By Eileen Tilson
These days we all know that in order to be a successful musical act, you must tour… all the time. However, Orlando indie band Rabbit! are using their tour to promote something other than themselves. For the past 48 days, they have hit 45 cities, each place turning the spotlight on a local music program doing good for their hometown. Make sure and check out Rabbit! tonight at the Atlanta Room, as they use the stage to promote the Georgia Council for the Arts. We had a chat with them about their plan.
Your tour is about to come to an end! Could you explain how the tour went and a little about the cause behind it?
With only a few days on this 46-day tour, I’d have to say that this was an amazing experience, one that we will never forget. As most bands know there’s nothing like a long tour to really get your act together, performance-wise. I don’t remember a “bad” show in the entire bunch. Whether at a house party, traditional venue, coffee shop, bookstore, ice cream parlor or kids summer program we were delighted by the reactions we got and we had a great time getting to play our songs live for people. This is really only our second time out as a touring act so it’s still exciting to get that immediate positive feedback that only live performances can garner.
We really wanted to make this tour about something more then just selling CDs, T-shirts, and promoting the band so we set out to learn about, explore and participate in interesting or unique programs that we could find that give kids alternative outlets to music and arts in the summer and year round. We also wanted talk to people involved with advocating music in schools and get their opinions on the current situation, there in. We have had four different videographers come along on four different legs of the tour to film some of the places and people we came across. We hope to put together all the video into a 5-10 min documentary-style presentation to share with the world wide web what we experienced this summer. We aren’t hard-core activists and we have a ton to learn still but we think this was a pretty cool reason to go out on the road and a different perspective on the typical indie rock band tour.
What should people know about Rabbit they may not already?
We are the on-hold music at Zappos.com So call them, order some shoes, and ask to be put on hold so you can hear us – win-win!
For more information about Rabbit!: www.saverabbit.com
