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The Band Perry used to have sibling “blood harmony,” but now things are just looking bloody between the sister and two brothers who used to make up country music’s foremost contemporary family band. Former member Neil
Perry has gone public with his far-from-harmonious feelings about the lineup of the newly reconstituted act — which now consists solely of Kimberly Perry and her husband of five years, Johnny Costello.
Neil expressed his thoughts about the estrangement in several Instagram posts. In one, he sits down in a chair in front of shelves of awards he won as part of the Band Perry in their heyday, with the sarcastic caption: “Preparing for my Netflix documentary about how the Band Perry went from three siblings to my sister and her husband.”
In another post, he shared footage taken from two of Kimberly Perry’s recent video interviews, in which she says that her brothers are supportive of her carrying on the act without them — something Neil Perry says could not be further from the the truth, as far as he is concerned.
“I explicitly asked my sister not to misrepresent my support for the current version of the band,” Neil begins.
“By May of 2024, none of us were consistently on speaking terms, and Reid had stopped engaging in both personal and business matters,” he continues. “Kimberly came to me about bringing the band out of hiatus, and we initially agreed that moving forward with Reid was not something we were prepared to do. Kimberly reached out to him, and he confirmed he was not interested. I was then presented with three options: move forward as a duio, hold auditions or have her husband step in. I was fine with the first two, but soon understood Kimberly wanted to move forward with the third. We ultimately decided not to proceed.”
Neil then describes how quickly things allegedly took another turn. “A few weeks later, Reid rejoined the band through conversations I was not part of, and I was given three days to decide whether I would continue under those circumstances. At the end of that three-day window, I asked for a conversation the following week and was told I was out of time. I was approached again a month later, but I could not move forward under those circumstances. At that point I understood that continuing to tour was no longer realistically an option for me and I would soon be forced out by the 2/3 partnership agreement. What I did not agree to was losing my financial interest and access to the resources and business I had spent my life helping build.”
Neil concludes this narrative by noting: “Shortly after the band signed a label deal, my brother left the band. What remained is my sister and her husband.”
Two publicity firms representing the Band Perry did not immediately respond to Variety‘s requests for comment. The act recently re-signed with its former label, Big Machine, and the duo released two new singles this year, the first under the group name in nine years.
Neil Perry is resuming his career in music, under a new band name, Wolves of June. The “June” in the band name refers to the month that he realized he was being edged out of the Band Perry’s resumption, to his mind.
“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. I never expected that my decision not to participate under those circumstances would also mean losing my financial interest and access to the band’s platforms, resources, and audience I had spent my life helping build.
“Then I watched a story emerge that didn’t resemble the one I lived,” he continued. “The anger became music. The grief became songs. The loss became freedom… June 2024 took the old life. @wolvesofjune is what came next.”
On the Wolves of June IG account, he has posted excerpts from a music video he has filmed to introduce his new musical incarnation, portraying himself singing in a boxing ring. He included lyrics from the song as a caption in one of the posts, hinting that they may reflect his feelings about his sister.
“TNT temper in a black dress / Your fuse gets lit / You lose finesse,” he wrote, quoting his new lyrics, then added: “Remind you of anyone?”
The Band Perry went on hiatus in 2022 before Kimberly Perry went into action to restart it two years later. “When we took a break in 2022, it was like, ‘We all need a minute.’ We’d been on the road since I was 15. Reid was 10. Neil was 8 at our first show,” she said in a spring interview with Bobby Bones for his “Bobbycast” podcast. “Their entire childhood and my young adulthood went to the Band Perry. By 2022, we’d been through so many changes, creatively and otherwise, a lot that people didn’t see. We needed a spiritual health break. We needed a mental health break. We couldn’t keep touring without taking a hot minute to pause.”
She said that Neil and Reid had gotten married and moved onto solo careers in the interim, but “I had the energy to rebuild this. We are not going out this way. We are not letting it end with the disappearance of the Band Perry. I couldn’t live with that. Thank God, I married a guitar player who can keep the family band alive with me.”
In the interview excerpts Neil Perry posted on his Instagram, Kimberly appeared to affirm that she was proceeding with her brothers’ supoprt.
In the “Bobbycast” podcast, Bones is seen asking, “ I think you pulled off the greatest coup ever. You were in the Band Perry with the two brothers. It’s kinda hard to be the Band Perry without your brothers. So you come back, you, your brother, and your husband, and then you drop your brother. So was that on… if it was on purpose, genius level, like chess and checkers,” Bones says.
Kimberly Perry responds to Bones: “ I wish I could claim that because maybe it would assure job security forever and ever. But no, it just happened the way that it happened. It did not feel authentic to me to play Band Perry songs live under the solo artist banner. And also, I just missed the hell out of playing with family on stage, whoever that family ended up becoming. But no, not strategic.”
In the Rolling Stone video interview Neil posted, host Joseph Hudak asks Kimberly Perry, “Did Neil and Reid give you their blessing to carry on with the name, because it is the three of y’all?” She responds, “ ”Yeah. I think they are very interested in the Band Perry getting landed as well. You know, we’re 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. And so I just really feel encouraged. Reid commented on our last post about ‘Psychological’ [the comeback single released in February]. He’s like, ‘I’ll be cheering from the bleachers,’ you know? And it’s just so cool to feel that love and support and to know that, hey, guys, like, 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 in the band if they ever want to tour.”
Reid Perry has not publicly commented on the latest developments. Last Odtober, he announced he was quitting the band, seemingly under amicable circumstances. “I’ve decided to leave TBP,” he wrote on Instagram. “I’ll be missing seeing you in the crowd at a Band Perry show but I’ll be around, managing a new voice,” naming a management client he was taking on. “I wish Kimberly and TBP the best as they move forward into the future.” He did not mention the status of his brother in that post, and has only subsequently posted a birthday tribute to his wife.
