Hawthorne Heights’ JT Woodruff on 20 Years of Tears Tour, Is for Lovers Fest, and the “Big 4” of Emo
The post Hawthorne Heights’ JT Woodruff on 20 Years of Tears Tour, Is for Lovers Fest, and the “Big 4” of Emo appeared first on Consequence.
Hawthorne Heights are hitting the road this summer for an extensive trek that encompasses their traveling Is For Lovers festival and their “20 Years of Tears” tour.
The Is For Lovers festival features Hawthorne Heights visiting various cities with the likes of Underoath, Yellowcard, The All-American Rejects, and more. And the “20 Years of Tears” tour finds Hawthorne Heights playing their 2004 debut album, The Silence in Black and White, in its entirety alongside a rotating cast of bands that includes Thursday, Saosin, and Anberlin.
Get Hawthorne Heights Tour Tickets Here
Tickets for “20 Years of Tears” tour are available via via Ticketmaster or StubHub, while passes for the Is For Lovers dates can be found at the festival’s official website.
Heavy Consequence caught up with Hawthorne Heights singer JT Woodruff for a recently published “Crate Digging” feature in which he listed his 10 essential 1990s emo albums.
During our conversation with Woodruff, he also discussed the festival, the tour, his feelings about the term “emo,” and the latest on new music from Hawthorne Heights. He even picked his “Big 4” of emo bands, as well.
Check out our interview with JT Woodruff below, followed by a full list of Hawthorne Heights’ tour dates.
It seems like the term “emo” has been embraced by bands in recent years, whereas in the past certain music acts rejected that label. What are your feelings about the term “emo” nowadays?
There was definitely a time period where it kind of came about as like a marketing term. When we were starting in the 2002, 2003 time period, no one really said “emo” regarding what what any of us were doing. There was no such thing as “screamo” in that world. So none of us were like, “Dude, let’s start an emo band. It’ll be awesome.” It was just like, “Oh, we’re kind of a pop-punk band, but we have these sort of leanings. We have hardcore influences, Saves the Day influences, stuff like that.” So, at that time period, I think that people started to get kind of bummed because somebody just kind of labeled them and they didn’t really have any choice in the matter.
We’ve never cared because we like all of these bands and we like all of these genres of music. So, if you want to call it post-hardcore, if you want to call it dark wave, all of those just don’t sound as fun as a three letter word called “emo.” So, from our point of view, as long as you’re relating us to bands that we love, call it whatever you want.
As for the resurgence, I think people just needed something to grab a hold of, because everything gets lumped into that. Bands that are clearly just pop-punk bands get lumped into that. If anybody’s calling you anything after 20 years, that’s positive. I think you’re probably pretty okay with it. But I don’t know who first connected that terminology. Somebody definitely started calling all of us that, and I don’t know who it was. And it was either a genius, a critic, or a devil.
But, yeah, I think everybody now is just like, “Oh, okay, if that’s how you have to identify us, and put us into a group that is very palatable for your understanding, do exactly that.” But we’re just happy to all be playing and having our own kind of club of all these bands that are still around and still together, and all kind of influenced by all that stuff.
Hawthorne Heights curate the traveling Is For Lovers festival, which is a celebration of all the music you just described. Why was it important for you to launch the festival and keep it going each year?
It’s a tremendous amount of work, which any DIY indie band has been doing their whole career — whether it’s doing rental hall shows when you first start out because no one will book you in a club, or carrying a PA with you on tour just in case something falls through. And the reason that we love to do it is because we still love this genre. We want to be careful stewards of trying to make sure that everything stays in people’s minds and stays relevant, almost like a museum of all this stuff, because if somebody is not fighting to keep it alive, then it’s declining.
So, we really are just trying to get all of our friends together. Every band that we’ve loved or been influenced by that is relatable. Our big thing is cohesion. So if our headliner is Jimmy Eat World, which is absolutely incredible to say that we booked the festival, and we invited them and they said yes, that’s like such a career landmark.
It’s like a high school reunion, so the fans have the best day of their lives and they remember what it was like to be a kid and listen to music recreationally for the first time and to be able to have fun because life takes over, and this is all about escaping for just a little bit and giving somebody a fun and special day.
So, the hardest part is curating the lineup because you gotta figure out your budget. You gotta figure out who’s available, who has to fly in, who’s on tour, stuff like that. And you want all of your favorite bands to say yes, and it can be heartbreaking to hear a band that you really like be like, “That’s not really for me.”
It’s a lot of work, but really it’s all 100-percent fan driven, and the love of the genre that we all grew up in, that really is all it is, because it’s definitely easier to do your own tour, and to play other festivals — that’s so much fun for us, too. But we do like to grind. We like the self-inflicted pain of trying to put it all together and figure out if it works or if it doesn’t. If you don’t take risks in your life, you’re gonna be wondering what if you could do something. And we’ve always been willing to fail. Failure is okay. Not trying is not okay. So, hopefully we win more than we fail.
In between Is for Lovers festival stops, you’re celebrating Hawthorne Heights’ 2004 debut album The Silence in Black and White with the “20 Years of Tears” tour. What does that milestone mean to you?
It means the world to us because we released a record in June of 2004 that changed our lives and none of us had the confidence that anybody would care at all. I’m from a town where I had to move three hours away just to find musicians to play with. So we have just 100-percent appreciation for it. This summer is really all about trying to get as many of the bands from that kind of 2004 time period when we were all kind of breaking at the same time, because that’s when we all first met.
So, back to the high school reunion thing, it’s about having a great time backstage and processing all these memories of the last 20 years, because all these bands have been through so much. I think that this is our moment to stop and smell the roses, to realize what lasting 20 years and what having a relationship with your fans for 20 years truly does mean. And it’s going to be this moment this summer of performing our album in its entirety. Having some tricks up our sleeves to make the fans remember why they liked it and what it meant to them at the time, and what it means to them now that they still listen to it.
That’s why we booked so many dates because in 2004, we wanted to play as many shows as possible because we were hanging on for dear life and you didn’t know if anything was going to last a moment or a decade. We still kind of feel that way. You still feel like, “Hey, this is awesome, but let’s do as many as we can because you never know what can happen.”
As far as new music is concerned, it’s been about three years since the last studio album. Are the wheels turning on the next album?
We’ve been kind of silently working behind the scenes on new music. We definitely have a lot of stuff demoed, and it’s getting ready to start to get into the phase where we can really track it. We’re excited about the songs and that’ll come directly after our year finishes up. Probably after the When We Were Young festival, we’ll start to get in the studio.
We own our own studio. We just get into our studio and really start to dig in and the winter time is normally a great time for us to do that because we hate to be out in the road. We hate the snow. Even though we live in Ohio, it’s kind of self inflicted. But yeah, we’re going to start to really buckle down and next year will be a time to celebrate new Hawthorne Heights music as much as we can.
This year we just wanted to be about the fans. It kind of seemed a little bit misguided for us to try and celebrate a 20-year anniversary with new music at the same time. So, yeah, it’s in the pipeline. We’re working on it and we’re super excited about it.
And one more for you. Just like thrash metal has its “Big 4” of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax, I was wondering if you can name your “Big 4” of emo…
That’s a very good question. Jimmy Eat World is on there, so that one’s locked and loaded. I’m probably going to put Taking Back Sunday on there because I just think that they’re an entirely unique band that kind of blends everything together. And let’s put The Get Up Kids on there. And Sunny Day Real Estate. I think that’s a good blend of past, present, and future.
I think that I probably won’t get yelled at too much for saying those bands. But those are all bands that clearly influenced me, each other, the next generation, and everything like that. I’m confident. I like that list. That’s good. If we had to throw one more on there and make a fifth, I’m putting AFI on there, because they blended it all in an entirely different way and they made it all dark. And I love that about them.
All great bands, although I thought you might throw My Chemical Romance on there, just because of how huge they became…
I would put My Chem on the new school version, because absolutely, they’re one of my favorite bands. I think The Black Parade is one of the most important records of the 2000s, for sure. What they did with that record, going from the basement to the arena, should be studied in textbooks because they went for it and they captured it.
It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes you take a little bit of a left turn and it’s too much for the fans and they’re like, “Huh, I ain’t doing this.” They did it in such a perfect way that I think it’s wonderful. But yeah, My Chem could probably have their own Rushmore.
Hawthorne Heights 2024 Tour Dates:
06/22 – Stateline, NV @ Lake Tahoe Is For Lovers
06/23 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Granary Live *
06/24 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre *
06/27 – Milwaukee, WI @ Milwaukee Summerfest *
06/28 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed *
06/29 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Intersection Outdoors *
06/30 – Cleveland Heights, OH @ Cain Park *
07/01 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore *
07/03 – Charleston, SC @ The Refinery *
07/06 – Clearwater, FL @ The BayCare Sound *
07/07 – Pompano Beach, FL @ Pompano Beach Amphitheater *
07/09 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern *
07/10 – Greenville, SC @ The Foundry *
07/11 – Asheville, NC @ Salvage Station %
07/13 – Charleston, WV @ West Virginia Is For Lovers
07/14 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE ^
07/16 – Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore &
07/17 – Wallingford, CT @ The Dome at Oakdale ^
07/20 – Manteo, NC @ OBX Is For Lovers
07/21 – Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore ^
07/23 – Knoxville, TN @ The Back Alley at Creekside ^
07/24 – Nashville, TN @ Skydeck ^
07/25 – Fort Wayne, IN @ The Clyde Theatre ^
07/27 – Sauget, IL @ Pop’s Is For Lovers
07/28 – Rogers, AR @ The Walmart Amphitheater ^
08/03 – Hot Springs, AR @ Magic Springs Theme Park
08/08 – St. Augustine, FL @ The St. Augustine Amphitheatre @
08/09 – Orlando, FL @ House of Blues #
08/10 – Pensacola, FL @ The Handlebar Outdoors #
08/12 – New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore #
08/13 – Katy, TX @ Home Run Dugout #
08/14 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater #
08/16 – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater #
08/17 – Eau Claire, WI @ Reverb Music Festival
08/18 – Superior, WI @ Earth Rider Fest Grounds #
08/19 – Fargo, ND @ Outdoors at Fargo Brewing #
08/21 – Green Bay, WI @ Epic Event Center #
08/22 – Cedar Rapids, IA @ McGrath Amphitheatre #
08/24 – Council Bluffs, IA @ Iowa Is For Lovers
08/26 – Dallas, TX @ Toyota Music Factory !
08/27 – San Antonio, TX @ Sunken Garden Theater !
08/28 – Lubbock, TX @ Lonestar Events Center !
08/31 – Los Angeles, CA @ California Is For Lovers
09/01 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren $
09/02 – Albuquerque, NM @ Revel $
09/05 – Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall $
09/07 – Cincinnati, OH @ Ohio Is For Lovers
09/08 – Pickering, OH @ Pickering Casino Resort ^
09/10 – Bangor, ME @ Cross Insurance Center +
09/11 – Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom +
09/12 – New York, NY @ Palladium Times Square +
09/13 – Harrisburg, PA @ XL Live Southside Stage +
09/14 – Wayland, NY @ FOrX Summer Stage +
09/15 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium +
* = w/ I See Stars, Anberlin, Armor for Sleep, Emery, This Wild Life
% = w/ Anberlin, Armor for Sleep, Stick to Your Guns, This Wild Life
^ = w/ Thursday, Anberlin, Armor for Sleep, Stick to Your Guns, This Wild Life
& = w/ Anberlin, Armor for Sleep, Stick to Your Guns, This Wild Life
@ = w/ Anberlin, Armor for Sleep, Emery, This Wild Life
# = w/ Thursday, Anberlin, Armor for Sleep, Emery, This Wild Life
! = w/ Thursday, Anberlin, Cartel, Emery, This Wild Life
$ = w/ Saosin, Anberlin, Cartel, Stick to Your Guns, This Wild Life
+ = w/ Anberlin, Cartel, Stick to Your Guns, Emery, This Wild Life
Hawthorne Heights’ JT Woodruff on 20 Years of Tears Tour, Is for Lovers Fest, and the “Big 4” of Emo
Spencer Kaufman
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