Evanescence Tour Loses Moody
Evanescence co-founder and guitarist Ben Moody unexpectedly dropped
off the band’s current European tour. Following an October 21st
date in Stockholm, Moody did not join the group for a string of
four dates in Germany.
A spokesperson for the goth rock band’s label, Wind-Up, would
only confirm that “Ben is not currently on the tour,” but would not
elaborate on why the guitarist is not performing with the band he
co-founded with twenty-year-old singer Amy Lee in Little Rock,
Arkansas when the pair were in their early teens.
Evanescence is still performing as a quintet, but the
spokesperson declined to name Moody’s temporary replacement and
said he could not comment on whether Moody will rejoin the band
when they kick off an upcoming slate of U.S. dates on November 21st
with a gig at Rillito Park in Tucson, Arizona. That tour is
scheduled to run into mid-December, with the band playing Australia
and Japan in January.
England’s Rock Sound magazine reported that Moody flew
home without speaking to his band mates on a day off during the
German dates. Lee told the magazine, “You don’t do that to your
band. You wouldn’t do that to your friends or your family. You
don’t do that to anyone.”
Evanescence has been on a non-stop blitz of U.S. and European
tour dates since its multi-platinum major-label debut,
Fallen, was released in March. The group was forced to
cancel a number of shows in Germany in June when Moody fell ill
during a gig in Spain, reportedly suffering from dehydration. The
current European dates, which continue this week with a string of
performances in England, are the first the band has ever played
without Moody.