BY: MAYA CAUS
Guest Contributor
Local to the city of Belleville, Illinois, Jackrabbit returned to the stage of Club 110 at 110 North High St. on Saturday, March 8, after a five-month hiatus. The band made the well anticipated comeback just six days shy of the release of their debut single.
Band members 18-year-old Megan “Niko” Nail, 19-year-old Estella “Stella Kidd” Lybarger, and 23-year-old Andrew “Drew” Rawlings took the stage as friends gathered to dance and headbang to their loud and heavy music, as the band describes. “I feel like I could do 13 backflips when I’m up there,” said Lybarger, STLCC-Meramec student, guitarist and backup vocalist of the band.
Jackrabbit, the name chosen by Lybarger, was founded in August 2022 by Nail and Lybarger after meeting at Rock Camp in Melodic Rhythms Music School located in the same building as Club 110. The two worked with their former guitarist and drummer and formed the band after having similar ideas for music and, “because we thought we vibed,” said Nail, vocalist and bassist. The band describes the genre as, “Riot Grrrl, or a subgenre of Punk… like Joan Jett or something,” said Rawlings, the temporary drummer.
Rawlings joined Jackrabbit in November 2024. He played with Nail and Lybarger at previous shows with his current band H7, and decided to learn how to play their songs and join the two on stage.
At the March 8 performance, two acoustic sets were played by friends of Jackrabbit before they set the stage. According to the band, the three have a mixed set of nerves and adrenaline while playing on stage for the first time in five months. “I’ve been in a car wreck and playing in a show has given me more adrenaline,” said Nail.
The band opened with their soon-to-be debut single “Get Clean,” set for release on Friday, March 14. “This one is about a sex worker, apparently… and listening to the lyrics, it makes sense,” said Nail.
During the writing process for “Get Clean,” the two were jotting down lyric ideas “that made no sense,” said Nail. As they were recording the song, their music producer allegedly assumed the song was about a sex worker with lyrics such as, “Walking down the street, a clean chick gone neat. She feels like a person, but baby, she’s a freak.”
“When we write lyrics together, it’s like a shitty ad lib… and we go ‘write that down, write that down,’” said Lybarger.
Other songs such as “Anti-Frat,” “Murder Husbands,” “Raise Hell,” “Watch Queen,” “Bite Me,” and their next single “Pepper Spray” were also performed. “Pepper Spray” has yet to be mixed and finished, and is set to release later this month, according to Jackrabbit.
The songwriting process differs for Nail and Lybarger. Whether song ideas are introduced to the other, a collaboration effort, or quickly written in 10 minutes, the two typically seek inspiration from different things. “Watch Queen” was written about gay men who would stand outside the doors of club bathrooms and alert those in the bathrooms of any police officers in the building, according to Lybarger, which she learned about in her sociology class.
The future plan for Jackrabbit includes booking more shows and recording new songs to prepare for their planned debut album release later this year. The next Jackrabbit performance will be Saturday, April 12, at The Record Space in St. Louis County, Missouri.
