Carolina Broadcasters, a band that harkened back to the old days of the Grand Ole Opry and AM radio country classics. Meanwhile, Austin played keyboards and guitar for an electronic band called DASH. Given these histories, how would Chatham Rabbits describe their musical marriage?
CHRIS MURPHY
Born into an Irish-Italian family near New York City, Murphy was surrounded by the disparate and eclectic sounds of his neighbors’ traditional music. “I heard and was influenced by everything – from Italian-mandolin music, to bluegrass and folk, to Latin music,” he says. Inevitably, he discovered rock ‘n’ roll, claiming still further influence from some of rock’s most adventurous and eclectic icons: Lou Reed and Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan and Richard Thompson. “My real hero,” he says, “was David Lindley. Hearing him play fiddle and lap steel with Jackson Browne — that kind of esoteric, enigmatic soloing over songs is originally what I loved.”
He learned about Turkish and Indian music at Simon’s Rock of Bard College and then studied composition at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. A longtime instrumental dabbler, Murphy has mostly taught himself how to play percussion, guitar and mandolin, even some Eastern instruments, but he found his proper match at 22, when he picked up the violin. “It’s the one instrument you’ll find anywhere you go,” he says. “And it has a wonderful, charming kind of minstrel quality. I love all the myths surrounding it.”
Eventually, Murphy did as so many American adventure seekers had done before him: He sought his fortune in the West. Now based in Los Angeles, Murphy earns his living by teaching — guitar, mandolin and violin — working on music for films, and, mostly, by performing his work for audiences.