LACEY STURM Says FLYLEAF Has No Other Shows Planned Beyond BLUE RIDGE ROCK FESTIVAL

In an interview with Ned of Iowa's Rock 108 radio station conducted at this past weekend's Upheaval festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan, singer Lacey Sturm spoke about how she ended up reuniting with FLYLEAF for their first live shows together in 11 years. She said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, actually, my assistant that was on tour with us from the very beginning of FLYLEAF; we were called PASSERBY at that time. We were touring in an '88 Ford Club Wagon van, and we had a bunch of gear in the back with a mattress on top, and you could climb in there and sleep. She actually came on tour with us to be a stylist or a merch person — whatever we needed. She was with us from the beginning. So she got married. And we hadn't seen each other in, like, ten years, nine years, and so we all ended up at the wedding together. And that's how it started."

Sturm went on to say that her reunion with FLYLEAF came together in a "more organic" way than has been the case with some of the other high-profile band reunions in recent years. "I think it had to be that way," she said. "There were some offers for us to get back together, to do reunion shows, but we hadn't seen each other, and everybody has different lives, lots of children. So it didn't really make sense in those times, but because we were already connecting, we figured it out."

Regarding her plans for FLYLEAF and her ongoing solo project in the coming months, Lacey said: "We just have these five festivals [Sick New World, Rock Fest, Upheaval, Inkcarceration and Blue Ridge] — actually, we just added these two on last minute — but we just had the five festivals booked with FLYLEAF. And that was all that we had. Moving forward, again, with the families, and the bandmembers have families, it's hard to figure out how to, like… what does it look like. So that's all we have planned with FLYLEAF. The solo project stuff I do with my husband. It's been in the works for, like, five years, another album. And so we just put out a song a couple of days, which coincided with these shows, which was just — I don't know — it just all converged. It was not intentional, really. But it all worked out. So here we have a song coming out, and hopefully we'll have an album out at the end of August that we've been working on for five years. It's sort of all coming together."

FLYLEAF played its first concert with Sturm in 11 years on April 27 at Schoepf's BBQ in Belton, Texas.

FLYLEAF, which hadn't performed live since 2016 prior to the Belton concert, will make its final festival appearance of this year at the Blue Ridge Rock Festival in September in Alton, Virginia.

Sturm left FLYLEAF in October 2012. She was replaced by Kristen May, who recorded one album with the group, 2014's "Between The Stars", before exiting.

Lacey opened up about her reasons for her departure from FLYLEAF in a video promoting her 2014 memoir "The Reason: How I Discovered A Life Worth Living". At the time, she said: "We were on our second album when I got married. And the album was called 'Memento Mori'. And 'memento mori' means remember you're mortal, remember that you'll die and remember that your life is short and precious and so are the lives of those around you.

"For two years, I toured with my husband and it was really amazing, and then after those two years, we ended up getting pregnant with my son," she continued. "And I recognized that my priorities were gonna change even more and that message of 'memento mori' and remembering how short your life is was really weighing on my heart.

"We toured for ten years. I mean, we weren't home for more than a month, probably, a year. So, for me, I just felt really blessed to be pregnant and to be in a place where I could stay home if I wanted to, and really ask that question: how is this gonna change my priorities? How is this gonna look? We had a few things happen that really brought that message home, but the one that hit the hardest was the death of our sound engineer [Rich Caldwell]. We did one last show with FLYLEAF as a benefit for his wife Katy and their son Kirby. And it was really hard to do a show without him, and it was really hard to think it could be our last show. So I remember looking at my son after Rich had passed and just wondering to myself, if this was the last year I had with my son, how would I spend it?

"It was really amazing to recognize this season changing in my life and the freedom that I was gonna be able to focus on my family. And I'm so thankful for that time. And although it was really hard, I'm thankful. And that's the reason I stepped down from FLYLEAF."

Back in 2016, Sturm was asked in an interview with RockRevolt Magazine if there was chance that she could reunite with her former bandmates after they had parted ways with May. She responded: "Well, you know, I feel like I'm the kind of person that I think so much happened that I never in a million years thought would happen, so I've learned to quit saying 'never.' But at the same time, I'm a really present person."

She added at the time: "I don't have any plans for that, but then again, you never know. I don't know… [Laughs] They haven't called me. And I don't have any plans [to go back]."

At several shows last year, Sturm joined SEETHER on stage to perform the FLYLEAF song "I'm So Sick".

Last week, Lacey debuted a music video for her aggressively introspective new song "Reconcile", a long-awaited follow-up to 2021's "Awaken Love".