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Deftones recently kicked off a North American tour supporting their new album Private Music, and fans were happy to see Stephen Carpenter playing the kickoff show in Vancouver, Canada. While the band’s founding guitarist is playing gigs in the United States and Canada, it appears he will continue to sit out overseas dates moving forward.
Carpenter opened up about his flight anxiety and stress in a 2024 interview. He had also previously expressed anti-vax beliefs during the COVID pandemic, after which he elected to sit out Deftones’ 2022 European tour, when international travel without vaccination was difficult.
Now, frontman Chino Moreno has addressed Carpenter’s absence from Deftones’ overseas tours, during which the band taps a fill-in guitarist for Carpenter.
“I don’t want to speak for him,” Moreno told Metal Hammer. “And even if I could, I still don’t have an answer. Really I don’t. It’s still something that I think he is figuring out. And if he does have an answer, I think it’d be great if one day he would share it. But yeah, we support him. We have to. He’s our friend. And his health, be it physically or mentally, always takes the forefront of anything.”
Chino added, “It’s sad, I want him onstage with us at every show. If you ask me what I prefer, I want him there every day, every time we do anything, with the band. But it literally comes down to: there’s two ways to deal with it. We accept what he can and will do, or we just don’t play. And we want to play.”
As mentioned, Carpenter is currently in tow as Deftones’ North American tour rolls on. The band plays Monday night (August 25th) in Calgary, Alberta, with the route running through mid-September festival appearances at Shaky Knees and Louder Than Life. Get tickets here.
English (US) · 