I consider it only the name that has fallen into disuse. Most of the people involved are still making music. In my mind, the band embodied the following people;

Me, Stevie Scott, Allan, Sarah and Catherine Reid, Luke Gal, Craig Johnson, Christian Ceccato, Cameron Gillard, Sam Saljooghi, Dave Williams, Mark Bawden, Gavin LaGrange, Rachel Manns, Rob Schlegel, and Dan Orrico.

Many of these people didn’t perform with us live, but the songs they contributed to on record, and thus we as a band, sound the way they do because of them.

I know the five central members in FOW at this point in time are all going to keep making music - a couple of dudes made it clear they wouldn’t feel comfortable keeping the name under the circumstances, but there will be a multitude of other projects popping up no doubt.

I make music because I enjoy it. The name isn’t all that important to me - a ‘legacy’ is a made-up thing that really has nothing to do with whether or not you’re making good music right now. And that’s what I want to continue doing.

So in a way it sucks I can’t make music as ‘Fires Of Waco’ anymore - not only because it is an awesome band name, but also because the music itself was tending towards a really weird evolution (involving reggae and dub and Shellac). In terms of writing and being a musician in general, I believe I did some of my best work in this band, and I got to explore both bass and guitar from yet another angle, and develop as a vocalist. That stuff is probably really boring to everyone except me. But I have a million thoughts floating around inside my head at all times, so I really don’t think I’ve been disadvantaged at all.

The Marathon 7” will be out in a couple of months, and Fires has four unreleased tracks that will be made available in digital format sooner or later. I’m really excited to get both of these releases out there.

That’s all that’s on my mind regarding this right now. If anything else comes to me, no doubt I’ll write about it.

Thanks to everyone who wanted to hear and/or see any of my bands, ever. And finally, an enormous thank you to Greg Bower at Arrest and especially Andy Hayden at Poison City for the incredible support in putting out our releases. I posted about my thoughts on independent labels over on the Marathon page, and I mean it. I think it’s an amazing thing what these people do, and very, very personally important to me. Poison City was this band’s home for most of our existence - nearly two whole years, and it was a good place to call home.

-Ryan

A new statement from the band...

"As many of you already know, Fires of Waco have decided to discontinue the band. We’ve had a brilliant run and squeezed a LOT into our short existence. We’ve managed to meet a lot of great people, see some great bands, visit areas all over Australia and written music that we are all extremely proud of. Another thing we are proud of was the reaction to a lot of the issues and causes that our songs explored. Whether you agreed with us or not, we’re glad that we got to share those debates with you all. Why are we ending it? Well in two years we have toured Australia twice and released 3 records and we have another one on the way digitally. We’ve managed to do that with 5 individuals who all lead totally different lives outside of the band. You just get to a point where you think, “what else can we do?” There just isn’t any more we can do as a band and we refuse to let Fires of Waco just fade away; it doesn’t seem in the nature of what we were. Everything was important and it was all considered. Fires of Waco is over."