Chad Gilbert Dies at 45 After Playing for His Daughter

New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert died on Sept. 20 at 45, three months after he returned to a Nashville stage to play for his daughter. The joint note from his wife, Lisa Cimorelli, and his bandmates said he passed in his sleep that morning, with Cimorelli and his mother, Jackie, beside him, as he had asked.

The statement did not name a cause. Gilbert had been in cancer care since 2021, and in April he had already told an interviewer that the family life he wanted was complete. The June set was the last public proof of that claim.

He Said the Dream Was Already Won

On April 20, five months before he died, Gilbert sat for a long talk about the new diagnosis and about Lily, then 4. Music had been the first wish. It was not, he said, the one that counted most.

I got my dream. I always wanted to play music, and I got that, but my biggest dream was to be married to a beautiful wife that would love me and have a daughter. That was my dream, so I accomplished my dream.

Chad Gilbert, guitarist, April 20 interview

Cimorelli, 33, is a singer in the sister group Cimorelli. They married in 2020 and had Lily the next year. Gilbert said they kept the worst of the illness from her, and that she still arrived with a toy medical kit to check his knees. He called it a game so she would not feel the weight of it.

He also said the work with New Found Glory had been aimed at ordinary people who could see themselves in the songs. The later years of treatment, he added, had given him a second audience: people going through hard medical news of their own.

The death notice put the same ranking in the band’s mouth. He was a musician with nearly three decades on the clock, it said, and “his favorite accomplishment was being a husband and father.”

A Six-Month Clock After Five Years

Gilbert, born March 9, 1981, in Coral Springs, Florida, first went down on Dec. 5, 2021. Cimorelli found him unresponsive at home and started CPR. Doctors found a malignant adrenal tumor that had grown into his liver. He had surgery on Dec. 13.

The first name on the file was metastatic pheochromocytoma, a rare neuroendocrine tumor of the adrenal glands. The National Cancer Institute says most of these growths stay benign, and that only about 10 percent spread. For tumors that have returned or moved, five-year survival sits between 34 percent and 60 percent. Localized disease is closer to 95 percent. The agency’s working estimate is about 8 cases per million people.

About 80 to 85 percent of pheochromocytomas start in the inner adrenal layer, the medulla. Gilbert’s care later moved the origin to the outer layer, the cortex. That is a different cancer with a different clock.

THE 2021 TO 2026 TIMELINE

1. Dec. 5, 2021: Cimorelli finds him unresponsive and performs CPR; scans show a malignant adrenal tumor into the liver.
2. Dec. 13, 2021: Surgeons remove the mass; treatment continues as the disease later appears in the spine, lungs, and stomach.
3. Feb. 20, 2026: He plays a seated set at the Nashville release event for Listen Up!, then falls at home on a walker.
4. Feb. 23, 2026: An emergency scan finds three new brain tumors, one described as the size of a walnut.
5. Feb. 27, 2026: Emergency brain surgery restores movement in his left hand; leftover tumors get radiation.
6. April 20, 2026: He and Cimorelli describe the shift to stage 4 adrenocortical carcinoma and a shorter outlook.
7. June 8, 2026: He returns for two songs in Nashville, with Lily in the room.
8. Sept. 20, 2026: He dies in his sleep, with his wife and mother at his side.

Cimorelli said the new label, adrenocortical carcinoma, or ACC, carried “a much shorter lifespan than he’s already lived.” The usual outlook she was given was “six months to a year.” Then she added, “And we’re five years out.” Mayo Clinic notes that adrenal cancer is rare, that it often shows up in children younger than 5 and in adults in their 40s and 50s, and that a cure is less likely once the disease has left the glands.

The Brain Was the Gap in the Treatment

Until February, Gilbert said the older tumors were quiet. Immunotherapy and other care had, in his words, left them dead. Cimorelli said those drugs did not cross the blood-brain barrier, so the skull was the last open ground. Two weeks before the fall, she said, he had not even needed a walker. “It went downhill so fast.”

The National Cancer Institute lists surgery to remove the adrenal gland, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted drugs among ACC options. Gilbert had already lived through several of those tools. His radiation oncologist, quoted in his March update, called the brain tumors “not a fatal blow and not the end of your story, just the beginning of a new chapter.”

He died about seven months after the February scans and five months after that April interview, inside the window Cimorelli had described.

Two Songs for Lily From a Scooter

In April he was already aiming at a hometown date. “I’ll be able to play,” he said. “I’ll be sitting in a chair.” On June 8 he did it, on a motorized scooter, at New Found Glory’s Nashville stop.

He posted that it was “very emotional getting up on stage with my band again to play. So many feelings all at once.” The line that followed was the one he had been saving for years.

“I got to play a show in front of my daughter, something I truly never thought I’d get to do again.”

THE JUNE 8 SET HE JOINED

• Hit or Miss: The early single from the band’s 2000 self-titled album, the riff many rooms still treat as the open door.
• My Friends Over You: The 2002 single that carried Sticks and Stones onto pop radio and onto the Billboard Hot 100.
• Lily in the house: He thanked the nurses and doctors who, he wrote, had kept him alive long enough for her to see it.

Some later write-ups mixed a wheelchair into the same night. His own post and the first accounts of the date put him on a scooter, seated, with a guitar in his hands. He closed the note the way he closed a hundred others: “If you were there I hope you had a great time. Love you all.”

The Riffs Behind Sticks and Stones

Gilbert helped form New Found Glory in Coral Springs in 1997 with singer Jordan Pundik, bassist Ian Grushka, guitarist Steve Klein, and, after a short first run with another drummer, Cyrus Bolooki. He played lead guitar and sang backups on the records that turned a South Florida hardcore kid into a Warped Tour fixture.

Sticks and Stones, released in 2002, is still the commercial peak. It debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and reached No. 10 on the British albums chart. My Friends Over You was the song that travelled. Hit or Miss had already done the club work two years earlier.

RECORDS THAT MARK THE RUN

The band’s own death note did not inventory chart peaks. It credited “guitar playing, songwriting, humor, and relentless drive” across “more than a dozen albums” and tours that never really stopped. Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, who has had his own cancer fight, called Gilbert “the best friend to every person he met” and “the most positive and creative force in any room he walked into.” Ice Nine Kills, posting under the band account, said NFG and Gilbert were “a big influence on us.”

A lot of the public noise reduced him to an old marriage to Paramore’s Hayley Williams, which ended in 2017. That is a fact of his twenties. It is not the ranking he gave his own life in April, and it is not the ranking the people in the hospital lobby used on Sept. 20.

Listen Up! Closed the Studio Book

Listen Up! arrived on Feb. 20, 2026, on Pure Noise Records, with Steve Evetts producing. It was the first full New Found Glory studio album in six years, and it was written while Gilbert was already sick. He played the release show that night sitting down because his left leg had gone weak. Hours later he fell on the back steps.

Dan O’Connor, the Four Year Strong guitarist who had been covering Gilbert on the road, was in the studio on that record and later signed the death statement. The live band had been a hybrid for years: Pundik, Grushka, and Bolooki out front, O’Connor holding the guitar chair Gilbert could no longer tour. June 8 was the night the original riff writer came back anyway.

Gilbert had told the April interviewer he was still writing songs in his head even when he could not yet pick up the guitar. The June date was the performance he had pointed at. There was not another one.

Home and the Band Signed the Same Note

New Found Glory posted the news on Sept. 20. The text was credited to Cimorelli and to Jordan, Ian, Cyrus, and Dan.

On the morning of September 20th, Chad Everett Gilbert passed away peacefully in his sleep. He left this world surrounded by friends and family and took his final breaths with his wife and mother by his side, just as he wished. pic.twitter.com/b8oNxSeYIV

— New Found Glory (@newfoundglory) September 20, 2026

WHO PUT THEIR NAMES ON IT

• Lisa Cimorelli: His wife; she found him in 2021, sat the April interview, and was with him at the end.
• Jordan Pundik: New Found Glory’s singer since the Coral Springs start.
• Ian Grushka: Bassist, same span.
• Cyrus Bolooki: Drummer, same span after the first lineup shuffle.
• Dan O’Connor: The touring guitarist who had already become part of the working band.

They wrote that they were “devastated and shocked by how quickly he left us, yet so grateful for how peacefully and smoothly he went.” Visitors filled the hospital lobby on short notice. Gilbert is survived by Cimorelli; their daughter, Lily, 5; his mother, Jackie; and his brother, Brian.

The last line of the music paragraph was a promise the remaining members now have to keep on stages he will not walk: his playing would be “felt on every stage we stand on, with every note we play.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Chad Gilbert’s Family Name a Cause of Death?

No. The Sept. 20 note said only that he died peacefully in his sleep, with his wife and mother beside him. He had been treated since 2021 for a rare adrenal cancer later called stage 4 adrenocortical carcinoma, and he had emergency brain surgery on Feb. 27, but those facts were his medical history, not a coroner’s finding released with the announcement.

What Band Was Chad Gilbert in Before New Found Glory?

He sang in the Florida hardcore band Shai Hulud in the mid-1990s, including on the 1997 record Hearts Once Nourished with Hope and Compassion, before and around the time New Found Glory formed in 1997. That early hardcore stint is why older punk bills still introduce him as more than a pop-punk guitarist.

Was Listen Up! Chad Gilbert’s Last New Found Glory Album?

Yes. Listen Up! came out on Feb. 20, 2026, on Pure Noise, with Evetts producing and O’Connor adding guitar in the studio. No later New Found Glory studio album with Gilbert was released before Sept. 20, so that record is the last full-length that carries him as a member.

Who Is Dan O’Connor on the Death Statement?

Dan O’Connor fronts Four Year Strong and had been New Found Glory’s touring guitarist while Gilbert was in treatment. He also played on Listen Up!. His name on the statement, next to Pundik, Grushka, Bolooki, and Cimorelli, is the clearest public sign that the substitute chair had become part of the inner circle.

What Is the Difference Between Pheochromocytoma and ACC?

Pheochromocytoma starts in the adrenal medulla, the inner layer, and most cases never spread. Adrenocortical carcinoma starts in the cortex, the outer layer, and is the disease Mayo Clinic describes when it talks about adrenal cancer in children and in adults in their 40s and 50s. Gilbert’s team used the first name from 2021, then told him in 2026 that the origin had been the cortex all along, which is why Cimorelli said the outlook had shortened even after years of treatment that had seemed to hold.

The June night with Lily, and the April sentence about a wife and a daughter, are now the last chapter he wrote in public. The remaining New Found Glory members still have to walk out under those songs without the guitarist who built them.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a public death and on medical facts Gilbert and his family chose to share. It is for information only and is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a guide to cancer treatment. Anyone facing adrenal disease, brain tumors, or related symptoms should speak with a licensed physician or oncologist before making health decisions. Details here follow the family’s Sept. 20 statement and Gilbert’s own 2021 to 2026 updates, and those details can change if relatives or doctors release more.