Sarah and Austin McCombie’s songwriting is populated with other people’s stories.
Over the course of the married Americana duo’s past three albums, voices from the past are resurrected by Sarah’s 1921 banjo and Austin’s 1941 Gibson guitar—a sharecropper, a rambler, and a pack horse librarian share a songwriting universe with figures from the couple’s respective family histories and, on commissioned songs, figures from the family lore of fans.
Even the duo’s band name, the Chatham Rabbits, is an interpretative nod to the past: In the late 19th century, the Piedmont was home to a flourishing foodway—the Eastern Cottontail rabbit trade. Upon buying a mill house in Bynum, several years ago, the McCormie’s also discovered that their home was once occupied by a musician in a stringband named The Chatham Rabbits that played for nearby millworkers. Once you start digging, the past always provides.
Be Real With Me, released February 14, takes a different approach to the material. New textures—drum machines, synthesizers, pedal steel—layer the duo’s traditional sound, pulling it forward alongside a more personal style of songwriting that takes the McCombie’s from their late twenties to early thirties. The wistfulness reflected in the songs is a matured kind of yearning, one that regards the past and the future in equal measure. “We could not have made this album,” Sarah tells the INDY, “without the life experience that predated it.”
I met Sarah briefly, around 2013, before the formation of Chatham Rabbits, when we both worked at Saxapahaw’s Haw River Ballroom. I remember being impressed by her hustle—she’d show up in a homespun vintage dress, stash her banjo behind the coffee bar during a shift, and then take off afterward for a gig. That work ethic has threaded throughout the McCombie’s career: In 2018, the pair quit their jobs as a teacher and financial analyst to take on the risky dual venture of being full-time musicians and moving to Guilford County to manage the 64-acre farm that has been in Sarah’s family since the mid-1700s.
That’s a prosaic enough story on paper, but being a musician in 2025 also requires being realistic about healthcare and the algorithm. Ahead of a February 22 and 23 two-night show at the Haw River Ballroom and on the heels of the album release, the INDY had a candid conversation with Sarah McCombie about complicated friendships, contemplating motherhood as a musician, and beating the system.
Y’all have talked about this as a millennial and collective coming-of-age album. I’d love to hear why it feels that way.
This album is so different from our previous records because [before], we relied on other people’s stories and the folk tradition of turning stories into songs. This record is all about our own experience—each song is something that happened to one of us.
But as far as the millennial piece of it all—I’m 31, Austin’s 32, and a lot of the things that we’re grappling with in this album are coming to terms with our shifting from an adulthood with limitless possibilities and being naive about the future. Now stuff is getting very real for people our age; thinking about family or wanting a family, thinking about healthcare or lack thereof, thinking about reeling in your drinking or partying.
Was it a conscious choice to shift to the first-person perspective, or was it just something that you all found yourself writing more and more about?
I think it’s both. We’ve both been in therapy for a while, and I think that helped us get to this place. But also, just naturally, we’ve been at this for seven years—we’ve grown a little tired of story songs about other people, and the traditional, formulaic bluegrassy arrangements. This feels really fun and natural to us.
I will say, you know—I’ve been the person who’s a fan of other bands and is like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe they’re changing their sound, they’re shifting so much!” But as a full-time touring musician, now that we’ve been in it long enough, I understand you have to keep things interesting in order to want to keep doing this. It is a very chaotic lifestyle, and you have to feed the creative process to stay motivated.
You’ve written and talked about friendship a good bit, and it’s not something that always gets touched on in music—in particular, in “Childhood Friends,” this theme of how, once you lose touch with someone from your childhood, it’s hard to recreate that dynamic in adulthood. How has friendship fed your songwriting?
I love that song. It was the hardest [one] for me to write, probably, on the record—that subject is really tender to me. Before I got married, my childhood best friends were my world. It’s almost like the words “best friend” are not enough to describe how important they were to me—that kind of falls flat. In our American culture, we don’t hold friendships in high regard as I think we could.
When I ended up having differing opinions and visions of how I wanted to live my life and wanted to break free of those friendships that ultimately were holding me back, it was really, really, really heartbreaking. Like you said, once you leave that era behind, it’s very difficult to make up for that time—yes, you can pick up where you left off, but I haven’t talked to these friends in 10 years now, how do you even go about it? Explaining what has happened in 10 years when you’re used to texting play-by-plays of each other’s days, you know? I used to know what these girls ate for lunch and now I don’t know where they live.
That was a very difficult thing to write about but it has been really nice to have out in the world because it’s sparked conversations. These people will be like, 80 years old, and say that it resonated with them. I talked to a girl this past weekend, a sophomore in high school, who’s having friend troubles. But the biggest turn of events—and this is the first interview where I’ve mentioned this—my ex-best friend that I wrote the song about, I had not talked to her in 10 years, and she heard the song on Spotify and called me and left me a voicemail.
Wow, she knew!
Yeah, and I called her back and we spoke on the phone for the first time in 10 years and it was crazy. We’re not gonna be BFFs again and neither of us are trying to rekindle this relationship, but it did allow us to have some closure on that friendship.
As someone also in the age bracket you referenced, the song “Collateral Damage” really spoke to me. The straightforwardness of the lyric “I want, my freedom / I want a baby” is captivating and also really vulnerable. What is it like to have that song out in the world? To be a woman and say you want both of those things is hard right now.
I’ve always wanted to be a mom but we live in this place that is bizarrely fixated on women being pregnant, but also on not supporting them at all once the kid is actually here. I worry about—okay, if I’m pregnant, what if I have a miscarriage and we’re touring and in Oklahoma? What would life look like? When I wrote this song, I was like, this first line is so abrasive and plain-spoken. I was almost embarrassed to sing it for the first time because I was like, “This sounds so simple, maybe this is stupid.”
It’s not.
Yeah, I’ve learned that it’s not. This past weekend we played a sold-out show in Atlanta, which was amazing, it was our first time selling out there. I had three different women come up to me at the merch table afterward. One lady had had six miscarriages and was finally able to carry her daughter—now she has a two-year-old. Another lady had five children, and she came to the show with her two youngest, who are twins that have cerebral palsy, and they’re in wheelchairs and are in their 20s. She is in her upper 60s and is still mothering, as if, you know, she had young children.
Another woman came up to me and her husband was standing right there, and she was like, “We’ve decided not to have kids and you would not believe the reception that that gets.” All that to say, I think it’s really good that these songs are creating conversations at the merch table or amongst people. And it brings me some relief to know that I am not alone in being worried about my body and what I want for my future.
It’s hard enough finding childcare support and daycare when you’re not in a touring position—to add that to the equation, I just don’t know how people do it.
If you want to piss me off, be a 50-year-old dude who comes up to the merch table and is like “There’s no perfect time to have a kid!” I’ve just started telling people—“Well, if you don’t have a uterus, you’re not allowed to give me advice.” I used to never give crap back to anybody but I’ve started putting up some boundaries.
I was reading another interview that you and Austin did—and I appreciate how forthright you both are about the difficulties of being a touring musician—and Austin said something along the lines of “Spotify is just a business card.” As in, that’s just the first step, everything else comes after. Could you speak a bit to the obstacles that musicians face right now, whether with monopolies like Ticketmaster or venue merch cuts?
The biggest thing for us is that people are waiting until the last second to buy tickets, and it makes it very difficult to plan. And I don’t mind if you print this, but prior to the pandemic, we had sold out Cat’s Cradle, we had over halfway sold out the Carolina Theatre before COVID hit—and now it’s hard to make it to 60% of those tickets. We’re just now getting back to that point and we’re like, seven years into this industry. The consumer culture has just really changed since the pandemic.
Secondly, the Spotify thing: We have tried so hard to play the industry game, we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on PR, on digital marketing, just to try to work with the algorithm. And it has helped a teeny bit, but nowhere near what we’ve put into it. It feels like a rat race right now, and it’s sad that artists are expected to not only play the music but you’re also expected to create things that feel inauthentic just to get views on Instagram. We have made decisions about our songs so that in the first 10 seconds it will, like, be playlistable, right? You know, so that it catches the attention of a playlist editor listening to it. It sucks that we’re making any decisions based on that.
And there’s no pleasing the algorithm, ultimately.
No, there’s no pleasing the algorithm and it’s incredibly frustrating. And now some venues take about 15 to 20 percent of our merch sales—when venues do that, we put up a sign that says, “We are having to raise our prices here at the merch table to reflect what the venue is taking from us. You can pay this or you can buy them on our website where it’s cheaper.”
A lot of venues will work with us or work with bands to not take a merch cut because, the thing is, we bring our own merch seller, too, so we’re paying someone $150 to sell our merch and then we also have to pay 20 percent so we’re only making a profit margin of 30 percent.
I don’t ever want to come across as gripey and whiny because Austin and I both feel very, very blessed to do this for a living. To be self-employed is a miracle and I’m so grateful for it. But just like everything else in America right now, [the industry] is being run by the man at the top, and everybody else is working and making them money and we’re not seeing any of it.
I’m curious about the live music aspects of this. Why do you feel like people are so much more hesitant to get out and see live music?
I think that we got really comfortable being at home and on our phones. I mean, now Netflix is an algorithm and we can flip through and be mindless. It takes effort to go to a show. What people forget is that going to see live music is just like going to therapy or going to the gym. You might not want to, but putting tennis shoes on is the hardest part—just buy the ticket and go! You will leave feeling 100 times better than when you got there. You’re always gonna have a good time, because it’s with people, it’s community, it’s art.
What people forget is that going to see live music is just like going to therapy or going to the gym. You might not want to, but putting tennis shoes on is the hardest part—just buy the ticket and go!”
I think people have to readjust their brains a little bit. I will also say, along the lines of live shows, another thing that we’ve seen—at every ticketed show is there are so many secondhand and after-market sales that are ripping off the venues. A lot of our fans aren’t aware of this and they’ll just buy a ticket from anywhere and show up at the Haw River Ballroom and that ticket is not real—that was a scam, yeah.
Oh, the other thing I will say—we’re trying to start earlier and catch people as they’re leaving work to come to our shows instead of going home, getting comfortable, and then heading back out. We’re trying to beat the system.
Yeah, I feel there is a consumer education part and habit part to this as well.
I just try to tell our fans, like all the time—and they’re probably sick of me saying this on Instagram—“buy your tickets in advance!” I try to list out why it’s so important. People will say, “Come to Texas, come to Kentucky!” And I’m like, okay, but if I do and we book a show there, you have to show up for us and buy in advance or else the venue is going to be like, “Who is this band from North Carolina?” The fans that want you to come to their city—they need to do their part and make you seem legitimate.
Are there local shows on this tour you’re excited about?
We’ll be all up and down the East Coast for the next month and a half. We’ve got the Haw River Ballroom—the first show is sold out but the second night still has plenty of tickets. And then the end of March, it will be the 28th in Wilmington and the 29th in Charlotte.
We are also doing more and more events on our farm in Greensboro. So we do concerts for our Patreon community and the community is very robust and our patrons hang out with each other when we’re not there—they are all buddies. We’re gonna do concerts on our farm this summer and we’re gonna do a Chatham Rabbit summer camp for kids, which we did last year, and it went so well we’re gonna do that again.
Is there anything else that has come up around the album, or anything else you want to tell readers about?
I just want to give a shout-out to Saman Khoujinian who is our co-producer and one-half of the leadership of Sleepy Cat Records. Saman is mine and Austin’s best friend—it’s so great that we can have a mutual bestie. He’s just such a wonderful person and we could not have made this album without him. The Triangle should be so thankful that is where he picked to live and work.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email sedwards@indyweek.com.