This weekend, Iron Pizza will play our Halftime Show at Cactus Club. It turns out the abbreviated Sunday night performance will be one of the last times the band will play together. Earlier this week, Iron Pizza announced they were breaking up, and that their finale(s) will take place during a December 8 doubleheader at Circle-A and Bremen Cafe.
Since originally forming in late 2013 as the solo project of Jarred Nonnemacher, the project gradually added new members and became a full-fledged synth-rock band, which we once said “occupies a warped, whacked-out wavelength where every broken thrift shop kiddie keyboard is an instrument to be treasured.” Once Rachael Thompson, Bryce Kedrowicz, and Jake Brahm joined the Iron Pizza ranks, the band has been a regular and refreshing fixture on shows in Riverwest and Bay View, with a few festival spots—including a slot on this year’s PrideFest—sprinkled in for good measure.
Though Iron Pizza’s piece-by-piece formation and the band’s sound are both quite unconventional, the reason they decided to part ways is a familiar one.
“We all kind of got busy with our own lives,” Thompson says. “Me being a mom, jobs, personal lives—we kind of just faded apart and practices stopped happening. There’s no hard feelings and we are all still really great friends. We will always be family.”
Prior to calling it quits, the band put out three releases of their own (most recently, the year’s Nobody’s Fool) and a split with Soup Moat. Last fall, Iron Pizza opened for Andrew W.K. at The Rave. Before officially bowing out, the band is planning to play two strikingly different shows on December 8. The first will be an acoustic performance at Circle-A. Later that night, they’ll plug in and play at Bremen Cafe and will share the stage with a secret band. Thompson promises “lots of glitter, hugs, and tears.”
Kedrowicz currently plays drums in The Hughes Family Band. Thompson says she plans on fronting another band at some point, and she’s sure Brahm and Nonnemacher will start other projects sometime soon.
“We all formed a very strong friendship being in Iron Pizza,” Thompson says. “This band meant fun, friendship, and acceptance. I’m just really happy that I was a part of that.”
The end is approaching for Iron Pizza, but you still have a few more opportunities to see them before they’re gone.