You, Me, And Everyone We Know members comment on break up

Days after they announced that the band had broken up, You, Me, And Everyone We Know vocalist Ben Liebsch and guitarist Augustine Rampolla have both posted lengthy statements about the announcement.

Rampolla's statement was released as a response to the statement Liebsch posted, where he claimed that it was his problems with alcohol that let to the decisions he made that let to the eventual demise of the band.

Liebsch posted:

"This is the first time i’ve had access to a computer since it was formally announced a few days ago that, for the second and possibly last time, there would be a mass exodus of members from You, Me, and Everyone We Know. Since then i’ve watched alot of people make alot of claims about what exactly happened with the band, my life, my past, and my personal character. I find myself in an interesting position here because by publicly acknowledging what happened, i make it more likely that i will be on the receiving end of a lawsuit from certain people i’ve disagreed with in the past. I am, however, compelled to once again overexpose myself in order to help clear my conscience, to give the people who made this band what it is/was some real answers, and to make it so nobody can invalidate the music this band has written over the course of its 5 year career. This will be a bit messy and long so please bare with me…

For almost 4 years I’ve used the band’s money to enable my drinking. At first, it was $5 or $10 dollars every few weeks when i was drunk and having a particularly bad night…and for a long time that was the extent of it. At that point, i was pretty much be able to sneak whatever i owed back into the money bag at some point and that’s how it went for some time. My drinking during this time, which had been much worse in my younger years, was subdued for a while by the fact that i had a girlfriend to answer to back at home in Maryland. In thinking about it, several things occured within a 3 month span in the late summer and fall of 2008 that allowed me to let this problem to once again grow beyond my control"

The full statement posted by Liebsch can be read here.

Rampolla responded:

"Alright gang, I hate this drama.

A) I am not looking to "stir the pot" as many of you have said. I was vague out of disbelief (and a bit of laziness).

B) The post made from Ben's account (CueJohnDenver) earlier was by Rico's mom. She did not intend for it to be from his account. She tried posting without knowing you had to be a registered member to make posts. She was surprised and told Rico's girlfriend that posting worked, and then they figured out it was from Ben's account (that he left signed in on her computer, because she let him use it when she housed and fed him) and deleted the post.

C) When we left the band we all agreed on a set break-up statement. We (all six of us and our manager) agreed to not get into specifics about the situation because it would only result in exerting a whole lot of negative energy into the world, which is just worthless (although proved inevitable). Ben of course couldn't handle this and posted a very long blog tonight. In this blog he continued to use drinking as a scapegoat. When we tried to reconcile after we dropped off the Glamour Kills tour, we made it very clear that since we lived in a van with him, we knew he was NOT an alcoholic and did NOT have a drinking problem (other than not being able to handle his alcohol on the sparse occasions that he did drink). We told him we wanted him to simply admit his wrongdoings and apologize. He did not. An exact quote from him on the phone was "i think...I feel like im sorry". It was after this call we realized he DID in fact have issues to sort out, and none of them had to do with drinking.

D) Despite that pretty long "C", I would rather not post a long overdone blog like Ben did. The long-short of it is that he is a pathological liar. Nothing he has said is wholly true. For example, in his blog, when he "came clean" in Denver....he meant to say that he stopped me IN PASSING and said "listen, I did spend that money" (which means that our hour and a half conversation the night before was nothing but lies to my face). Then says, "but every time I spent band money I was drunk or too hungover to care".

This is clearly bullshit. I have printed bank statements from March 2009-April 2011. I went through them myself and highlighted every purchase that was not band related. I did NOT highlight any ATM withdrawals, even though I'm sure that money was blown on pointless things too. And I did NOT highlight any rent or utilities from his time spent living in Portland, Oregon."

Click here to read the entire message from Rampolla.