Jackrabbit

Brooklyn-based San Fermin, now an eight-piece touring enterprise, did not start that way. In December of 2012, the initially makeshift project performed a single concert-from sheet music-and signed a record deal. Their self-titled debut was subsequently released worldwide in the fall of 2013 via Downtown Records. Following rave reviews, the band was thrust into the spotlight, performing sold out shows and festivals across the world and opening for the likes of the National, St. Vincent, Arctic Monkeys, and The Head and the Heart. Suddenly, we were not in a vacuum. We were in the thick of it, which was thrilling but also terrifying, bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone says. There were all these new possibilities and gray areas. It was a shock to the system-out in the world, barely at home, constantly in a state of semi-crisis. Many of the songs on Jackrabbit, San Fermin's second album, existed only on Ludwig-Leone's laptop for the better part of a year, as he toured and turned the band into an ensemble operation. When at last he revisited them, he knew that they had to be reborn.