Modest Mouse have said guitarist Simon O’Connor will not join their upcoming tour, following allegations of inappropriate messages to a 16-year-old fan.
The claims emerged on the band’s Reddit forum earlier this week, when a fan shared screenshots of an Instagram exchange they said had taken place shortly before their 17th birthday.
In a statement shared on social media today (July 31), Modest Mouse confirmed that Les Savy Fav guitarist Seth Jabour would replace O’Connor for their upcoming dates.
“Simon O’Connor will not be joining us for the upcoming tour,” they wrote. “The good news is that Seth Jabour of Les Savy Fav will be jumping in to play guitar. We look forward to being out there with you all.”
The band did not directly address the allegations or confirm whether O’Connor has permanently left the group. He has played with Modest Mouse since 2021.
The fan who made the allegations said that their age was visible in their Instagram bio and that O’Connor had viewed a story featuring a countdown to their 17th birthday.
The screenshots appeared to show O’Connor opening the conversation with a sticker reading “SIMON calls your bluff BUZZ”, before sending a sexually explicit meme. The image was censored in the Reddit post, although the fan said that it had not been obscured when it was sent to them.
O’Connor responded to the allegations on the same forum, saying that he “unequivocally” opposed “any sexual behaviour towards minors”.
He claimed that an individual had repeatedly created social media accounts in order to “mess with” him and that he had mistakenly believed the fan’s account belonged to the same person.
“I assumed that this was the same person I had dealt with before and, with poor judgement, I decided to reach out with a tasteless meme, a sticker that read ‘Simon calls your bluff,’ and an attempt to indicate that I recognized the ‘barrage of likes’ and similar photo content from the previous profiles…. Almost a ‘gotcha’.”
O’Connor said he realised “after a few minutes” that he had made a mistake, before unsending the messages and ending the exchange.
“I’m genuinely sorry to the person who received those messages,” he added. “They didn’t deserve to be put in that position, and I’m sorry for the stress and attention this has brought them.
“I know some people will choose not to believe me, and I understand that. I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is tell the truth, take responsibility for my mistake, and apologise.”
Jabour has been a member of New York indie-rock band Les Savy Fav since their formation in the mid-’90s.
Modest Mouse released their eighth studio album ‘An Eraser And A Maze‘ in June, their first since the death of founding drummer Jeremiah Green in 2022.