Vulture:

So Mark and I would talk, but we weren’t really talking about the band. We’re friends before we’re a band. Far beyond what the band is to me is Mark’s health and his friendship. So we just were talking. And over the course of, I don’t remember the exact timeframe, but Mark said that they were talking to Tom and starting to work on things. So it didn’t come as any — it was just as far as the actual information dropping and the schedule of everything was revealed to me when it was to everyone else, but I knew that it was coming. It wasn’t this huge surprise, nor was it a stab in the back. Those guys, we were friends — and this includes Tom. Tom especially has been a friend and a fan of my band for many years. Long before I started playing with Blink, Alkaline Trio was out on tour opening for Blink. And Tom had, if not everything to do with it, a lot to do with that. So we’ve always been buddies. We haven’t talked in recent years.