Cage the Elephant’s Matt Shultz Arrested for Gun Possession

Cage the Elephant frontman Matt Shultz was arrested on Thursday (Jan. 5) in New York City, Billboard can confirm.

The 39-year-old singer was arrested with two charges of criminal possession of a weapon after police found two loaded firearms in his room at the Bowery Hotel, according to the NYPD. The arrest came in response to a 911 phone call around 10 a.m. reporting that there was a person in possession of a weapon. Shultz spent the night at the 9th precinct in Lower Manhattan.

Billboard has reached out to Cage the Elephant’s reps for more information, though received no response at the time of publication.

The award-winning rock band released their most recent album, Social Cues, in 2019. The album went on to win best rock album at the 2020 Grammys. “During the making of the record as a whole we were pretty obsessed with horror movies,” guitarist Brad Shultz, Matt’s older brother, said of the album’s second single, “House of Glass,” at the time. “We wanted the song to have a horror film feel and John Carpenter has always been a favorite of ours. Fun fact, he is from Bowling Green, Kentucky, our home own, and actually dated our bass player’s mother when they were teenagers.”

Social Cues came following 2015’s Tell Me I’m Pretty, which also won the Grammy for best rock album.

Matt formed Cage the Elephant back in 2006 with his older brother Brad Shultz, as well as Jared Champion, Daniel Tichenor and Lincoln Parish, who left the band in 2013.