The Blue Ridge Music Center presents The Chatham Rabbits with special guest Kate Rhudy live in concert in our spacious outdoor amphitheater on The Blue Ridge Parkway
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? “We’re not purists,” Austin says.“ And we’re certainly not the hippest,” Sarah adds. “But we’ve been able to belong nowhere and everywhere at the same time,” Sarah says, and I agree...With their first album, 2018’s All I Want from You, Chatham Rabbits shared the many stories they’d heard over their years growing up in North Carolina. With The Yoke Is Easy, the Burden Is Full, they’re sharing their own stories. - author Wiley Cash
KATE RHUDY
Raleigh-based songwriter Kate Rhudy worked alongside collaborator and producer Andrew Marlin of Mandolin Orange to create her 2017 debut, Rock N’ Roll Ain’t For Me, which earned Rhudy nods from WUNC and INDY Week as “one of the Triangle’s sharpest young songwriters”. In October of 2020, Rhudy released a 7-inch record Dance It Away, Snake, including the single “Dance It Away” featured on Spotify’s Infinite Indie Folk playlist.