Ken Stringfellow has been trying to claw back his music career since 2021 when four women accused the co-founder of ’90s power pop band The Posies of years of sexual abuse. His fellow members of The Posies quit the band in disgust. Alternative rock bands Big Star and REM — with whom Stringfellow has toured over the years — also disowned him.
Stringfellow, 55, has since recorded a new album, Circuit Breaker, and scheduled a solo tour, which until a few days ago included an Oct. 22 appearance in Eugene.
On Oct. 14, Stringfellow canceled his Eugene appearance. His wife claims the venue — which he was keeping secret until showtime — is undergoing renovations and will not be ready in time. Eugene Weekly asked for the name of the venue to verify the information, but she declined to provide it.
The cancellation follows an interview Stringfellow gave to EW, in which he questioned the motives of women who have leveled allegations against him as he seeks to restart his career.
In 2021, Seattle’s NPR affiliate KUOW published an investigative piece detailing specific allegations from three women who say Stringfellow forced them to have sex and bit them hard enough to leave bruises. One woman said Stringfellow forced her into a bathroom and had sex with her, painfully biting her in her genital area after she told him she couldn’t have sex that night. Another woman said that she woke up to Stringfellow having anal sex with her. Three women agreed to be named in the KUOW story.
At the time, Stringfellow said the relationships with the women were consensual and denied he was ever violent. Still, Stringfellow took responsibility for how his actions caused pain, and said that he would not criticize the women who made the allegations.
“While we categorically deny these allegations,” Stringfellow said in a joint Instagram statement with his wife, Dominique Stringfellow, “we respect these women and do not intend to speak negatively about them.”
In promoting his tour, however, Stringfellow has changed his tune. He told EW that he had already responded to the allegations. “I’ve addressed the situation, and it’s time to move on,” he said. “None of that, for me, changes anything about my life as an artist.”
Stringfellow then turned on the women, calling their allegations “fabrications” and, referring to the instance of anal sex as “practically physically impossible,” he also questioned the women’s motives.
“I would say that they developed extremely unrealistic expectations of where the relationships would go,” Stringfellow tells EW. “They took that rejection to a very dark and immature place and used that as a justification to hurt me in return by any means necessary.”
Stringfellow says Circuit Breaker is about overcoming years of challenges and obstacles that his career has faced following the allegations. He tells EW, “The journey of this album was to recalibrate my life, coming from how to deal with these allegations and these impossible challenges and make something beautiful from it.” It is being released Oct. 18.
Katherine Mengardon is less than happy about Circuit Breaker’s release and tour. She says, “The problem is that he’s trying to use us [his victims] to forward himself. And that is just adding major insult to injury here.” Mengardon was one of several women who spoke with EW about her allegations against Stringfellow as news of his tour broke.
Mengardon says she spent years in therapy understanding the trauma that she alleges Stringfellow has caused her. “Absolutely don’t use us even further. You’ve already used us once before, you’re trying to use us again. Fuck off.”