On Friday, Oct. 11th the Community Center for the Performing Arts proudly welcomes Hawthorne Heights to the WOW Hall.

HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS

Dayton, OH natives, Hawthorne Heights are back, HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS – JT Woodruff (Vocals, Guitar), Mark McMillon (Guitar, Backing Vocals), Matt Ridenour (Bass, Backing Vocals), Chris Popadak (Drums) are still delivering monumental albums and maintaining their DIY mentality, while remaining dedicated to their longtime fans.

Throughout their long and storied career as one of the most iconic emo acts of the new millennium, the quartet have overcome obstacles at every turn – but these roadblocks always seemed to come from external forces, from unscrupulous record labels and the shifting whims of fickle audiences to unimaginable personal tragedy threatening to derail them.
Despite the odds, Hawthorne Heights have overcome it all: earning two Gold albums (2004’s The Silence In Black And White and 2006’s If Only You Were Lonely), penning some of the genre’s most well-known songs (“Ohio Is For Lovers,” “Saying Sorry”), and remaining a hard-touring act nearly two decades after forming in Dayton, Ohio.
But in 2019, the band – Woodruff, Matt Ridenour (bass, backing vocals), Mark McMillon (guitar, unclean vocals) and Chris “Poppy” Popadak (drums) – found themselves staring down maybe their biggest foe yet: themselves.
2018’s Bad Frequencies, the group’s first album for Pure Noise, had re-established Hawthorne Heights in the scene after a series of self-released efforts, and they followed it by – what else? – heading out on tour with the likes of New Found Glory and Silverstein. The shows were epic, celebratory, and cathartic for the band as they re-found their footing, but they also complicated things tremendously when it came time to start working on Bad Frequencies’ follow-up.
It was this moment of realization that cements THE RAIN JUST FOLLOWS ME as an essential entry into the Hawthorne Heights discography, as the group adroitly swerve between soaring pop melodies and caustic breakdowns with little warning – keeping audiences, and even themselves, guessing.
They didn’t set out to replicate the sound of their early albums, but rather the spirit, eschewing overthinking and instead simply following their instincts: the riffy, frenetic (and aptly named) first single “Constant Dread” that finds Counterparts vocalist Brendan Murphy delivering a bone-rattling guest spot; the driving title track and reflective “Thunder In Our Hearts”; the album standout “Spray Paint It Black,” featuring Bayside’s Anthony Raneri.
The 11-track record stands as some of Woodruff’s most resonant writing to date, as he unravels themes of both physical and emotional distance as well as personal identity – anxieties so exacerbated by the last year that it’s incredible the album was completed before the pandemic hit. (“There’s so many undertones of what would happen over the next 16 months,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know if that makes us the emo Nostradamus or what.”)
Most of all, THE RAIN JUST FOLLOWS ME is quintessentially Hawthorne Heights. It’s who they’ve always been – they just needed to push down the heartache and strife long enough to rediscover those intangible characteristics.