Hawthorne Heights - Interview - 2006

Chances are you’ve never heard of this band, let alone know that they are the surprise US hit of the season. With a half a million album sales to their name, James Gill asks…

…WHO THE FUCK ARE HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS?

Half a million. That’s how many copies of their debut album, ‘The Silence In Black And White’, Hawthorne Heights have sold in only a year. That’s more than high-profile label-mates Taking Back Sunday. That’s more than Trivium’s ‘Ascendancy’. That’s on a level with ‘In Love And Death’, the latest album from The Used.

The difference being, these are bands you’ve heard of.

Most of you will be thinking, ‘Hawthorne who?’ And you’d be right. After all, this Ohio quintet appear to be nobodies. Their music is not on the play-lists, their presence is not on the radar. But here they stand: 500,000 copies of their debut album to the good. With minimal promotion, a virtual press blackout, no hyperbole and no marketing campaign to speak of, Hawthorne Heights are suddenly contenders. 

How? What? Where? When? Why?

“It’s difficult to say [why all this has happened],” says Eron Bucciarelli, the group’s drummer. “We’ve only had a handful of decent reviews, for one thing - the press wrote us off as just another emo band. In fact, everybody completely underestimated us. We were worried at first, but we tried not to focus on it. The [record label] press guy would email us the reviews and we’d look at them, laugh, delete them, and move on. We were getting good responses every night when we played live so we didn’t really care what these websites or magazines were saying. We had people coming up to us every night buying our t-shirts and telling us how much they loved us. To us that’s way more important than being in any magazine.”

“Compared to other bands we’re severely underpaid” – Eron Buccerialli explains why he’s in no position to lend anyone a tenner.

In an earlier life, Hawthorne Heights were called A Day In The Life; but it’s with a new name, a new line-up (completed by bassist Matt Ridenour, vocalist/guitarist JT Woodruff and guitarists Casey Calvert and Micah Carli) and a clutch of new songs that the band have beaten the odds. And beaten the odds they have: a group on a proud independent label with limited resources have outsold many a band with major label money and marketing campaigns behind them.

For Bucciarelli, the reason is simple… 

“Our record label, Victory Records, knows how to sell us,” he says, “whereas major labels don’t understand this type of music. It’s a completely new genre to them, a completely new market. They’re not used to advertising in fanzines, on websites or in the little magazines that have only been around a few months. Majors just book a couple of ads in Rolling Stone and Spin and that’ll be it. Victory are very much geared towards the underground, I think that’s why bands like us can sell just as much – if not more - than if we were on a major label.”

Although Eron makes a good point, it doesn’t quite explain his band’s impact. His words, though, are wise. Many newly established bands think of signing to a major label in the same way that footballers feel about signing to a Premiership team. But major labels can be perilous places: they can sign bands on a whim, throw them into the studio at exorbitant prices, release an album in a genre they’re unsure how to market, wait a year to see how it sells and if the numbers aren’t impressive the group will be dropped. Goodbye and good riddance.

Make no mistake, the odds of Hawthorne Heights achieving their current level of success on, say, Warner Brothers are slight. 

And then there’s the money. The average cost of a CD in the United States (where most of Hawthorne Heights’ sales are accrued) is the equivalent of ten pounds. The maths are simple: 10 x 500,000 = five million quid, of which the band probably receive ten percent. That’s before merchandise moneys and ticket sales – where bands make the most money – have been taken into account.

One question: Are you boys loaded?”No we’re not,” says Bucciarelli, “absolutely we’re not. Although we are making better money than we did a year ago: we’re selling more T-shirts at our shows, for example…”

But there’s a but.

“But we have been victims of our own success. Our record sold so fast that when a booking agent books us three months in advance, by the time we get to that date we’re two or three times as big as we were at the time of the booking. 

“Compared to other bands our size, we’re severely underpaid.”

It almost seems as if the polite yet hardly engaging drummer is unable to grasp the concept of an independently signed newcomer selling half a million copies of a debut album in just one year. He has really nothing to offer us in terms of an explanation.  “We simply approached [the album] thinking, We’re just going to write the best songs we possibly can,” is the unrevealing response. “If it’s embraced again then cool, if it doesn’t then we’ll still continue to write the music we like to write.”He pauses to think about this… “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m functioning on very little sleep here.” Eron apologizes  in a tone of voice that sounds like he’s been drinking Lithium and cough syrup smoothies. His lethargic tones come with all the speed of Dutch elm disease.   

“ The kind of music we play is becoming more and more mainstream,” he says. “And I don’t mind that – in fact I it’s kind of neat.” How would you describe a typical Hawthorne Heights fan?“We get a wide range of people, from the 13 year old girl who just saw something on TV, to kids who listen to Throwdown or Marilyn Manson.”Talking to Eron Bucciarelli isn’t easy. He has that independent emo thing down pat, that innate ability to downplay everything he says, no matter how remarkable the thing he’s describing happens to be. So selling half a million albums is “cool”, being the unlikeliest success story of the year is also “cool”.

It’s all a bit…

  “We’re the lamest group of people ever,” he says, by way of confirmation. “We’re all in relationships so we don’t go out to find girls to hook up with. JT [Woodruff] is straight edge, Mike [Carl] might as well be. Only Casey [Calvert] and I actually drink. I guess we’re just not flashy people. We’re not into the whole rock star thing.”

Surely a gold album must change you a little bit?

“Nope, nothing’s changed for us. We’re not egotistical because of our success - we try to stay humble and down to earth.”

This is no good, these answers are no good. Hawthorne Heights make good music, but they hardly give quote. So let’s try again: How on earth have you sold half a million albums when it seems that no one has heard of you and you’re signed to a record label that might reasonably be described as ‘small-fry’…“Er”…  Bucciarelli starts to laugh “…It’s probably a combination of our relentless touring and the marketing genius of Victory Records.”And then he has a think…”I don’t know, maybe we were in the right place at the right time…”

The way he says it, it’s almost as if anyone could do it.