The Rabbitts have recently released their new 10 track LP entitled “Tall Pines & Tangled Vines”, a acoustic, folk/psychedelic folk, nature inspired masterpiece. The duo originally from the UK has been living in BC Canada, where they have been writing and re offing music as well as touring. There music is tender and whimsical, encapsulating themes of love, nature, exploration and freedom.
I spoke with the couple, Odran Linsey and Lucy McKinlay, about their quest for nature and music. They have a great spirit and energy which is reflected within their music….
So I caught you in the middle of a Canadian tour?
Lucy: Yes. We were living in Vancouver for about 18 months and we’ve just started to travel around the big country.
How long have you been together?
Lucy: As a couple, 4 1/2 years.
You’re a couple as well?
Lucy: Yes we are. 41/2 years as a couple and about 21/2 musically.
Odran: We’ve played music kind of always together, but more seriously about 2 years.
How did you get the name Rabbitt?
Lucy: We met at University in Norwich where I’m from. It’s like a very green space, there with tons of bunnies that run around there. We spent a lot of time outside there being together. It was just a bit of a symbol of the University and where we met, so it just seemed to fit for us. We liked nature and it just seemed to fit.
I can tell by your songs and your video. Who writes the songs, are they collaborative?
Lucy: Yeah, we write them together. It was hard when we were in Vancouver because we were working, we didn’t have too much time together. So we would write separately a bit and then bring them together when we had time.
Odran: One of us would come to the other one with a song and we’d build on that together. So there wasn’t any song that was written entirely by either of us.
I think the face that you’re a couple is adorable.
Lucy: It’s pretty nice.
Do you ever get back to the UK?
Odran: Well our visas will expire in November.
Lucy: We had a limited time in Canada, two years, so we are coming to the end of our visit.
Odran: So we are going to fly back to the East Coast and then we will be back in England.
Will you be touring the states?
Lucy: We haven’t planned on touring the states. The tour that we are doing here is we are just exploring the country as well. We are taking four months to travel the country. It’s more of a leisurely tour. As soon as we get back to England we are planning a three city tour and then we’re hoping for the next festival season to do a lot of festivals around England, and maybe Europe.
Aside from nature, what are your influences?
Lucy: Sometimes we write songs coming from our relationship. The goods and the bads. Love is a natural thing to write about.
Odran: I don’t think you can pin point anything. They can be pretty random.
Lucy: It could be random. We like to write about society, some things to do with that. Maybe some injustices and technology dependent people as well. We live in a mostly technological dependent culture.
Odran: I think just nature mostly. We love to throw out metaphors for different things.
Where do you wish to be with your music in five years?
Odran: It would be great to have another couple of albums under our belt and to have progressed a lot musically. I feel that we are at a point in our musical lives where I imagine that we are improving as much as will ever improve. Especially over the last year. I hope that kind of carries on for the next five years. Hopefully we will be able to support ourselves from the music, and be able to give more time.
Lucy: We try to be quite active in improving our instruments, improving our voices, and our songwriting. So I think that is what we will be doing.
Who did you grow up listening to?
Odran: On my mum’s side of my family is Irish and it would have been a lot of big Irish musicians, that I would’ve grown up listening to, Van Morrison, the U2’s, Thin Lizzy…and then other Irish folk bands such as the Cheiftons. I would’ve listen to a lot of music like that.
Lucy: I listened to a lot of 60/70’s folk and rock like Joni Mitchell and the Rolling Stones.
If you could say anything to your fans and followers, what would that be?
Lucy: It would be nice to let them know that we didn’t get professionally trained in music or anything, and it’s nice to know that you can push on with something you like just with perseverance and passion. It would be nice for people to know that they can just come and do things like that if the want to, because we did. I didn’t think a few years ago that we would have recorded an album. It seems wild but we pushed on and it happened.
https://www.therabbitts.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheRabbitts/
https://www.instagram.com/therabbitts/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/20fBRSsvDK3GmHQKcpZ3DH?si=S-2EcswnTZeR6wrOABGbaQ
https://www.youtube.com/therabbitts
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