Mumford & Sons Joke About Their Hiatus

Have the days of Mumford & Sons come to an end? Don’t ask banjo player Winston Marshall.

In an interview with Vulture at an after-party for Mistaken For Strangers Wednesday night, Marshall implied that the group was in his rearview mirror. “I wish I had something to say about Mumford & Sons. It was a good time,” he offered. “It’s over. We had a good time, though. It was good.” When asked if a “reunion” tour was in the works, he responded, “Well, I dunno, fucking, that would be awesome. But, you know, it is what it is, I guess.”

It sounds like Marshall might be following the lead of frontman Marcus Mumford, who spun a similar story when he co-hosted a radio show earlier this year. “Everyone keeps asking if we’ve broken up as a band, which I love, so I keep saying ‘yes’, and then we can have a big comeback tour next year!”

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Marshall  also spoke a little, shall we say, candidly about whether or not he thought Mumford & Sons had ‘killed’ the banjo. “I think ‘killed’ is an understatement. We murdered it. We let it, yeah — fuck the banjo. I fucking hate the banjo.”

A self-proclaimed “renaissance man,” the ‘ex’-banjo player also claimed responsibility for the party’s catering. “Well, for me, food and music are very similar in that you create, you spend a lot of time making something and it only lasts a few seconds, or a few minutes. So yeah, this is sort of my new — this is me getting it out, I guess,” said Marshall.

For now, Mumford fans can take a deep breath. A publicist for the band stated that Marshall’s comments were completely in jest. “He was joking. Although I think the catering of the party might be true.”

Following September’s news that Mumford & Sons were taking an indefinite hiatus, the band members have stayed busy with separate projects. Marcus Mumford, along with several other artists, is working on an album of songs based on unreleased Bob Dylan lyrics from the Basement Tapes era. Some artists working on the project include legendary producer T Bone Burnett, Jim James, Elvis Costello and Dawes guitarist Taylor Goldsmith.

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In November, Marshall joined another band: Salvador Dali Parton, a one-night-only spectacle of a supergroup that played a string of six shows in Nashville before splitting over “artistic differences” before the evening was through.