Hawthorne Heights

Victory Is Ours

When Hawthorne Heights drummer Eron Bucciarelli admits touring is starting to take its toll on him, you can’t help but sympathize. After all, since his band released its Victory Records debut, The Silence In Black And White, in June 2004, free time has been scarce. That year the band had about four total weeks off; this year Bucciarelli and his bandmates (guitarists Casey Calvert and Micah Carli, bassist Matt Ridenour, and vocalist/guitarist JT Woodruff) have it a little better: the drummer estimates they will have had 60 days off by year’s end.

“It takes a toll on your personal life,” Bucciarelli says when asked about the hardships of such a grinding schedule. “Everybody in the band is in a serious relationship so it makes dealing with a relationship a lot more difficult than they normally are. A relationship, even when you are home all the time, can be tough at times so it’s definitely challenging when you are out on the road and you are unable to see that person for months at a time.”

He continues, “Family you obviously don’t get to see that much, only when you tour through that area so that’s rough. Towards the end of any tour you are just ready to get out and away from everybody. You just need a couple days breather.”

But Bucciarelli isn’t complaining. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s the afternoon of Friday, October 28th, the second day of the Never Sleep Again tour, a cross-country jaunt headlined by Hawthorne Heights and also featuring labelmates Silverstein, Bayside, and Aiden. For Hawthorne, this tour represents the icing on the cake that has been the last 16 months. Silence has not only been certified gold, but spent more than 40 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 and upon its release broke the record Taking Back Sunday set for Victory’s highest-selling debut, selling almost 3,500 records in its first week.

In just a year and a half, this Dayton, Ohio-based band went went from opening for the openers to headlining its own bill, and that fact isn’t forgotten by Bucciarelli. “We couldn’t be more happy,” he admits. “Just to be headlining is kind of cool because we’ve never really headlined. We’ve done a couple small-market shows and no production. This is our first time with a sound guy, and a light guy — we’re trying to step it up and put on a good show. As you grow as a band there’s more expected of you and we we’re ready to step it up.”

But it only took two days following our first conversation for the happiness that Bucciarelli initially described to turn into something else completely. In the early hours of Monday, October 31st as the tour convoy was en route to Magna, Utah for only the fifth show of the tour, Bayside’s van hit a patch of ice and flipped, killing drummer John “Beatz” Holohan and injuring other crew and band members, including bassist Nick Ghanbarian, who suffered a broken back.

Because the bands have toured together so many times — at least four according to Bucciarelli — Hawthorne Heights and Bayside had become very close. Holohan’s death was especially dispiriting for the 26-year-old Bucciarelli, who says the 31-year-old Holohan was “like an older brother . . . He was definitely, in my opinion, the best drummer I’ve ever toured with and had a chance to watch first hand and hang out with,” Bucciarelli says during an interview the week after the accident. “I had so much respect for him as a musician and as a friend, and everybody else is also missing him . . . quite a bit.”

After five days off, though, the Never Sleeps Again tour resumed in Anaheim. In a few weeks Bayside vocalist Anthony Raneri and guitarist Jack O’Shea will rejoin to perform a nightly acoustic set (“I think that’s going to be really really tough on everybody,” Bucciarelli says. “I can’t imagine there being a dry eye in the crowd or among our crew.”) and those involved, including Hawthorne Heights, will try their best to move on.

And moving on for Hawthorne Heights means releasing a new record, If Only You Were Lonely, which was recorded in late summer in Hoboken, New Jersey with producer David Bendeth (Clutch, Towers Of London).

When asked to compare it to Silence, Bucciarelli is surprisingly honest. “I am definitely liking the new album a lot more than I like Silence.”

Part of that, he admits, might stem from the fact that he’s growing increasingly tired of playing those same 11 songs night after night. But more importantly, this record was recorded on the band’s own terms instead of what the producer thought was best for the sound.

Some of the techniques used by producer Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Spitalfield), Bucciarelli says, stripped the band of the live vibe it was so eager to showcase. “With Silence our producer was a huge ProTools nerd and every single instrument they ProTool’d to death. It kind of pissed us off because we can play our instruments, but what they did with the drums, with the guitars, with the vocals, they made everything line up exactly through the click [track], and it sounds so mechanical. There is no feel anymore at that point.”

The goal with If Only You Were Lonely was to sound more like the live, raw Hawthorne Heights and less like a band chewed up and spit out by recording software. “We wanted it to sound more natural and not as overproduced and rigid,” he explains. “If I listen to Silence right now I can’t stand it because it’s so rigid, there’s no feel to it, to me it sounds lifeless.”

Music fans disagreed, though, gobbling up the record and even giving it a modest radio and MTV hit with “Ohio Is For Lovers.” While truthfully, the group’s blend of emo, pop, and hardcore isn’t much different than a lot of bands (including many of its own labelmates) making this kind of music, these five guys from Dayton have struck a chord with listeners. Enough so to warrant a fancy-pants re-release of Silence that includes bonus songs (including a track from the band’s days as A Day In The Life), a DVD stuffed with live performances and music videos, and exclusive liner notes.

When Hawthorne released Silence, it completely snuck up on people, becoming an unexpected success story — a pleasant surprise. That won’t be the case with Lonely, though. This time people are anxiously awaiting to hear what’s next. “People are obviously aware of us now, so that’s a major difference,” Bucciarelli admits. “This time it’s like, ‘Well, we liked that album so this album better be way better.’ We definitely have people’s expectations to contend with this time. It could be good or it could be bad. People can be tough.”

He’s not worrying too much, though. When a band really has no expectations, as Bucciarelli claims was the case with Hawthorne Heights, all of the awards, magazine covers, and television appearances are simply bonuses.

“It’s crazy,” he says, thinking back on the time passed since Silent‘s release. “We never thought when we were recording our album, ‘Oh we’re going to sell over 500,000 records, we’re going to be headlining tours in a year and a half, this is like, everything, the re-release, our headline tour, Warped Tour, it’s all way beyond anything we ever imagined.”

— Trevor Fisher

Category: Features, Monthly