Members of Iwrestledabearonce are Considering a Reunion with Original Vocalist Krysta Cameron
Louisiana-based metalcore act Iwrestledabearonce are probably remembered most for being the band that first brought together vocalist Courtney LaPlante and guitarist Mike Stringer, who would go on to start Spiritbox in 2016 and become one of the most popular things in metal since long hair on men and not showering. But before either LaPlante or Stringer joined the band, Iwrestledabearonce made a name for themselves with original vocalist Krysta Cameron. Now, eight years after the dissolution of the band, it looks like an Iwrestledabearonce reunion may be in the works, not with LaPlante, but with Cameron.
IWABO’s long-time bassist Mike “Rickshaw” Martin has a podcast called Nerding Out with Rickshaw and, during a recent episode (that was reported on by Lambgoat), Rickshaw revealed that he’s been discussing the idea with Cameron:
“You know I’ve always thought right now with the lineup, the old school lineup with Krysta, I always thought that like Krysta and [guitarist] Steven [Bradley] are really the ones that needed to like hammer it out if it was ever going to happen. But the other day, I’m not going to be 100% and give you all of the stuff right now, but I will definitely tell you some of the details right now.
“Right now I was talking to Krysta on the phone and she’s just like, you know we’re catching up about this, we’re catching up about that and then she’s just like ‘you know a lot of people always hit me up in my DMs and they’re talking about when’s the IWABO reunion. When’s Iwrestledabearonce coming back.’
“And I’m like ‘yeah obviously Krysta.’ Like I do a show where we talk about music a lot and there’s people in there all the time ‘when’s IWABO coming back?.’ There’s comments, everybody hits me up. I’m like hey check out my new band and people are like ‘okay when’s IWABO coming back?.’ You know what I mean, like so you know that’s what I have to deal with you know.
“I’m telling this to Krysta and she’s like ‘well you know Ricky, Rickshaw, would you do it, would you ever do it if we were asked to do a reunion.’ And I was like ‘Krysta, I’m the only one playing shows for 40 people.’ You know what I mean, like I’m out here doing you know vocals in a new heavy band I said ‘yes Krysta obviously I would play with IWABO again. Let’s do it.’
“I was like ‘what about you Krysta. What do you think about this?.’ She said ‘I would fucking love to do an IWABO reunion.’ So that’s where we’re at.
“There’s more information, but at this point in time you know we’re just getting, we’re just slowly getting the band back together, seeing what’s going on, being friends again. And then, in the future, we are going to start talking about what it would be worth to do it right. So I’m going to need all the people that loved Iwrestledabearonce to start rallying behind that too.
“You need to be talking about it. We need to be posting about it. And so the more buzz we get going, the easier it’ll be for us to decide to leave the children at home for a month or whatever. You know it’ll be easier if the buzz is happening and we don’t have to go out there and and make it hard on ourselves to get something going. You know what I’m saying. We want to lube it up.”
Lubing it up is always a better idea than just going in raw, unless of course you’re some sort of masochist. Okay, I think I lost the metaphor in there somewhere. But regardless, a reunion between Rickshaw, Cameron, and Bradley sounds interesting. Guitarist Steven Bradley was the only consistent member of the band from formation to finish, but his exact role in the band shifted over time based on their needs. However, Rickshaw didn’t mention speaking to Bradley yet, so we’ll have to hope that he’s pre-lubed and ready to go.
