By Jonathan Diener

Preparing for a final tour is a bit like a funeral. When someone passes the last thing you want to think about is the funeral arrangements, which casket to pick out, if cremation is the better option, dividing assets, the will and who to invite. Maybe it’s not that grim, but a lot of those strange feelings are there. There are plenty of things you would rather not deal with, but you have to. When my band The Swellers announced we were calling it a night, we received a wide array of responses including some that were bummed out, but understanding, comparisons and predictions for the future and the strange, unfortunate criticism on how we handled things. During a breakup there are a lot of emotions in the air, but I don’t think most people get to hear from the band’s perspective.

On The Swellers’ twelfth anniversary, we posted that our band decided to play some final tours then move on. A bit later I wrote about The Life and Death of a Mid-Level Band and detailed the reasoning behind our breakup. The black hole of the internet didn’t reach our whole fan base and people are just now finding out that after May 1st, 2015, we will no longer be an active band. In addition to just finding out the end is near, people are confused as to why we’re still playing shows without hearing our final tour announcements. We’re not mad or upset, but constantly getting comments of people hoping to see our last show in Chicago when we played it and heavily promoted it months ago, is a little confusing. It’s the same as being excited to post tour dates, but when you do you end up bumming half the world out that you’re not coming to their city: it happens all the time to every band.

As a band breaking up because most of the members were tired of touring full time, we opted to do small chunks of final shows in different regions. To successfully tour the whole U.S. you’re looking at a solid five to six weeks of being gone, so instead we tried to do our best to hit all of our best spots. I don’t think a lot of people realize how important morale is to a band. Being gone for months at a time, the only thing keeping your sanity in check is the overall mood of the band. If your members aren’t talking or there’s negative energy, you’re stuck in vans, on floors, in hotels, and most importantly on stage with them. In addition to time, driving through the middle of the country is one of the most expensive things a band could do. Every drive goes from a few hours to a day at a time and the only way to make them shorter is expand your tour by a few weeks. It didn’t make sense for us.. We ended up doing a four day weekend of shows, return home to our jobs and families, charge our batteries and show up to the next batch ready to go. After those we flew to California to play the best places for us on the West Coast and had a blast. The people who like our band could tell we were having fun and I think that’s worth more than us just existing on stage.

It is also important to remember that booking tours, especially international tours, takes a lot of time. My brother and Swellers singer, Nick, booked all of our final U.S. shows and they ended up being awesome. We tried to get everything booked and sorted by the new year, but in typical Swellers fashion, that wasn’t the case. The whole California leg that was supposed to happen in December fell through and we had to rebook it for a later date. We lucked out and got to play Soundwave one more time in Australia and spend time with a lot of our touring band buddies. Some people were bummed with the ticket price and shorter set, but we all agreed getting on that tour would be the only way we’d go back one last time. More than anything we wanted to get on the punk rock mecca of festivals, Groezrock festival in Belgium. We were able to snag a spot on the main stage and hopefully relive the magic we had a few years ago where we felt like rock stars in a fantasy punk rock world for one day. We played in front of thousands of people, which is something our band rarely was able to do. That helped us get our UK tour and it all fell into place. Hundreds of emails and hours of nail biting later, we had all of the shows booked. Morale and sanity in mind, we were ready to go.

I’ve heard through a few mutual friends that some people didn’t want to see us because they didn’t like the way we were handling our breakup. From my perspective, we opened up completely and told people what was going on instead of creating some bullshit mystique to help us sell a final DVD. We weren’t doing this to cash in, we were doing it to have fun and give people an option to see us. We honestly didn’t have to play ANY final shows, so it’s pretty strange hearing negative things while we’re already dealing with so many emotions. We are at ease with just putting the name to rest, but it’s scary as fuck thinking about the rest of our lives. What if we don’t ever have that feeling again? What if we just become nobody losers and live with regret? I don’t think that’s the case because we’re all motivated people. It’s not like we hate being in the band by any means, it’s just that time has definitely changed all of us. A lot of bands have dressing rooms for individual members and the only reason they exist is because it’s a job and a great source of income. I never wanted to be one of those bands who just floated on.

I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams about our final show. In them I’m not finished setting up my drums in time, or nobody shows up or we just completely suck. I care so much that i’m actually having nightmares. Sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing to deal with and I’m going through that now. We all are. So before you get angry or judge us, just remember that half of my life has been in this band. I started out as a 14 year old goofy kid with braces and didn’t wear a shirt hoping I’d get impress girls (it didn’t work) to a guy that that has played in eighteen countries finally putting the band to rest. We all had a blast and we love all of you for caring. If you’ve never listened to our band, now you get to see the depth and thought that goes into everything. We don’t want to answer awkward texts and emails from people asking when the money is coming in or if we’ve paid all of our debt to labels and merch companies. It’s the same as not dealing with finances at a funeral. The difference is, the end is in sight and we’re ready for it. What would your band do if you had two weeks left on Earth?