Hawthorne Heights

Hawthorne Heights started in Dayton, Ohio, in 2001 as A Day in the Life, named for the Beatles song, with JT Woodruff singing and a demo called Four Bullets for One Girl that sold out its 500-copy run in two months. After some modest success the whole band quit except Woodruff, who rebuilt it with new members. In 2003 bassist Matt Ridenour drove past a Hawthorn Inn & Suites on his way to work, added an "e" and "Heights," and the band had its name.

They mailed about 35 press kits to labels. Victory Records sent back two form letters a month apart, so drummer Eron Bucciarelli emailed to say what the band had been up to; founder Tony Brummel called the next day, saw a showcase six days later, and made an offer. Everyone quit their day jobs a month after that. The Silence in Black and White, recorded at Smart Studios in Madison and Big Gold in Chicago, came out June 8, 2004, and sold slowly until the video for "Ohio Is for Lovers" got MTV airplay. The song, which Woodruff says is about touring while the band's girlfriends stayed home in Ohio, mixes homesickness with self-harm imagery and has been jokingly called "The Emo Anthem." Woodruff's clean vocals against Casey Calvert's screams became the template, and the album, which peaked at number 56, became Victory's highest-selling debut and went gold.

If Only You Were Lonely, released February 28, 2006, debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and number one on the independent chart, with "Saying Sorry" reaching number seven on the alternative chart and running on MTV, VH1 and Fuse. The band played the 2006 Nintendo Fusion Tour and went to war with Victory in a lengthy legal battle. Then, on November 24, 2007, the day after a tour opened in Detroit, Calvert was found dead on the tour bus at 26, a death the medical examiner ruled accidental; the band declined to replace him, and Woodruff said the album credits would always read "Casey Calvert: guitar/vocals."

Fragile Future followed in 2008, still on Victory after all, and the band has kept going on its own Cardboard Empire label and later Pure Noise, releasing The Rain Just Follows Me in 2021. For the kids who found them through that one MTV video, though, Hawthorne Heights will always be the first band that screamed back.