Slaves 'Have Nothing To Be Down About' Despite Forced Warped Tour Exit

Controverisal Californian band Slaves have shrugged off their expulsion from the US Warped Tour following a last-minute "Town Hall" meeting at which performers on the travelling festival voted to remove the act from the bill.

"We have nothing to be down about," the band wrote to a fan on social media who had expressed sympathy with respect to their being voted off the tour. "We know ourselves and we know who is our family." 

According to reports, a missive was sent out to artists aboard the Vans-backed event at the weekend requesting their presence at a "Town Hall" meeting to decide the fate of Slaves with respect to the remainder of the Warped Tour, with the ultimate result being the band's exile by their peers.

Among the allegations against the band — particularly directed towards frontman Jonny Craig, also of Dance Gavin Dance — were the apparent (implied sexual) assault of a merch seller, peddling/usage of drugs, and wanton disposal of sewage, which the band were swift to elaborate on via social media, instead asserting that they were removed from the tour primarily due to Craig's levels of intoxication.

"I’m going to keep this as short as i can, first i’m going to address the rumors that are NOT true," a statement read on Facebook.

"There were NOT drugs involved nor was anyone in our band looking to buy, or sell drugs.

"There was NO RAPE or any forceful sexual harassment, no woman was ever touched or even spoken to, just felt uncomfortable by our behavior.

"We NEVER agreed to Warped Tour, Or to [merch seller] Colleen that we would not drink on this tour.

"We did NOT empty our non existent sewage tank from our bus all over.

"Let me make it %100 clear that we are not continuing Warped Tour because we were voted off because the opinions of certain people who believe that since Jonny drank, despite his success getting clean, will lead to his relapse."

Craig admitted to Lambgoat that he "got drunk and treated our merch girl like she was one of the dudes" and that he "understand[s] this was not respectful behaviour"; however, while he describes himself as "sorry, very sorry" about the incident, he believes "this isn't worth all this".

"I don’t think the word rape is funny and I don’t think anyone should just toss that around," Craig said. "I would never hurt anyone of the opposite sex. I’m sorry for breaking my streak of not drinking and have no problem picking right back up. I have spent a year putting my life back together will REAL change for once and I don’t deserve this. Neither do my band who have done nothing but take care of me and picked me up time and time again."

In some ways, the decisive response against Slaves from the Warped community is pretty unsurprising — the festival has been stuck in the looming shadow of sexual misconduct allegations against line-up inclusion Jake Mcelfresh, aka Front Porch Step, since early this year, with promoter Kevin Lyman recently defending the decision to allow the artist to perform despite the allegations, describing the performance as a step in Mcelfresh's rehabilitation.

Warped 2015 continues across the United States through till August. A London event will be held in October.

Slaves' original statement:

I’m going to keep this as short as i can, first i’m going to address the rumors that are NOT true.

There were NOT drugs involved nor was anyone in our band looking to buy, or sell drugs.

There was NO RAPE or any forceful sexual harassment, no woman was ever touched or even spoken to, just felt uncomfortable by our behavior.

We NEVER agreed to Warped Tour, Or to Colleen that we would not drink on this tour.

We did NOT empty our non existent sewage tank from our bus all over

Let me make it %100 clear that we are not continuing Warped Tour because we were voted off because the opinions of certain people who believe that since Jonny drank, despite his success getting clean, will lead to his relapse.

This band has been under a microscope for everything we have done, we have had to bite our tongue for every completely twisted story that hits the internet, and are now being called rapists for something the internet doesn’t know about, all of this is because of what people have read about Jonny’s past instead of what people KNOW about who Jonny is.

We aren’t the people you have read about, if you would take the chance to get to know us you would see that every situation isn’t what you read of it online.

Our first merch person was a very attractive girl whom remains to be our very good friend. You can read her statement here.

We stood by jonnys side the last year, we stood by his side last night and we will stand by his side this morning. because we KNOW the truth.