Chatham Rabbits – Be Real With Me

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Chatham Rabbits is built around husband-wife bluegrass duo Austin and Sarah McCombie, the name deriving from how rabbits once rampant in their native Chatham County, North Carolina. Be Real with Me, their fourth album, kicks off with Austin singing lead on Facing 29, a song written not longer after moving to Bynum after seven years to buy and restore her family’s farm, and, as per the title, his turning 30. Featuring pedal steel, banjo and bass, addressing their relationship, it’s reflective on both the past (“The last year of our youth/Oh how we have grown“) and the future (“Will you still be there/When I’m in a rocking chair“).

Written and sung by Sarah, the largely acoustic strummed Matador draws on the title’s bullfighting associations for a song about those who close their eyes to the red flags others are showing (“I look back now, I see what for I lit myself on fire to keep us warm… I knew you before you had a pit to hiss in and now you’re full of it/And I’m left to figure it all out“) and those who’d like to kick niceties into the ditch and get confrontational. She also heads up the upbeat wheels-rolling rhythm Gas Money, which, featuring Aleah Rose Walsh on flute, originates in how one of their fans, an 86-year-old woman from Virginia named Eve, would frequently send her letters enclosing money to treat herself. One had the note “gas money for the long road home“, which duly became the chorus hook on a break-up song about realising that it might be “all I have to share, all I have to loan”  in the hope that “on the long road home you’ll think of me“.

Featuring pedal steel from Ryan Stigmon, Sarah’s third in a row is the strummed, drawled Childhood Friends which, as the title suggests, is all about reflecting on what has gone and realising you can’t turn back the clock, trying to replace those lost faces with new ones (“I make friends with all my bartenders/There’s no stranger I can resist/To make up for the statues I’ve toppled/And companions that used to exist“) and, while wondering what became of them more pointedly wondering if they’re doing the same (“Do you think they will miss me?/Or dream of me like I do them?).

For Big Fish, Small Pond the album takes a rippling instrumental break, with Austin on circling acoustic pattern, Sarah on banjo, Casey Toll on bass and Stigmon on octave mandolin returning with Austin’s Did I Really Know Him? a sparsely strummed melancholic number  he dashed off during a writing retreat so he could spend more time fishing but which emotionally explores how despite knowing a lot of facts about yourself or those close to you, you still question if you really know who you are (“I know his biggest fears/I know which ones were his best years/And what he wants to leave behind/I know who he loves/I know what he’s proud of/And what he is not/But do I really know him at all?“), and looking to become a better version.

The remaining numbers are all written and sung by Sarah, One Little Orange, again with pedal steel, is a deeply personal memory of her maternal grandfather, who died when she was still a child from years of drug and alcohol abuse, the song, one of the most countrified on the album,  anchored in the only memory she has of him (“I was only three or four I would say/You peeled us an orange and together we ate/And every piece you fed to me straight“) and of recognising that people can be both troubled and full of life (“Every picture of together of us we are smiling/It’s the happiest folks who are the ones best at hiding/It sounds like you had a lot of good friends/Then why did you die alone in the end?“). Ultimately, it’s about clinging to the truths that mean the most to you as she sings, “That one little orange will feed me forever“.

Their bluegrass roots make themselves felt on the warbled, fiddle and banjo arrangement of Collateral Damage, Vivian Leva on harmonies, a song  Sarah describes as a ‘cake and eat it’ number and, as a woman in her thirties, wanting it all, career and motherhood (“I want my freedom/And I want a baby/it’s all been coming to me lately, the time I have for it is fading“), how that might mean ruffling a few feathers of those who become the collateral damage. Given her age, it’s also surprising that the lyrics reference Bonanza, a TV Western series from the 60s to the early 70s.

It ends with Pool Shark’s Table, musically capturing a touch of Loudon Wainwright III, while its background of a night in New Orleans where she tied one on (“those juicy hazy IPAs get me every time“) and woke up with both a hangover and a mountain of shame at being so irresponsible (“woke angry at myself/After years of masks and lung collapse/I made my bed a jail“) wouldn’t be equally amiss in the comparisons. Beyond that, though, it’s also about pushing the envelope in the search for bigger, more resonant experiences, at whatever the cost (“Like a thief, took what called out to me, headed home wanting more/And woke up with a sober mind, pleased with my reward“) and being aware of the consequences (“I’d stop if I wanted but I do not/I should my get thrill another way/It will catch up to me someday“). Suffice it to say, you probably wouldn’t have been advised to go on a pub crawl with her back then.

Veined by regrets and desires, it’s an honest and open album that moves beyond its bluegrass borders to explore different musical territory. As the title says, it gets real.

Be Real with Me (14th February 2025) Self Released