The Handshake Murders drop off tour

The Handshake Murders have dropped off their current tour with We Were Gentlemen in addition to cancelling their upcoming dates with Rosetta and Architect. Here's the official word: "As some of you may or may not know - we made the decision of dropping our May tour with We Were Gentlemen as well as our highly-anticipated runs with Rosetta and Architect. Anyone who cares deserves the reasoning behind this: after 11 days of touring with We Were Gentlemen, our guitarist Jeff Kear was faced with some significantly urgent issues to take care of back home, and though the issues I do not feel at liberty to disclose at the moment, they are issues which lead to the indefinite departure of him from The Handshake Murders. We then tried to soldier on as a four-piece, with only me on guitar - needless to say, it lacked the energy and momentum we felt we had going with our set-list, which consisted of mostly new songs dependent on two guitar parts. On top of that, we were facing 5 cancelled dates on a tour that was falling apart from the beginning. Dropping off the tour was one of the most difficult decisions we've ever had to face - no lie. Instead of copping out and posting a Paypal link for your sympathy, I would like to instead mention that we will be selling all of our current merchandise online via our myspace page - there are some mind-blowing new designs from our buddies Mike Wohlberg and Aaron Crawford, as well as this super cool tee that I personally designed. "We'd like to sincerely apologize to We Were Gentlemen - our new friends made from the start of tour - for abandoning them in the hellhole known as the Midwest. Apologies go out to all the promoters and bands we were slated to play with, and especially Rosetta and Architect for destroying tour plans that we were incredibly stoked about. "However, we will be touring from July 3rd - July 18th through the Midwest (mostly Texas) with our friend Bryce from the band Syrens filling in on guitar duties. Architect are likely to jam out these dates with us, and Syrens will be on the tale end of that run. We're also doing some scattered shows through-out August and September, but certainly nothing large for the rest of the year. "Also, in other news - we've officially parted ways with Goodfellow Records. There's no bad blood - that's all you need to know. We're focussing all of our energy now on writing new material, and we're going to continue writing as a four-piece until we further consider the replacement of our second guitarist. We have 5 songs in the bag so far, with tons of riffs and parts to assemble. The sound we've been achieving with the new songs is absolutely different from that of 'Usurper' - more atmospheric, more rock-influenced, and it's definitely the material that reiterated why we picked up instruments in the first place and challenges us as musicians (no, there are no scale-sweeping or blastbeats - sorry!). The big plan is to demo some material out, show it off, and hopefully find ourselves a label to call home."