Drew, from I Call Fives, has released a statement about the future of the band. From the statement we can gather that I Call Fives have not technically broken up but will be touring a whole let less. Read Drew's Statement from Facebook below:
"I’m writing this today - one week from my 26th birthday. 8 years ago, in 2006, on the week of my 18th birthday, me and some friends had just graduated high school and decided to start playing music in a basement. We would play around 4 hours a day, 4-5 times a week. It was this one thing that we all really wanted to do; we didn’t think much beyond that. We just wanted to play – and we hoped that maybe it could lead to recording a demo and playing some shows.
I read something from The Swellers yesterday that talked about the future of their band and the decisions they had made. It was an honest piece of writing and it kind of helped me realize some things. One part stuck out in particular, “You can question yourself forever, but it won’t change a thing. I like the choices we made.” There’s a reason why not much light has really been shed on ICF over the past year..
Over the years, we went through a lot of member changes. Not long after the beginning months in 2006, when we were called Remedy, we began to take the band more seriously and do what we thought it took to become a “real band.” Over the years, this amounted to constant touring, often times playing to less than 20 people, and at the expense of being away from home, being broke, and whatever else. We did a 35 day tour in my car in 2008 with The Wonder Years. It was great..but we were 20 years old. We didn't make any money, didn't play to a ton of people..but we were doing "it". Fast forwarding to the summer of 2012, we released our first LP and played over 2 weeks on the Vans Warped tour. It was sort of the peak of my expectations; at that point, we had already toured the UK, been to Australia, toured the U.S. countless times, and then played the Warped Tour and had our record chart on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart. Shortly after that tour, we went back out, once again headlining our own run, followed immediately by a co-headlining tour with our long time pals, With the Punches. This time period sort of shaped what would become the future for this band; it was probably our 10th tour to California and we saw the same results. We couldn't afford to pay our cell phone bill from touring. Money, stress, and whatever else eventually add up – the constant van break downs, member changes..it was difficult after 6 years of regularly touring.
When we came home from that tour, at the end of 2012, the band agreed to stop touring and to begin doing different things. I went back to finish school and the other guys went to work full-time. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to do; I always wanted to play music. Our booking agent and I kept our ear out for shows, still trying to occasionally play. We ended up playing Skate and Surf 2013, which was considered to be the final thing for the band. A few months later, we were offered to go back to Australia – this time for Soundwave Festival with Green Day, Korn, and a bunch of bands we never could have imagined playing with. The band agreed to go, we played a couple shows around New Jersey, and we spent 2 insane, surreal weeks in Australia.
Now that it’s been nearly six months since the last time we played, I wanted to make a post about it. I’ve always tried to make light of the situation when people ask about the future for I Call Fives. I quote one of my favorite movies – The Shawshank Redemption.
The future for I Call Fives will remain uncertain, but I can say certainly that we will never be in the position to tour like the band did for so many years. The opportunities that people gave us make it very hard to ever say it’s done forever. Unfortunately, the reality is that we’ve had to work jobs full-time, finish school, and do whatever it is we found best for the next chapter of our lives. It has been so hard to admit or write this for me because this band became all I knew, all I thought about, all I put myself into. We met so many bands, many that have grown to be very successful and are still doing it. So many people that let us sleep on their floor..or donated money when our engine blew up and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. From Sydeny to Toronto to Dublin to Richland, WA…I know I speak for all of those ever involved with this band when I say that we will never forget this. We will forever be grateful for what you guys allowed us to do.
To wrap this up, there’s a good chance you won’t see us play again. It took me a long time to accept that and write this, but I’ll continue to quote Andy Dufresne:
“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Continue to settle for nothing, I’ll never forget what this band gave me.
-Drew"
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