Mushroomhead’s original singer Jeffrey Hatrix sued Steve ‘Skinny’ Felton for unpaid royalties.
Hatrix, who left Mushroomhead in 2018, said in his lawsuit that he hasn’t received royalties for his music in years. He wrote or helped write 148 songs with the band. “Most of the performing arts copyright registrations were registered as Stephen Felton being the copyright claimant,” the lawsuit obtained by Blabbermouth read.
It continued, “And, although on many songs [Hatrix] was given proper credit for his participation in creating said works, there seems to be no record of mechanical royalty payments stemming from these performing arts registrations.”
“Felton’s actions … became more nefarious, including the doctoring of publishing splits giving Skinny (Felton) double pay under 2 names ‘Tenafly Viper’ and just plain ‘Steve Felton’, along with 30% going to him under ‘unknown publicist’ and ‘unknown writer,'” said the lawsuit about the time before Hatrix left Mushroomhead.
The lawsuit added, “In fact, most of the publishing splits seem to have disappeared as plaintiff has not received any mechanical royalties to speak of for several years at least.”
“Although the money coming increased, plaintiff was apparently receiving pennies on the dollar,” the lawsuit also noted. “[Hatrix] was paid an ‘allowance’ $1,200 per week per, per tour. In fact, plaintiff was paid almost nothing beyond this and is due his publishing and other, royalties, income from touring, sales and royalties from film media, along with loss from other sources of income to be determined.”
Jeffrey left Mushroomhead in March 2018. A few months later, the vocalist talked about leaving the band on the ADHD podcast. He said, “My issue was there was only one chief [Steve Felton], and that’s not how it started. That really catapulted us all backwards. I feel like we could have done so much more… Things could have all been different and friendly, but I don’t believe my former band has that in their vocabulary. I never wanted it like that. It’s odd.”
He added, “I left the band because I couldn’t do it anymore. I stayed for a long time for the fans and it just got to be like, ‘Sorry I just can’t do it anymore.’ I was trying to leave on semi-amicable terms and then that never happened… I got to the point where I didn’t even want to go on tour anymore.”
Hatrix’s lawyer, Ronald Stanley, told Cleveland.com that Hatrix wants at least $3.5 million, but they don’t know exactly how much he should get yet.
