Break-ups: Small Brown Bike (1996-2004)

After 7 years, about as many ex-members, and a number of full lengths, EPs, and the like, Michigan's Small Brown Bike have announced their breakup. The band's full statement is below. While the band is considering itself defunct, they still plan on organizing a group of final shows in the coming months. We'll bring you news on that when we know it.

Small Brown Bike had a busy year up until now, releasing a new EP and a new LP, on No Idea and Lookout! respectively.

Dear Friends,

First of all, we are sorry for the lack of communication for the last few weeks. Thanks for all of your concern and support while we were so quiet.

We come to you with good and bad news. Let's start with the bad. The bad news is that we have decided to break up.

This may or may not come as a surprise to some of you and we're sorry that it has to be this way. The good news is that this is the right thing for us and we wouldn't have made such a hard decision if we didn't think it was fair to ourselves and everyone else involved with our band.

One of the hardest parts of making this decision was realizing the fact that our new record was just over a month old and we were beginning a new relationship with the people at Lookout Records. The bottom line is that their excitement, support and sincerity gave us a reason to really put everything that we could into 'The River Bed'. We can only offer our sincerest apologies to their entire staff for putting them in such a tough place.

We also want to apologize to everyone for abruptly cancelling our tours and leaving so many people scratching their heads. Our timing could not have been worse, especially after all of the hard work that Fata Booking, Lookout Records and all of the promoters had done.

It would be pretty tough to get into all of the details of why we won't be playing/writing anymore. When we made this decision, we knew that we were going to let a lot of people down. It came down to our personal happiness and unforunately having to be a bit selfish as well. After logging thousands of miles and years of our lives into this band, it just feels like it's time to move on to other things. We can still look at each other and be proud of all of the things that we have done and most importantly, sit down around a table of beers and soda and just be friends.

It's been about seven years since we played our first show and we have a whole lot of good times in between then and now. We want to thank Dan Jaquint and Scott Flaster for being a part of this band and still being there for us today.
We want to thank all of the wonderful, hard-working people at Lookout Records, Smallman Records, No Idea Records, Second Nature Recordings and Fata Booking. We want to thank all of the amazing people who we have met along the way and recognize their support, friendship, time and money. We wouldn't be here without them.

We would especially like to thank all of the fans who have supported us through the years. You all made it worth it and for that we thank you. We're still not sure how we are going to formally close the book, but we are making plans for some final shows in the coming months. Stay tuned…

Thanks and Love,
Mike, Ben, Trav and Jeff.
Small Brown Bike