At the Drive-In’s Jim Ward Splits on Eve of Reunion Tour
At the Drive-In guitarist Jim Ward is parting ways with the band he co-founded just days before they head out on their world tour.
At the Drive-In dropped the news in a brief Facebook post Friday evening that left the motivation for Ward’s departure unexplained.
“As our ship prepares for voyage, we announce that Jim Ward will not be joining us on future journeys,” the post read. “We wish him well and are excited to see you soon.”
Ward had played alongside his post-hardcore comrades on their 2012 reunion tour dates, which came 11 years after the band first split up to focus on other projects. That string of festival appearances had inspired them to start writing music together again, bandmembers said.
“We’re all excited to be seeing each other, to be playing in a room again, and to be making music under a new context,” guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López said in an interview with Fuse in January as the band announced their world tour. “This is where we all came from. We have different families now, we live in different places, but these are our roots, and a true person never forgets their roots. There’s a safety in being around people you trust.”
At the Drive-In kick off their 38-date tour in March 22nd with a show at the Observatory in Santa Ana, CA, before heading to Europe on March 26th. Their U.S. leg begins again on May 15th with an appearance at the Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta.