That depends on who you ask. If you ask Jon Gray, Bill Gray, or Jacob Cooper, the Mae Shi are playing. Jacob's Facebook update from yesterday says this:
Jacob Safari OK guys, tomorrow 1PM Union Park on aluminum stage Pitchfork Fest. LAST MAE SHI SHOW W/ THIS LINEUP EVER. THIS IS IT.
This makes us sad, and requires some back story.
Back in 2006, when Ezra and Corey quit the band, Tim and Jeff and Brad weren't sure what to do next. We still had more songs in us, we still had more people to meet, and we couldn't come to terms with the thought of no longer being in a band. We met up at Palms Thai and decided to keep it going.
We didn't want to "replace" Ezra. We didn't want a new "singer." But we all agreed that we needed one more person -- one more voice, one more opinion -- in the band.
We put the word out that we wanted another member. We posted a ridiculous flyer at the Smell. We played with a few people. The two people we thought of first were Jon and Bill Gray, two cousins we met right when the band got started. The two people that were the biggest supporters of the band; the two people that cared as much as we did. Go back and watch footage of 2003 Mae Shi shows at the Smell and you'll see Jon and Bill in the front in every shot. They told us when we were good and told us when we were bad.
And so, in August 2006, Jon ended up joining the band (Bill would join later). At that point, we had the sketches of what would become HLLLYH finished, and with Jon on board they quickly took shape. We played with Jon for the first time in September 2006, and pretty much finished the record by January 2007. Instead of having one singer, we all sang, and having Jon as a multi-instrumentalist and singer really tied things together. He wrote amazing lyrics for songs like 7XX7 and Party Politics.
We had this awesome record done, but knew we wouldn't be able to really promote it. Brad wasn't interested in touring anymore. Tim had decided to go to law school in the fall. So we did SXSW and did one little tour and laid low.
In November, Bill and Marcus joined the band, and Brad and Tim stayed home and worked on other things. All of a sudden, there were four people -- Jon, Jeff, Bill and Marcus -- committed to touring and ready to hit the road.
In January 2008, Jon asked Marcus to leave the band, and replaced him with Jacob. Jacob, Jeff, Jon and Bill toured like crazy for the entire year and made a lot of new friends. Meanwhile, Tim studied and Brad stayed in LA and worked on new songs.
Who was in the band by January 2009? It's hard to tell. Our myspace page still showed six members. A few months earlier we had gotten our first real "manager," and we were being told that to be successful, we should market ourselves as a four-piece. We were told we needed to "focus," and the audience needed something to focus on. We needed a "front man." We took that advice, and took aim at the future as a quartet -- Jon, Jeff, Bill and Jacob. Jon was our front man, and he did it well. Brad was fine was this, as he wasn't interested in performing, only writing and producing, but Tim felt weird and a little hurt about it.
Things were not all well. Jeff, at this point the only original member, had been hiding a drug and alcohol abuse problem, and Jon and Bill and Jacob witnessed him do bad things and make terrible decisions and be dishonest about it all. Before their European tour, Jon and Bill and Jacob announced to Jeff their intent to "step away from" the Mae Shi when the tour ended.
In May 2009, midway through the European tour, Jeff realized how bad his problem had gotten, and flew back to get help. The rest of the band finished the tour without him as a three-piece.
When Jon and company returned from Europe, they did not check on Jeff. Jeff, at that point three weeks sober, finally got in touch with Jon and told him that he wasn't healthy enough to play any upcoming shows, and suggested the band cancel the remaining booked shows, including Pitchfork Festival, which was six weeks away.
Jon responded that he and Jacob and Bill were going to do Pitchfork whether or not Jeff played it too, and so it would be best if Jeff just gave them his blessing. Jon asked Tim, who had been on the sidelines looking for a way to get involved, if he would play the festival and take Jeff's place. Tim chose not to.
Meanwhile, Brad -- who had gotten extremely busy with his day job making music for a TV show -- had gotten tired of all the drama and stepped away from the band as well.
Both Tim and Jeff learned on Wednesday that Jon and company had issued a press release that Pitchfork had spun into a news item: the Mae Shi was turning into Signals. In the language of the release, three of the four members of the band were quitting to form a new band called Signals, and the Pitchfork show would be the last chance to see the current lineup of the Mae Shi as well as the first chance to see the new band.
Is that true? Not really. Jeff will not be there. Tim will not be there. Brad will not be there. You will see 3/4ths of the most recent touring band. What you will see will be Signals.
Jacob Safari OK guys, tomorrow 1PM Union Park on aluminum stage Pitchfork Fest. LAST MAE SHI SHOW W/ THIS LINEUP EVER. THIS IS IT.
This is all, in our view, a tremendous bummer. It makes us deeply sad. The Mae Shi have had their share of tough times. We are a dysfunctional bunch. But we've always been friends, and we've always believed that we are generally good people. We've always been family -- real family. Byrons and Grays, a Buchla, a Breeck, a Cooper. A Fogel and a Savino. But this seems extremely opportunistic and inconsiderate, and not how friends treat one another.
We feel very weird and sad about all of this. Because of Signals' press release, we are getting tons of emails and calls from friends asking if the band is over. We weren't prepared to discuss this; while Signals were building Myspace pages and booking shows, we were trying to get better. We've been told Signals is going to play Mae Shi songs, which also makes us feel weird.
So here is the hastily written story: We are the Mae Shi. We do not break up. Currently, we are Jeff and Tim Byron, and we hope to be more people in the future. The future is uncertain, but there is a future.
We wish Signals the best of luck.
- Tim and Jeff
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Currently, there are six members of the Mae Shi: Brad Breeck, Jeff Byron, Tim Byron, Bill Gray, Jon Gray and Jacob Cooper. You are likely to only see four of us on stage at any given time, but the rest of us are lurking in the shadows. We've been told that "mae shi" means "business card" in Japanese. This is fitting, because the band is our business card. The band is our self-help vehicle, and as our personal goals change, our roles within the band change.
Amidst all of this change, some things are constants. What's been done has been done, and it's of little interest to us unless we can repackage it in a new and exciting way. The only option is to forge ahead, to try new things, to test out bad ideas, to all try to sing and work together and hope the road we're on leads somewhere. It's about the journey and the destination. This all sounds immensely airy but we believe it -- at its core the rock and roll band is a surrogate family for our culturally extended childhood, it's our self-help group, it's our soap box, it's a way to see what we're really capable of. Growing up is tough. This is our attempt to grow up.
