Not holding back.
The Band Perry announced they were taking a hiatus back in 2023, before hitting the road this year following a 2025 relaunch…sort of.
The band responsible for hits like “If I Die Young,” “You Lie,” and “Better Dig Two” was originally made up of siblings Kimberly, Reid and Neil Perry, but now consists of Kimberly and her husband, Johnny Castello. And apparently the lineup change wasn’t entirely without drama.
If you recall, Kimberly has been on a bit of a press tour since the return announcement, most notably going on the likes of Rolling Stone and Bobby Bones’ podcasts over the past year. During these interviews, she’d claim that both brothers were completely on board with the current state of the band.
In fact, she’d tell Rolling Stone that both of them gave her their blessing to continue The Band Perry without them:
“Yeah, absolutely. I think they are very interested in The Band Perry getting landed as well. We are so proud of the past that we shared, and I think it’s just been about where does it go in the future. This was really my family band in the living room before anything else…
It’s just so cool to feel that love and support and to know that, ‘Hey guys, I’ve got this. Everything that we built was so magical and so beautiful. And I’m gonna go land this with the same integrity that we started it with.’ And of course, there’s always an open seat for a brother if they ever want to tour.”
According to Neil, however, that’s not the real story. In fact, he seems to be claiming that it’s a flat out lie.
A couple of months ago, he took to Instagram to claim that he had been kicked out of the family band by his sister and replaced by her husband:
“June 2024 took something from me. Something I had spent my entire life building. A band. A business. A family. A name.
My sister wanted her husband to become a member of the band, taking my brother’s place. I made it equally clear that I was not okay with that. By then, the situation had become about far more than the lineup. I had witnessed instability and broken trust that fundamentally changed my ability to move forward.
Weeks later, I was terminated. The day after my birthday.”
He also claims that he asked his sister not to “misrepresent” his support for the lineup changes, appearing to refer to the Rolling Stone interview, while revealing that he lost all “financial interest and access to the resources and business” when he was kicked out of the group.
Perry has continued to speak out on the drama surrounding the (former) family band, and yesterday for Halloween he took another pointed shot at his sister and the new iteration of The Band Perry.
“The Band Perry wins Halloween this year. No costumes needed when my sister and her 2nd husband have spent the whole year cosplaying as our sibling band.
The real horror story? Watching them try to hit family blood harmonies with a marriage certificate.”
The whole family dynamic clearly makes this situation about much more than simply being kicked out of a band, but it sounds like Neil Perry is clearly still not happy about how it all went down – or the fact that his sister and her husband continue to use the name he helped to build.
