Photo via the Ryan Montbleau Band Facebook page

Ryan Montbleau Band keyboardist Jason Cohen has announced that he will be leaving the band in order to focus more on his family. The band posted a letter from Cohen on their Facebook page today that reads:

Dear RMB friends and family,

After 10 years of relentless touring, it’s with a heavy heart that I’ve decided to bring my time with the Ryan Montbleau Band to an end. The music we made will always be a great source of joy to me but the time has come for me to be home and focus my energy on my family.

I’m enormously grateful to all of you for the love and support you’ve given us over the years; you guys are truly the greatest fans in the world.

I love all the guys in the band and wish them the very best as they move forward. I’m positive this won’t be the last time we share the stage. Thanks for the memories and see you down the road.

With love and gratitude,

Jason Cohen

The band also announced the coming departure of guitarist Lyle Brewer earlier this year. Montbleau addressed the changes in his band’s lineup today with another letter to his fans, in which he revealed that they would be taking the fall off in order to regroup and finish up their forthcoming album. That letter read:

As we announced a few months ago, guitarist Lyle Brewer will also be leaving the band at the end of this summer. As hard as it is to see Lyle and Jason go, (believe me, no one understands the gravity of these two leaving our band more than I do), I fully support both of these guys in their decisions. The fact that they are doing this for good reasons, i.e. for the love of their families, makes me sure that this will somehow lead to good things for the greater RMB family.

There will be no fall tour and I will be using that time and the beginning of next year to recoup, regroup, write, practice, and put the finishing touches on our record. One big final hometown throwdown with this lineup is being planned for December. As Jason said, this probably won’t be the last time the six of us will get on a stage together, but this much is true: the Ryan Montbleau Band as you currently know it is playing our final stretch of shows.

I have many more songs to write and many more shows to play, both without and most certainly with a band. James, Matty and Yahuba and I already have a few ideas kicking around for the fall. But mostly we will be using this time to put our feet back down on the earth for the first time in a decade.

I don’t quite know what’s coming next but I know that somehow it will be great.

Thank you for listening. Much more is on the way…

Sincerely,

Ryan Montbleau

The Ryan Montbleau Band will perform tonight at the Narrow Center for the Arts in Fall River, MA. A full list of their summer tour dates can be found here.