News of a band breaking up hasn’t hit me this hard since The Get Up Kids played their last show in July 2005. Piebald have announced that they’re breaking up when their current tour ends next month.
It may be hard to understand why this band that you’ve never heard of means so much to me, but I will do my best to explain. I first discovered Piebald the same way I discovered all good music when I was in high school, from Justin Lee. Justin put the CD on in the car and told me to shut up and listen. It was love at first listen. Not only do Piebald combine odd time signatures and odd song structures with ease, they also have some of the funniest and most clever song names and album titles I have ever heard.
“It’s not funny like ha ha, it’s funny like I told you so.”
One of my favourite albums of all time is Piebald’s “If It Weren’t for Venetian Blinds It Would Be Curtains for Us All”. Piebald are amazing live, they tour in a van powered by used restaurant grease, and they wrote songs that served as the soundtrack for the last 9 years of my life.
I will always remember seeing Piebald play only 4 songs at the Pine Room in Oakville because Moneen set off fireworks and the Fire Department showed up. I’ll remember driving to Buffalo to see Piebald with Justin and Alison in 2001 and then again with Alison 9 months ago. I’ll remember seeing Piebald eating at Pita Pit before playing at Lee’s Palace. I’ll remember bothering the band to let me play the drums when their original drummer took off. I’ll remember getting pulled over for speeding on the way to Alison’s house while listening to “All Ears, All Eyes, All the Time” for the first time. I’ll remember how sad Alison was as we found out that Piebald were calling it quits, she was wearing her Piebald hoodie when the news broke. I will always remember Piebald.
As we speak, Alison and I are canceling our camping plans for the Labour Day long weekend and buying tickets to one of Piebald’s last shows. We’ll be driving 4 hours to Detroit on August 31st to get one last Piebald fix. Thanks for everything Piebald, you will be missed.
“We have the best job ever. Yeah we really got lucky.
We’re nobody’s robot. We’re nobody’s monkey.”
I already wanted to cry.. now I do even more. Thanks for putting it into words for me, because all I could bring myself to do was list them and other bands that I like that have broken up.
I know it’s been a long time coming, but I still can’t believe it’s happened. Hopefully the show at the end of the month will just be the last “for a while”, not “forever” (they’ve even played with a band called The Reunion Show)