On Thanksgiving day, we were perusing Instagram, and ran into a picture of Brent Hinds, his leg wrapped in a cast and holding a blade. The caption stated that the Mastodon singer/guitarist broke his leg in a motorcycle accident and it seemed to suggest that his shows with other projects Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, West End Motel and Fiend Without A Face might not happen. That was especially unfortunate news for Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, the supergroup featuring him along with The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Benamin Weinman and Alice In Chains’ William DuVall, whose tour was to begin this week. While there was no official word initially, on Saturday, the band announced that they would be cancelling the tour:
We deeply regret to inform everyone that GTO has to cancel our U.S. tour. Brent Hinds broke his leg in a motorcycle incident. It requires surgery and traveling for him is both impractical and highly ill-advised. We can’t do our debut tour without our guy. In our view, this is a “Go all-out or don’t go at all” situation. So we had to make the very tough call to cancel. The venues should be providing refunds. No words can convey how sorry we are to everyone who was planning on attending these shows, just as no words can express how much we were looking forward to bringing the songs from the “Broken Lines” album to you live. The important thing is that, aside from his broken leg, Brent is otherwise okay. He will hopefully make a full recovery soon and we’ll all live to fight another day. And, with that, our goal becomes carving out our next opportunity to play. One thing is sure: We will let you know as soon as we know. Until then, keep jamming “Broken Lines.” Have a wonderful – and SAFE – holiday season. With love, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra.
The most disappointing things about this, as we’d mentioned before, is the band’s schedule. With Mastodon’s next album coming out next year, The Dillinger Escape Plan continuing their farewell tour for the foreseeable future, and Alice In Chains still a big live draw, it’s going to be some time before the members of Giraffe Tongue Orchestra’s schedules’ sync up. While Dave Grohl can have a custom wheelchair/throne built for him, and then lend it to Axl Rose, that’s not practical for the venues and touring the band was set to do. The good news is, according to Weinman, it will happen next year:
We are so disappointed that we won’t be seeing the fans this month,” says Weinman. “We didn’t feel like we would be giving you guys a real GTO show if we went on the road without Brent. We decided to rest up and add some more dates to what we intended to do, and tour sometime in 2017. We are breaking out our schedules and figuring out how to make it work.”
