Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren and Mick Hambly.
Hi Lauren and Mick, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hi there! We’re Australian, Nashville-based recording artists and award winning duo, “Leaving Lennox”, comprised of Mick and Lauren Hambly. Where do we start…
We met back in college in 2015 (both studying a Bachelor of Music Performance), where we formed a friendship over our love for music, which later formed into “Leaving Lennox” and a relationship to come with it. We based ourselves in Sydney, performing up and down the East Coast of Australia for around a year and a half. In 2017, we decided to vacation the Pacific Islands on a Carnival Cruise Ship, where we befriended an English duo who were resident performers on the ship.
After arriving home to Sydney, we decided to apply for Carnival Cruise Lines for a duo position. 6 weeks later, we were flying out to LA to join a ship. It was our first overseas adventure together and we were so excited to be performing for 6 months on American Cruise Ships. We were fresh out of a College Music Degree and the Australian touring circuit and were so excited to play music for an audience on the other side of the world.
The American crowds seriously exceeded our expectations. We sold out of our albums within weeks and grew our social media following by over double within a few months. We decided to take on just one more cruise ship contract out of Miami. On our last week, we met some folks from Nashville TN, who had nothing but amazing things to say about “Music City”. From that point on, it was our goal to get over to America, perform on land there and be full-time artists.
Fast forward six months, we booked a one-way flight over to Nashville… three minutes before a show started here in Sydney. It was the best decision we ever made! Nashville has been an absolute dream and has shown us a world of opportunities, that we would never have imagined two and a half years ago.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
If we were to use one word to describe our journey, it definitely wouldn’t be “smooth” haha, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We are super happy with how far we have come over the past 5 years and wouldn’t change any part of our experience.
One of our most difficult endeavors has been getting a US Performance (work) visa. A lot of people don’t realize how difficult it is to do this and it took us almost a year to accumulate everything we needed. Another inevitable struggle with our journey was essentially “starting over” here in the US and getting settled. We basically had to start from scratch when it came to our personal life, but we are constantly thankful that we went through it all together.
Once getting settled, there have been other roadblocks (i.e., being a creative during the pandemic, haha), but we have thankfully come out of this with a stronger fanbase and as more resilient artists. This past year has been career-defining for us and we have also had many milestones in our personal life. We released new music, wrote some of our favorite songs to date, received airplay on National radio and CMT, performed some of our biggest shows, got married, and have some huge news, which we will release in early January 2022.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are a Pop-country music duo and believe our industry strengths are definitely performing and songwriting. We love to perform in front of a live audience! It’s definitely one of our favorite feelings in the world.
We think what maybe sets us apart is our ‘big’ sound for a duo. We often perform live just the two of us and love exploring the world of live-looping our love performance. It allows us to create drums, bass and overlay guitar solos/vocals in our songs. This is a really engaging way to connect with our audience.
Another element to our duo that we feel sets us apart is that our released material has been written by us and us only. We understand co-writing is a big thing in Nashville and we love to participate in that part of the songwriting community, although, we are really proud that all the recorded material we have put out into the world is solely us. We find writing really therapeutic and inspiration strikes us sometimes at unconventional times (8 hours into our cross-country honeymoon road trip).
Lastly, our personable connection with our fans is something that we feel sets us apart and that we pride ourselves on. During 2020, we performed online shows religiously and tried to connect with our online fans as much as we could. It was during this time, we truly realized how much music could bring people together and how loyal our fans were. We of course see the pros and cons of social media and try to remain as authentic as possible on our social platforms. We love connecting with our fans candidly and forming relationships with people who resonate with our music.
How do you define success?
Great question! Honestly, we have huge dreams for our music, but we often try to sit back and just appreciate how far we have come instead of always looking at how far we need to go. We see where we are now as success. We believe it’s important to balance our ambition with living in the “now”. With that being said, we feel like in this moment, personal success looks like: making a living out of our music.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.leavinglennox.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leavinglennox
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leavinglenno
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/leavinglennox
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFR9XO-xKsJFXYxqbm1VEhA
Image Credits
Sarah Kohrt
Mckenzie McNeil
