FISHBONE: NORWOOD, JOHN STEWARD and "DIRTY WALT" HAVE LEFT THE BAND

  Los Angeles, California ska/funk/metal fusion legends FISHBONE  have announced NORWOOD, JOHN STEWARD and "DIRTY WALT" have left the band.

 

 

 

 FISHBONE unleashed "Crazy Glue" (EP) in 2011 and "Still Stuck in Your Throat" 10/16/2016 via TER A TERRE.

 

 

 

FROM FISHBONE: 

 

Man… the idea of being vague on posts was to not air dirty laundry.

The follow up to the initial post came from Q Magazine and this also was a way to respond to fan inquiries.

The writer of the piece tried to contact the other party (we even gave him the contact information) but there was no response.

As a result, you ended up getting one side. We believe everyone should hear all sides. That side has now come out.

What lead to all this was the failure to communicate. We couldn’t do it alone, even went the Metallica route and had therapy sessions. Went through 2 separate therapists with no results.

With regards to our claim the other members quit.

Norwood was sent a letter on November 27th asking for solution or resulting in a hiatus of the band. We had shows to do, so followed up with a zoom call on December 4th which Chris discussed in the article. The purpose of this was to not go on hiatus and discuss the future.

The result of that call and the fulfillment of our show commitments, it was made clear on the call he would not work with us on the requests discussed and even a hiatus would just be a band aid on an open wound.

That final letter was delivered on January 16th after much deliberation and hard talks amongst ourselves.

This letter was sent to all members of the band.

We continued to have communication with the band members and contacted John Steward on a February 27th asking him to stay with us and his response was “ITS OVER” and differed to be a part of Fishbone moving forward.

We hoped for Walter to stay on. We had many conversations with him and even a zoom to go over it all and it wasn’t until April 14th, the day before we went into the studio to rehearse that he texted to give his final answer after his thinking it through was also no to moving forward as Fishbone. This was a huge blow to us. Didn’t expect that based on the leading conversations.

This has been hard for all of us and even harder now with documents being presented publicly with an innactruate narrative and hate that we have to post our documents to validate what has been said.

When it came to shows being booked, we were being booked as Fishbone… no promoters asked for a list of members that would be appearing.

One tour asked based on discussions between musicians. Without hesitation, we gave the names of who was in the band.

Since the post yesterday, we spoke to the promoters of the upcoming shows and none cancelled or felt they were sold false information. They booked Fishbone and Fishbone is coming. They didn’t book Fishbone, featuring any particular members.

In addition, the post yesterday, was also to let the fans know well in advance (over 6 weeks) of what was happening and have given our word to help get any refunds if they do not want to attend any of these future shows based on this news of line up changes.

It’s sad that this has gone this public.

Transparency should have limits when it comes to some information, but that is out there now… and we have feel as we need to lay the cards to the court of public opinion.

We have nothing but love to Norwood, John and Walter. As much as they have wished us well, we wish them the same and will continue to support them in anything they do.

To all of you who have been invested in us for so many years and have showed your support or even oppose these changes. Your passion and love is recognized by all of us as hard as it is to read at times.

Peace and love…

 

 

As it has been posted as of today, we will not be joining Primus on the 10 shows we were slated to be on.

While we were looking forward to it, there are many unwritten codes in life. In this case the bass code took effect.

We respect that and accept it.

Shout out to Coheed and Cambria we were looking forward to meeting you and playing with you.

As mentioned in previous posts, if anyone was planning on seeing Fishbone on any of these shows and would like refunds, I’m sure they will honor that. If there are any problems, please let us know via DM and we’ll try to assist any way we can.

We WILL be playing No Values and any other shows that will be announced shortly. We spoke with all promoters and artists and they have no problem moving forward.

We hope to see you soon and apologize for being removed from this particular tour, that was not our decision, but we were honored to be considered to be a part of such a great line up. We will always have nothing but love for Primus.

Thanks-Stay Metal, Stay Brutal-\m/ -l-