Billy Corgan’s post-Smashing Pumpkins band Zwan has broken up amid poor sales and personnel problems.

He broke the news Monday to Chicago radio station WGN.

“A couple of people asked me, ‘Why didn’t you tell anybody?’ I’m sort of out of the period of my life when I run around trying to generate news,” Corgan said.

Zwan — which featured bassist Paz Lenchantin, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and guitarists David Pajo and Matt Sweeney — canceled a planned summer tour due to “family matters.” Lenchantin quit Zwan last month to join Pajo’s Papa M project for a fall tour and studio album.

“I really enjoyed my experience with Zwan, but at the end of the day, without that sense of deeper family loyalty, it just becomes like anything else,” Corgan said.

Zwan’s lone Reprise album, “Mary, Star of the Sea,” debuted earlier this year at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 267,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

“Our attitude in the Pumpkins was, it was a do or die proposition, and that got us through all the hard times we went through, particularly with the Pumpkins where we had two members with serious drug problems,” he continued.

Corgan will participate in a multimedia poetry performance Wednesday in his Chicago hometown, opening the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 31st Annual Reading Series at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rubloff Auditorium. The performance, expected to incorporate elements of singing, reading and playing music, will also serve as a promotional preview of Corgan’s forthcoming poetry book.

Credit: AP, WGN