THE WALLACE BROS. SELL OUT REUNION TOUR; IMMEDIATELY BREAK UP

For Immediate Release – After years of feverish expectation and a growing spate of hunger strikes by rabid fans on all seven continents, the release of tickets for the Wallace Bros. Reunion Tour caused a surge in web activity so profound that the band came briefly under the scrutiny of the NSA, apparently out of concern that they posed a threat to the normal functioning of the nation’s communication infrastructure.

Privacy advocates expressed outrage when the band was held without charges in a secret government facility for several days in January, but Mark, the band’s recording engineer, guitarist, bassist, and string section, was philosophical upon the band’s release.

“The NSA, I mean, people complain,” he said.  “But in this day and age, it’d be embarrassing if they couldn’t figure out how to read everybody’s email.  This is America!”

In contrast, in her interactions with the press, his sister and bandmate Carey adhered rigorously to a cover story apparently concocted by the NSA to obscure the details of the band’s temporary captivity: that the two of them had not been kidnapped in the name of national security, but simply stuck in her apartment for several days during a blizzard that dumped twenty-seven inches of snow on New York City.

Her story: that Mark had only been in town to take his girlfriend to the ballet, a romantic gesture that was thwarted by the storm, which trapped his girlfriend in Detroit, and him in his sister’s apartment. 

But the speed of ticket sales, which reduced records set by Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Adele to piles of steaming wreckage, was almost immediately overshadowed by reports of the breakup of the band and the tour’s subsequent cancellation.

From a monastery on the Hudson River, Carey released only a printed handout of an ancient labyrinth to the press by way of comment.

But Mark was characteristically more forthcoming.  His explanation: that the greatest sibling duo in the history of music had sundered over his insistence that the band be renamed “The Mark Wallace Explosion.”

“Look,” said Mark.  “There’s only one person in this band who’s not replaceable. And it’s not Carey.”

Many members of the press saw his move as a serious miscalculation by a fading star with a potentially fatal inability to tell his friends from his enemies.

But Mark was adamant that the band had broken up because Carey simply couldn’t tolerate his ungovernable passion for authenticity.

“I just wanted to tell the truth for a change,” said Mark.  “About who’s really the heart and soul of this band.  And Carey – man, she wouldn’t even consider it. 

“But what are you going to do?  You can’t talk sense with a narcissist.”

The Wallace Bros.:

The New York Daily News Interview

NYDN: I see that you’ve returned, with this recording, to your tradition of releasing covers in celebration of Valentine’s Day.

MW: It’s not just Valentine’s Day. We’ve always been a cover band. We just tweak what we cover a bit more than other acts.

NYDN: I did notice that the melody of your B-Side, which is ostensibly a Wallace Bros. original, is almost identical to a cut from the Ass Ponys’ first album.

MW: Carey was like, why don’t you write an Ass Ponys song? And I was like, why would I do that, when they already wrote some?

NYDN: And the A-side appears to be a cover of a monster hit by.. Poison?

CW:  Actually, it’s a Fred Thomas cover.

NYDN: Fred Thomas wrote Every Rose Has Its Thorn?

CW:  No. But he covered it on his Family Jam 2005 Tour Album. We didn’t cover Poison. We covered him. We’re pretty much a Fred Thomas cover band at this point.

NYDN: But the Fred Thomas version doesn’t include the mashup with that other classic Poison track, Give Me Something To Believe In. I have to say, I was impressed by the seamlessness of the transitions between the two songs.

CW: Bret Michaels made that easy for us. I mean, we’ve done mashups before. But Poison songs are on a whole other level. They’re not just interchangeable verse to chorus. I mean, you can swap out lines from the verse of one song, and just plug them right into the verse of another one.

MW: Plus, his songs are pretty much half great, and half total crap. So you just cut all the crap out of two of his songs, and what you’ve got left is TOTAL GREATNESS.

NYDN:  I’m not sure I ever really listened to the lyrics of Every Rose Has Its Thorn back in the day. But when I was previewing your version, I started wondering. Bret Michaels is talking about how he never wanted to hurt this girl, but then he’s like, “every rose has its thorn.” So, is this a song about how Bret Michaels is the rose?

CW: Look, from a literary standpoint, it’s a complex composition. One way to read it is that Michaels does conceive of himself as a delicate flower, who feels regret about the way his thorns inadvertently hurt those he loves. He’s also playing against the traditional view that the break of dawn is a welcome end to the night. In Michaels’ view, dawn is like a thorn, bringing pain, rather than relief, as the night ends.

NYDN: Well, the interplay between the two verses – one with lovers in bed, and one depicting homeless people on the street, is striking. Although I’m not sure the connection is clear to me.

CW: Well, we’ve done ten years of romantic songs. And this year, I just kind of thought, is it possible there’s something more important than just our own hearts? Is there anything else we might do, besides scrambling after our own transitory satisfaction? Is there any other story we could be a part of?

MW:  She overthinks everything. The song basically says, “Baby, come back to bed.” And that’s pretty much why music was invented.

NYDN: The stripped down, acoustic quality is a welcome surprise after the high production values of the past few years – a return to your roots as you look back over a long career?

MW: Man, I’d love to tell you we ever thought that hard about anything. The fact of the matter is we weren’t even planning to do a record this year. But then we got stuck in New York together for the blizzard with nothing but a ribbon mic and an acoustic guitar.  And we ran out of Scandal episodes.

CW: And I couldn’t get him to watch another season of Royal Pains.

NYDN: This release sees you entering your second decade as a band, taking your place among the elder statesmen of the music industry. You’ve got a reputation for radical innovation which is borne out by the almost frenetic diversity of your catalog. And you’ve seen quite a bit of personal upheaval in the past ten years –  tensions in the band, controversy in the press, romantic escapades involving everyone from Taylor Swift to Drake..

MW: You dated Drake? Without telling me?

CW:  He’s really shy. Can we talk about this later?

NYDN: As you look back over it all, is there anything you could point to as the heart of this band? Or a northern star you look to, as you step into the future?

CW: Well, when you put it that way, the one thing I can think of is our friends.  Whatever else is happening, they never change. 

MW: Yeah, they do.  They get better.