I DECLARE WAR have now parted ways with another member, this time it’s guitarist Evan Hughes, making him the second member to leave the band this year, following their bassist Brent who left last February.
Hughes himself explains in regards to his departure:
Lots of questions about the IDW thing, so I feel like I should attempt to lay it all out and try to level things out as well:
Admittedly, I had expressed some reservations about staying with the band:
– Money is an issue for me as I don’t have a job where I can leave any time and come back. We do not make money from being in the band. I can’t pay bills by being on the road. For anyone that wants to turn this into the whole money/greed thing, please stop reading now. It’s not about making money off of the band and getting “rich”…it’s about still having money to live somehow. I’m not in a situation where I can live outside of the band while I’m getting $5 or $10 a day on tour and that’s it. I spent the better part of 2011 unemployed, living off of what I had saved, and living where I could. I came back from the Lionheart/Molotov tour dead broke, hence why I moved back to Nevada. I got a job in Nevada that was pretty flexible about letting me go, but I was never guaranteed a job when I got back. Luckily IDW wasn’t very active at the time, so it wasn’t much of an issue when I needed time off for the tours we did do. I chose not to leave Nevada, where I had a steady job and a living situation in which I didn’t have to pay rent, despite how much I did not want to be there. The whole reason I went to Nevada was so that I could keep doing the band, as backwards as that might sound.
– I get a lot of anxiety and it’s tough for me to be calm when we’re out on the road. Money, van problems, etc. get me worked up and I tend to freak out about stuff. I love touring and I love playing, but I have a hard time keeping calm.
– Making it to a level where a band is comfortable and doesn’t have a lot to worry about is extremely difficult. Most bands never reach this level. With the way IDW had become so stagnant, I felt like there wasn’t much hope for us to continue to grow. Yes, it sounds pessimistic, but instead of touring and living the life that I wanted, I was at a job that I didn’t like in a town that I didn’t want to be in. It gave me a lot to think about and made me question why I was where I was at. That’s why I jumped on the chance to work for Whitechapel on Mayhem.
– When I did Mayhem with Whitechapel, I discovered it would be a way for me to tour and make money, even though I wasn’t playing. Touring with Whitechapel also kept my anxiety down as there was a lot less I had to worry about; I just did my job and that’s it. I did not want to drop IDW in order to stay with Whitechapel, considering IDW was my life for 6 years and I still loved playing; at the same time, I did want to stay with WC as much as possible. I initially turned down doing the Hatebreed tour so that I could do the TAS tour with IDW. I was planning on doing whatever else IDW was in talks to do in the following months. I was probably looking at being on the road more than I would have liked, but I was going to do it. I told the rest of the band multiple times that I did not want to quit. It was then they told me they wanted to move on without me.
So in all fairness, no longer being part of the band was partially my choice. I had my reservations about staying. However, those reservations were not going to stop me from continuing on with it. I was completely torn between the two.
We can play the blame game all day long but when it comes down to it, I’m still not in the band and I’m still not happy about not having it anymore, regardless of whose decision it was.
