The band Panic! At The Disco kicked off our summer with some exciting announcements on June 1st. First things first, an upcoming release for their new album, Viva Las Vengeance, is currently set to drop on August 19, 2022. In the following month, they’ll take off for the album’s tour. Oh, and of course, they dropped their catchy Viva La Vengeance title track that already has over 5 million listens on Spotify, and nearly 4 million views on the accompanying music video on YouTube.
Normally when someone says “band,” one typically thinks of a group of people. However, this will be P!ATD’s second album release with founding singer Brendon Urie being the only member left in the group. Additionally, this comes without working alongside any of his former bandmates, not even as touring members. The first album Urie released and toured without his former members, Pray For the Wicked, came out almost exactly 4 years ago in 2018, and was a MAJOR hit. In fact, the track “High Hopes,” is at over 1.2 billion listens on Spotify. This is nearly twice as many listens as their prior most-listened-to song, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” which Urie attributes the band’s success in 2005. So it’s pretty safe to say, being the band’s sole member hasn’t slowed Urie down one bit.
But what about the band’s former members? Where are they today, and what caused their departure in the first place? Some of the answers are more interesting than you may anticipate. The founding members were Ryan Ross, Spencer Smith, Brent Wilson, and, of course, Brendon Urie. They formed P!ATD in 2004 while they were all still in high school.
Brent Wilson, bassist, was the first to leave the band in 2006. Well, “leave” is a nice way to put it. He was kicked out over a phone call from Smith and was completely shocked. When the news originally surfaced on the band’s website, it was claimed to be a mutual and amicable decision between the four. However, when Wilson made claims that the surprise decision was made in a greedy ploy for the other three members to make more money on their upcoming tour, Smith shut down that claim. Rather, telling MTV at the time that it was Wilson’s lack of responsibility that got him kicked out of the band. Smith went on to describe that Wilson didn’t write or record even a single bass note on the debut album, instead, they were written and recorded by Ross and Urie. They even had to simplify the bass parts in concert for Wilson to be able to play them.
Well, if Wilson didn’t feel like life was treating him kindly in 2006, it certainly isn’t treating him kindly today, either. On January 22, 2021, he was arrested on three counts of possession of narcotics, as well as unlawful possession of a firearm. He had been pulled over for crossing three lanes of traffic without signaling, and when searched there was evidence that pointed to intent to sell. He had pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance back in 2018, as well.
With Brent Wilson out, the next member to join the band on bass guitar was Jon Walker. The first time he played in the band was at radio event in California in 2006. Wilson had basically no-call-no-showed the event (which may have been the last straw in the decision to kick him out), leading the band to fly Walker out ASAP. He went on to help the band’s second album, Pretty. Odd., in 2008. The album took on a much different sound than the first, and while the band made Walker feel welcomed, the four found they were being split in two different creative directions. Smith and Urie wanted to continue to evolve the band’s sound in the direction we think of as emo, pop punk/rock, while Ross and Walker liked the vintage/retro rock direction the Pretty. Odd. album had.
With that, in 2009 the band split in two, with Ryan Ross and Jon Walker forming as The Young Veins. They released one album in 2010, Take A Vacation!, and that was it. The same December, Walker announced the band’s indefinite hiatus on Twitter, and there’s been nothing else from them since besides an online release of a deluxe edition of their album in 2019. It is unclear what caused the band’s end, however, Walker and Ross remain in the music industry with their respective solo careers. Walker has come out with several EP and LP releases since 2011, his most recent being the LP Different, in June 2021. He remains active on social media, even sharing on Twitter in early March his own Spotify playlist titled “Best of Jon Walker.”
After The Young Veins split, Ryan Ross was not heard from until 2013, when he began posting solo content on his SoundCloud page. He has since seemed to strip all of his solo content from the internet, at least via his own profiles. The songs can be found reposted on YouTube and SoundCloud by fans. Since then, most projects he’s been a part of involve his long-time friend/former girlfriend, Z Berg. Not only did he feature on two of her songs (“The Bad Last” in December 2018, and her cover of “Lonesome Town” in June 2020), he was a part of a group she created called the Dead End Kids Club, introduced in July 2019. This was a group featuring a variety of their musician friends that would take turns performing on stage. Not in the traditional sense of this musician first, this one second, this one third, seeing each act once. Instead, it was a constant rotation of the different artists playing different songs with each other, then jumping in on another song a few tracks later. Ross toured with the Dead End Kids Club in the fall of 2019, the group having plans to tour annually. However, our good ol’ friend COVID-19 happened. The last heard from the group was on Halloween of 2020, from a repost on their Instagram page of Ross performing at one of the group’s shows, captioned, “Those were the days, eh?… Stay home. Stay safe. Hopefully we’ll have a Halloween together again one day. Miss you all.”
After the departure of Ross and Walker, Dallon Weekes would join forces with Panic! initially as a touring member. While he had no writing or recording credits on their third album, Vices and Virtues, he toured the album with them and would soon be announced as an official new member in the band’s lineup via Twitter. While the album’s cover art (which Weekes helped conceptualize) appeared to only feature Smith and Urie, Weekes is a fun Easter egg in plain sight, standing behind Urie while wearing a goat mask. In their next album that was released in 2013, Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!, Weekes had co-written most of the songs with Urie.
However while Weekes was becoming more involved with the band, the opposite was true for Smith. Smith came out in 2013 as having been battling an addiction to alcohol and prescription pain medications. While he performed in the first few shows of the new album’s tour, he couldn’t juggle the pressures of touring with his journey to sobriety. It was announced that Smith would be taking break from the band to continue his treatment, fully supported by the band and their fans. He later announced his official departure in 2015.
Smith’s story has gotten a lot happier since then. In 2018, he and Pete Wentz announced that he would be joining Wentz, working at his record label DCD2. DCD2, previously known as decaydance, signed their first band in 2005. Who was that band you may ask? Why it was Panic! At the Disco of course! Smith has been working happily alongside Wentz since, also working closely with Crush Management. While not very active on his own social media platforms, he is seen from time to time in places like Pete Wentz’s Instagram story, smiling and having a good time.
This of course brings us to the departure of Dallon Weekes. Weekes resumed status as only a touring member in late 2015. While he had no part in writing or recording Panic!’s 5th album that came out in 2016, Death of a Bachelor, he did complete the tour alongside Urie. He announced his official departure just before the start of 2018. He is now a full force in his own band, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me. While he originally planned for many years as a solo act, he brought on Ryan Seaman who was best known previously from Falling In Reverse. They knew each other from Weekes’ prior hobby band, The Brobecks. They released a few singles and an EP between 2017 and 2018, then dropped their first full-length album titled RAZZMATAZZ, in 2020. This brings us to today. On May 31, a single day before Panic! Announced everything Viva Las Vengeance, IDKHow announced their upcoming fall tour which they will be co-headlining alongside Joywave.
And there you have it, consider yourself caught up on the history of Panic! At The Disco’s band members. Most, of which, continue happily in the music industry today.
Photo credit: Boston Schulz
Leave a Comment