This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Artist News
Every Time I Die’s Keith Buckley issues lengthy statement on the band’s messy split
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 20 January 2022
Every Time I Die vocalist Keith Buckley has posted a lengthy statement giving his side of the story on the band’s recent break up. Contrary to the statement released by the other members of the band earlier this week, he says that he repeatedly tried to communicate with them over the last month but was ignored – the public statement confirming the band’s split coming after his most recent attempt to speak with his former bandmates.
This all unfolded relatively quickly. On 3 Dec, Buckley announced that he would not play the final three dates on the band’s US tour but would return for their annual hometown Christmas shows later in the month – which he did.
When the rest of the band said that they would play the remaining tour shows without Buckley – instead inviting the audience to stand in for him – he released a further statement. In that, he said that the reason he had left the tour was that he had overheard his brother, Jordan Buckley, the band’s lead guitarist, telling someone that they were planning to replace him.
The rest of the band have denied that allegation. However, says Keith in his new statement, he attempted to speak to his bandmates several times in order to find some sort of resolution.
The first he heard from them, he says, was a legal letter on 20 Dec informing him that he was no longer a member of the band and ordering him to stop using the name or making negative statements about the group online. He recently posted that letter to his socials, though only after the split had been announced by the other band members.
He says now that he abided by the cease-and-desist request in that letter “even though [it] was not legally binding” while continuing to request a meeting to discuss how the band could move forward. In early January, he adds, he received another letter from the rest of the band, this time saying that they were quitting and offering to give him the rights to the Every Time I Day name in exchange for fees to be paid if and when he used it. This offer, he confirms, he declined.
“The thing is”, he says, “being given back the band and/or replacing them was not something I was interested in doing at this point in my life. Also, I do not see ETID as anything other than these specific members. I declined the offer on 6 Jan. If it was done, it was done, but I was still open to figuring out what was best for all of us”.
In their statement earlier this week, the other band members said that it was Keith who had refused to communicate with them, and that they had decided to make a public statement announcing the split after they “were informed … of something planned to be released [but] not mutually agreed upon that consists of inaccuracies and controls a narrative to the benefit of one”.
In his statement, Keith addresses this, saying that as the month progressed, he became concerned that tickets were still on sale for their 2022 live shows. UK and Ireland dates had already been cancelled due to COVID restrictions, but further US dates were set to run from February to the end of March.
Keith says that the band’s manager “unexpectedly quit” on 17 Dec, so it was unclear who was taking responsibility for decisions relating to the tour dates. Still unable to make contact with anyone to discuss this and other matters, he says he sent a proposed statement announcing his departure from the band, telling them that he would post it online 24 hours later if they did not respond with their own input.
That draft statement, he says, read: “In a desire for transparency, I want to let you know that I received a letter from the band’s lawyer firing me from Every Time I Die on 20 Dec. There were no band discussions prior or since. While the details are being legally worked out, know that I am in a good place and excited for whatever comes next. I wish everyone well and have no hate in my heart”.
He heard nothing until Jordan Buckley and the band’s other guitarist Andy Williams posted their statement online, pre-empting his. That statement came via the guitarists’ personal accounts, because at the same time all of Every Time I Die’s official social media accounts were deactivated.
“That is how I found out that the band I started when I was nineteen years old was publicly over”, he writes. “In posting that without prior conversation, without legal consultation, without any personal sense of honour for the band we built, these men took away my ability to say goodbye to 20 years worth of sacrifice. That is one of the hardest things to stomach”.
“After half my life in a van, I don’t even get access to an Instagram page worth of memories”, he goes on. “That, coupled with the incongruous stories that are being told to manipulate and blur the narrative for anyone that might one day look back on this are to me a wailing and gnashing of teeth”.
He again states that he believes the reason he was forced out of the band was due to lifestyle changes he made during lockdown – particularly stopping drinking alcohol. “My truth is that the pandemic changed me”, he says. “I looked at my life and realised not only was I unhappy, I was exhausted from pretending I wasn’t. So I stripped everything back until I found what I loved”.
His efforts to protect his mental health were not always welcomed by his bandmates, he claims, and at times were “used as a weapon against me”. He adds that other issues leading to the break up date back much further than this though, reckoning that they probably “should have broken up in 2014”.
Nonetheless, he says he is “thankful” that he “stuck it out” long enough to make three more albums that are ”important records that I feel needed to be made”. However, he adds, “the firm spiritual and political stance I took on [2021 album ‘Radical’] became an insurmountable point of contention between Jordan and I”.
He concludes his statement by saying that he has “no plans to comment further”. There is, however, the matter of a series on on-stage interviews that he is due to take part in around the UK, coming up next month, where the topic is sure to arise again.
