Bunnies

Usually when a band gets a big chance, like opening a series of dates during the Pixies' reunion tour, they use that name recognition to carry them to the next level. Instead, Northampton's Bunnies changed their name from the Bennies, and took a left turn into outer space, literally.
"We're going for a science fiction thing now, futuristic, more spacey," singer and guitarist Jeremy Dubs says. "We started writing new songs that we liked so much. It's not that we don't really like our old stuff, it just doesn't seem to fit with what we're doing now."
Citing Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Stanislaw Lem and Isaac Asimov as influences, the band has immersed themselves in other worlds.
"We read a lot of science fiction and get our aesthetic from those novels," bassist Jack Godleski says. "Some of our songs are macro science fiction about galaxies, and some of them are smaller subjects like individuals. We pretty much changed everything but our name, so we decided to change our name, too."
With a new backing band featuring drummer Matt Newman-Long and guitarist/Moog player Robert Ives, the band changing their name just sort of happened accidentally.
"It started as a joke," Dubs confesses. "We had the songs in a file on our computer and we had it under Bunnies. We'd joke around about what if that was really our name. Eventually we started calling ourselves Bunnies. And we started feeling like Bunnies."
Their connection with Frank Black has existed since Dubs first handed him a tape of his songs back in 1998, and now Black is on the verge of producing a Bunnies album.
"Really our main goal is just to get an album released," Dubs says. "We've always wanted to make a good album."
"We want to bridge the gap between experimental and accessible," Godleski adds, "kind of like how Sonic Youth does where you can be far out within the framework of a song."
The band hopes to carry their music beyond the Pioneer Valley, as playing music is the one thing that Dubs really wants to do.
"I would love to be on tour," Dubs says. "Basically I just don't ever want to have a day job. I hate working."
Godleski chuckles and adds, "Jeremy has a lot of advantages ... he doesn't take up a lot of space."
Dubs, who is confined to a wheelchair due to a genetic disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta, agrees. "I can sleep anywhere." - Boston Metro (January 19, 2007)