Incubus announce Nicole Row as their full-time bassist

Incubus have officially announced bassist Nicole Row as a full-time band member. Row was first brought to the fold as a sub after their previous bassist Ben Kenney got time off band duties due to a surgery for a brain tumor. Kenney has now recovered from that illness, but will not be returning to the band.

Frontman Brandon Boyd has recently spoken about Row in an interview with Rolling Stone, saying:

She’s definitely part of the band now. Her very first project with us was obviously going on tour, and she swooped in and was this delightful breath of fresh air, which we’re so thankful for so many reasons. It’s always sad when somebody from a creative family decides to step away, but she brought a whole new universe into our band, which has been amazing. Part of that momentum we’re feeling in writing a new record is partly her fault.

He then spoke of Kenney:

He has recovered. It’s complicated. I’ll just preface what I’m about to say with that. It’s complicated from an interpersonal point of view, but he himself decided to step away. I think that the situation — as it would probably for anyone — gave rise to a bunch of questions about what he was doing in his life and the direction he was heading. And from what I’m able to discern, he decided it was time for him to step away and do other things. So god bless.

We were sad at the revelation, but we love him deeply and we respect him and honor his contribution to our band for over 20 years. I want Ben to have the chance to answer these questions in his own timeframe and in his own voice, because I don’t really think it’s for me to say what his reasoning was.

Boyd also addressed the re-recording of their fourth studio album, “Morning View“, a process for which Row contributed. When asked if Taylor Swift‘s move to re-record her own music so she can own the rights to the new recordings weighed into the situation, he said:

It was definitely part of the discussion. Through time, we won our re-record rights back, and it’s not unimportant to the process. To me, it’s sort of a less interesting part of the process, but still a part of it. When you’re involved in the making of music, especially when it’s exotic recording contracts from the Nineties, you pour your soul out and give everything you have into these recordings, and then ultimately you don’t own them. And there’s something not unusual about that, but it’s also sad.

So we’ve been around long enough now. We got to that point after all the decades where we’ve started to get our re-record rights back. We’ll never own the masters to the original recordings, but in the contracts it basically says that should we choose to re-record the album, we then own those master recordings. So it just gives a little bit more license and ownership to these tracks. But like I said, it’s not the most important thing.

Incubus’s re-recorded version of “Morning View“, “Morning View XXIII“, will be out on May 10. They’ll also be performing the album in its entirety live on the road this summer on tour with Coheed And Cambria.