Hawthorne Height’s Stay Home Virtual Tour 2020 | Review

With virtual shows becoming more and more popular, quite a few bands have put together some virtual tours, and one of these bands is Hawthorne Heights. The band put together a three-date run where they stream a show from local venues in different regions of the United States, with the proceeds from tickets and merch giveaways held throughout the night going towards various local venues within those regions. 

The opening act for this tour was Mark Rose, a solo musician and the former vocalist of Spitalfield. His setlist primarily consisted of Spitalfield songs (“Texa$ With A Dollar Sign” from 2005’s “Stop Doing Bad Things” and “Stolen From Some Great Writer,” “Those Days You Felt Alive,” “Kill The Drama,” and “I Loved The Way She Said ‘L.A.’” from 2003’s “Remember Right Now”), but he also performed a cover and a song from one of his releases as a solo artist – “Like A Dark Sky Holds The Moon” from 2015’s “The Wild Type.” Mark’s vocals really grabbed my attention, and the set showed how talented of a musician and performer he is. Although I wasn’t familiar with his music and had never seen him live before, I really enjoyed his set. 

A little while after Mark’s set concluded, Hawthorne Heights took the stage. Despite a technical difficulty later on in the set, the band soldiered on and still put on a fantastic show. They played a wide variety of songs from throughout their entire discography, starting with three tracks from their debut album “The Silence In Black And White” – “Life On Standby,” “The Transition,” and “Silver Bullet.” The band performed one song from their third album “Fragile Future” (“Rescue Me”) before going back in time a bit and playing a handful of tracks from their sophomore LP “If Only You Were Lonely” (“We Are So Last Year,” “This Is Who We Are,” “Saying Sorry,” “Pens And Needles,” & “Where Can I Stab Myself In The Ears”). The setlist also included “Crimson Sand,” a song from the band’s most recent album, 2018’s “Bad Frequencies,” and after that, the band stripped things down a bit to do a few songs acoustically. This portion of their set consisted of acoustic renditions of “Oceans” (from 2011’s “Hate”) and “Decembers” (also off of “If Only You Were Lonely”), as well as an acoustic cover of “Pet Semetary” by The Ramones, and after the acoustic performance, the band did an encore consisting of two of their biggest hits from “Silence” (“Niki FM” and “Ohio Is For Lovers”), as well as an extra song to compensate for the technical difficulty earlier on in the evening – “Hard To Breathe.”

The sets from Mark Rose and Hawthorne Heights were both very entertaining to watch, and between the incredible performances and the fantastic efforts the bands made to support the music industry throughout the evening, the Stay Home virtual tour was a special one.
For more information on how to support local venues during the COVID-19 pandemic, visit the websites of Save Our Stages and the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).

Review courtesy of Megan Langley | Instagram

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