I Am the Avalanche guitarist Michael Ireland announced that he is leaving the band to focus on becoming a full-time bar owner.
As many of you know, Mikey has opened his second bar called The Three Diamond Door in Brooklyn, and it’s a beautiful place to drink. He certainly has his hands full since opening a business requires 24/7 focus and it’s hard for him to find time for much more, so he has made the difficult decision to leave the band in order to be a full-time bar owner. We wish him the very best of luck with everything and are super proud of him. He’s still our brother, and there’s absolutely no bad blood or anything like that. We will have friends filling in on our upcoming shows this year and a new addition to our band will be locked in before our new album drops early next year.
Please read on for a message from Mikey himself:
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Dear People,
The time has come for me to gracefully step away from IATA. As most of you know I opened a bar a couple years ago in Bushwick, Brooklyn with some friends called Pearl’s Social & Billy Club. Last month I opened my second bar called The Three Diamond Door which is just a few blocks down from Pearl’s. Needless to say, my responsibilities at home in New York have mounted to a point where I can no longer spend months on the road or in the studio anymore. It’s been a crazy nine years with my best friends. From our apartment burning down in 2004 to smoking spliffs on a lawn in Paris to eating sushi in Tokyo with No Use For a Name to holding koala bears in Australia to hitch hiking to a show in Michigan to spending a week in Elko, Nevada waiting on a trailer repair smoking bible paper joints to shitting my pants in the van and not telling the other guys about it (sorry guys) to getting molested by Maris the Great in Denver to getting driven around Europe by Santa Claus to hitting Bunny in the nuts for snoring too loud to slamming a bottle of whiskey at 3 am in the streets of Switzerland….the list is endless. I love this band to death. It is with a very heavy heart that I write this letter. I’m going to continue writing and recording solo material, and I have a band in the works right now that I am doing just for fun which you’ll hear about soon. I wish IATA the best of luck and am excited to see what those dudes do in the future. Much love to Vinnie, Kellen, Aggro, and the Ratt. Adios, Amigos!!!!!!!
