The Funeral March and Joe Whiteaker (R.I.P.) release final EP ‘It All Falls Apart’ – Out now
The Funeral March - Joe Whiteaker
Last year, musician / singer / songwriter, Joe Whiteaker (1968-2024), founder and bandleader of gothic rock band The Funeral March (Rockford, Illinois, USA), lost his life to pancreatic cancer. Before he died, however, Joe and his band made their final studio recordings, the new EP “It All Falls Apart“.
While there have been many incarnations of the lineup over the years, Whiteaker was joined in The Funeral
March by guitarist Wayne Thiele in 2020, and bassist Darius McCaskey in 2021. This trio recorded “It All Falls
Apart”, with producer William Faith at 13 Studio in Chicago. The band is also joined on the album by guest
contributors Ria Aursjoen of Octavian Winters and Aursjoen on additional vocals; Rob Hyman of [melter]
on drums; and Renard Platine on Bass VI, while the most recent live version of the group also features
guitarist Jeff Goins, and drummer Joel DeLuna. Rounding the recordings out to the band’s first album-length release, “It All Falls Apart” also features remixes from Tweaker, Bellhead, and The Joy Thieves.
Tragically, however, near the end of recording sessions, Joe learned that he had pancreatic cancer, and after
a months-long battle, passed away on 17 May of 2024. Bassist and longtime friend, Darius McCaskey, states: “I’d like people to know how proud Joe was of this record. We had a great time recording what would become It All Falls Apart with William Faith in 2023, before Joe was diagnosed with cancer, nd he was able to hear the final mixes before he passed away. Joe didn’t have a specific theme in mind. Each song was written independently, some even several years ago. But as tracks were selected and refined, this idea of things and people breaking down and falling apart emerged.”
“It All Falls Apart” by The Funeral March is released via Bandcamp today. Tomorrow evening, Saturday 15 March, bandmembers Darius McCaskey, Jeff Goins, and Joel DeLuna come together with guest vocalists to celebrate the release at Rockford’s RPL Nordlof Center, with support from special guests Tatv Gral, [melter], Bellhead, and William Faith. The show will also be streaming live from the group’s Bandcamp.
Joe Whiteaker is survived by his wife and two children. All proceeds from the release of “It All Falls Apart” will
directly support the family.
About The Funeral March
Led by the late Joe Whiteaker (b. 21 October 1968, d. 17 May 2024), US gothic rock / post-punk band The
Funeral March of the Marionettes – more often simply ‘The Funeral March’ – emerged from Rockford,
Illinois, in 1987. The band drew inspiration from seminal English acts like Bowie, The Cure, Siouxsie and the
Banshees, Bauhaus, and Joy Division; while their name was a nod to Charles Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a
Marionette’, best known as the theme music for TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
During this first phase of the band’s existence, The Funeral March was active from their first gig on 1 August 1987, until the mid-1990s, as Whiteaker later explained: “I looked up, and I was the only original member left, and after many years of fits and starts, when it all fell apart again, I decided it was time to leave it to slumber in its crypt… dreaming the blood-red dreams of madness…”
Intermittently reactivated during the early 2000s, another long hiatus followed from 2007. Finally, in 2017,
Joe felt that the band’s thirtieth anniversary was the right time to resurrect the project in earnest, and
released their long overdue debut, “The Raven” EP: a remastered collection of unearthed recordings from the
band’s early years.
Revitalised by a new cast of revolving members, The Funeral March would go on to record and release a string of new EPs: “Resurgence” (2018), “Solace” (2020), “Flood” (2021), and “Persephone” (2023) – with several standalone singles bridging the gaps between them – before entering the studio in 2023 to record what would become their final release, “It All Falls Apart”.
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