Flaw guitarist/bassist Tommy Gibbons has been fired from the band after recently apologizing for ‘accidentally’ plagiarizing several tracks featured on the band’s latest release, “Vol. IV Because Of The Brave“. Gibbons recently issued this apology on the matter, explaining that the situation arose as a result of himself having re-recorded tracks from various YouTubers over the years in a bid to challenge himself as a musician.
Gibbons stated that given the time past and frequent nature of his habit, he was unclear on which song ideas he had actually penned himself when submitting material to Flaw for the album.
While five of the album’s tracks were shown to have not originally been written by Flaw, only one thus far was proven to have been officially licensed prior. Two of the tracks were confirmed to have been stolen from a YouTuber named Douglas Patrick, while two more were seemingly taken from a writing collective known as Sound For Production. Another song was confirmed to have originally been written by YouTuber ‘Riff Master T‘ and was legally purchased by the band for usage on the record.
Flaw frontman Chris Volz initially seemed to show support for Gibbons in the wake of his apology, stating this past Friday, October 04th:
“Thank you for owning up to your mistakes Tommy, hopefully the BS gossip queens can take a nap now……”
However, yesterday, October 06th, Volz revealed in a new statement that Gibbons had been let go, offering:
“Flaw Family:
-It is with a heavy heart I have to announce that we have parted ways with guitarist/bassist Tommy Gibbons. I know most of you have seen the bad press over the past few weeks and know the situation I have been put in, I really had no choice but to let him go. I can not and will not tolerate unauthorized use of any artists material whatsoever, no matter the excuse.The integrity of Flaw and every project I have ever worked on is extremely important, and I can not accept any form of plagiarism or misuse of other people’s material. I have worked too hard and sacrificed too much for the past 20 years to let anyone ruin that. Flaw will persevere through this and we will come out stronger in the end.
We wish Tommy the best in his future endeavors and hope he has learned a valuable lesson from all of this. He’s not a bad guy and is an amazing string player so I hope he can realize the severity of his actions, correct this behavior, make it right with all parties involved, and move on. I can not in good conscience continue to work with him or have him as a representative of the Flaw crew.
That being said, we are currently accepting video auditions for a new bassist, please send video of live performance play-a-long to our songs ‘Payback‘ and ‘Whole‘ to: [email protected] (my name without the ‘i’) and we will get back to you for a full physical audition. Thank you all for your understanding during this difficult time and we can’t wait to see you all soon on the next tour!”
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