Bunny Gang have spent the last few months making a name for themselves. Now they have to change it.
The San Diego trio came rushing out of the gate this summer, rapidly releasing its debut album, getting nominated for an SDMA, opening for Little Hurricane and playing our June SoundDiego LIVE event at the Lafayette Hotel. But now the band's race to success has hit an unexpected speed bump.
Last week, the band announced it had received a cease-and-desist order from Flogging Molly guitarist Nathen Maxwell, who claimed he owns the rights to the name Bunny Gang.
According to Bunny Gang singer Megan Liscomb, "Basically what happened is this dude from Flogging Molly has apparently been calling his band 'Nathen Maxwell & the Original Bunny Gang' for a couple of years and just now decided he'd like to change the name to 'Bunny Gang.' "
To some, it appeared that Maxwell's decision to shorten his band's name occurred right when Bunny Gang's popularity was exploding.
"He applied to trademark the name in August, several days before we released our album, and his lawyer sent us a cease-and-desist letter last week," Liscomb said. "He still doesn't hold a trademark on the name, nor is it actually his band's name."
For their part, Bunny Gang were reluctant to go to the expense of defending their rights to the band name.
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"We haven't officially answered the guy," Liscomb said. "It is totes harshing my mellow."
Instead, Liscomb and Co. decided to just pick a new moniker. After week's of brainstorming and asking for suggestions on Facebook, they finally settled on the band's new name: Boy King.
"There are a bunch of hipster dude bands that have girl or woman in the name, and I wanted to flip the script," Liscomb said Thursday. In addition, "I've been reading Game of Thrones a lot" and "Royalty is awesome and it would look good on a pyramid."
And there you have it: Bunny Gang is dead. Long live Boy King.
We attempted to contact Maxwell for a comment for this post but have yet to receive a response. -- Ed.
SoundDiego associate editor Chris Maroulakos is also the managing editor of the San Diego music blog Owl and Bear.
