Nintendo is for lovers
Hawthorne Heights headlines the video game platform's modern rock tour
by Alan Sculley (buzz@boulderweekly.com)

For J.T. Woodruff, lead singer and guitarist of Hawthorne Heights, pressure is a word that has no place in his, or his band's, vocabulary.

"We never really worry about pressure because we just kind of do what we do and we have fun," he says. "You can't really sit back and worry about what somebody's going to say or worry about anything like that when it comes to writing songs."

That outlook is a good thing, because Woodruff has certainly had his opportunities to become thoroughly acquainted with that feeling. Two years ago, when Hawthorne Heights was writing and recording the band's debut CD, The Silence in Black and White, Woodruff was facing the prospect that this batch of songs might serve as his last shot at a career in music. Woodruff had been in a series of bands, and at age 25 he knew he couldn't continue living the way he was much longer.

"The lyrics on that album are pretty dark because I was pretty unhappy at that point," he says. "Some of those songs were written before we were signed, before there was a light at the end of the tunnel. So it's like, 'Alright, dude, I'm working at a gas station, and I'm delivering pizzas and going to community college. Where can you tell me there's a light at the end of the tunnel when you're doing that all day and all night?'"

In approaching If Only You Were Lonely, the recently released second Hawthorne Heights CD, Woodruff could very easily have felt an entirely different kind of pressure.

The Silence in Black and White became one of rock's quieter success stories of recent years, gradually building momentum until it topped 500,000 copies sold and made Hawthorne Heights a leading newcomer on the modern rock scene.

In the weeks leading up to the release of If Only You Were Lonely, the band's label, Victory Records, made no secret of how it viewed the project. The label openly predicted the album would sell 200,000 copies in its first week of release and debut at No. 1 on the Billboard magazine album chart. If Woodruff and his bandmates had their hearts set on attaining those first-week numbers, he didn't show it in this interview.

"Just from a band standpoint, we don't have any expectations," he says. "We never thought we would ever make the Billboard chart in our lives, let alone think about debuting in the top five or anything like that. Honestly, we will be happy if we will be the number one rock record that week."

As it turned out, the CD debuted at No. 3. The CD has since produced a top 10 modern rock hit in "Saying Sorry."

Nintendo Fusion Tour

No matter how the numbers get crunched, the high-profile arrival of If Only You Were Lonely emphatically shows just how far Hawthorne Heights has come in a fairly short career. The Dayton, Ohio band formed in 2001 under the name A Day in the Life, and switched to Hawthorne Heights a couple of years later, after a series of personnel changes left Woodruff the group's lone original member.

Hawthorne Heights' sound clicked so well that by November 2003, a mailing of demos to some two dozen labels had earned Hawthorne Heights a contract with Victory Records, the Chicago-based indie label that is home to such fast-rising bands as Atreyu and Silverstein.

Expectations for The Silence in Black and White were rather modest, although at the time it racked up the best first-week sales total for a debut album by any Victory artist—a whopping 3,800 copies. Obviously, that total paled as The Silence in Black and White built lasting momentum. The success came despite the fact that the CD didn't boast a huge hit single or get major exposure from MTV. Woodruff attributes the success of the first CD to old-fashioned hard work.

"If I had to put my finger on it, I think our record label and our band worked equally hard together," he says. "We played 300 shows last year. [Victory] has always been willing to put advertising dollars into us, and they've always believed in our record, and they keep pushing it no matter what."

With If Only You Were Lonely, Woodruff and his bandmates were clearly intent on giving friends/fans more of what attracted them to Hawthorne Heights' music in the first place.

"One thing we can say if people listen to our last album and listen to our new album, I think they will say, 'Well, this sounds like a better version of their first album,'" Woodruff says. "We really wanted to keep that. We wanted to sound like we sound. We want to do what we have succeeded with."

New songs like "Saying Sorry" (the first single), "This is Who We Are" and "Pens And Needles" once again deliver the hard-hitting, yet poppy and melodic guitar-rock sound of the first CD.

"There are some songs that are a lot heavier than the last album," says Woodruff. "[But mostly] I think we just kind of wanted to stick to our guns and just do it better."

Buzz Word

Hawthorne Heights headlines the Nintendo Fusion Tour with Relient K, Emery, Plain White T's and the Sleeping on Saturday, Nov. 4, at Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 Clarkson St., Denver, 303-837-1482.

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