SPEAKING IN BLACK AND WHITE

An Interview with Chris “Poppy” Popadak of Hawthorne Heights

by Nicole Willis

Hawthorne Heights (HH) is an American emo rock band that has been writing and performing dynamic and emotionally charged music since 2001. The Ohio-born band is currently composed of vocalist and rhythm guitarist JT Woodruff, bass guitarist Matt Ridenour, lead guitarist Mark McMillon and drummer Chris “Poppy” Popadak.

Popadak is the most recent addition to the band, having joined the group in 2014 after former drummer Eron Bucciarelli stepped away from the band. Despite joining HH after they had been already established, Popadak had no trouble fitting in. He spent plenty of time around the group, even helping out on tour years before officially joining the band. Popadak and HH guitarist, Mark McMillion, have a band called The Story Changes, which they formed in 2003. The two bands have a past of performing together.

HH will be performing in Pensacola on August 10 as part of their 20 Years of Tears event, locally hosted by The Handlebar at Community Maritime Park. For tickets and complete show details, visit thehandlebar850.com.

DTC: What initially drew you to play the drums, and who were some of your musical influences growing up?

CP: I’ve been playing drums my whole life. I guess I just kind of came out as a baby, tapping on things. My mom bought me a drum kit when I was like two years old. My first introduction to rock drummers would have been the MTV era, seeing hair metal or rock stuff. Motley Crue, Van Halen and all of that was a really big early influence for me. By that time, I’m probably 10 years old, and I had already been fascinated with drums in general. My mom always told me that she just knew I would be a drummer, so I think it’s just something that was kind of instilled in me.

DTC: How did you become a part of Hawthorne Heights?

CP: Me and Mark (McMillon, HH guitarist) have a band called The Story Changes, and we kind of came up playing a lot of the early HH shows. So, when the band was growing, they took us on a lot of tours. In 2009 they asked us to go on another tour, and then at that point, they were thinking about adding in another guitar player, after their [current] guitar player, Casey, passed away. So we were touring together a lot, and they asked Mark if he wanted to play guitar in the band. He wanted to, and that went great. We did some tours together where Mark played in both [HH and The Story Changes]. Since Mark was always gone, HH asked me if I wanted to come along and sell merch, which I did. I did that for maybe three years, just touring with them, selling merch and being a tour manager. Then when HH’s drummer, Eron, made the decision to pursue a business opportunity, they called from Europe and asked, ‘Hey, would you like to audition when we get home? Our drummer is leaving the band.’ So, I did my audition and I got the gig. We had already been basically living together on the road, so they knew that we could coexist, which is really the most important thing. There are great musicians everywhere, but you have to be able to share close quarters in a van or hotel rooms for half the year.

DTC: Being that you began making music in the early 2000s, what was it like gaining popularity from the internet and specifically platforms like MySpace?

CP: MySpace really elevated all of the bands; it gave all of us a larger audience that was very unexpected. The Story Changes started at about the same time as HH. We all just played local shows. So to have your stuff be on the internet and reach the world with an organic type of growth is something you

DTC: How do you think that the music industry has changed since you started? How have you seen the changes affect your performance and the way you write?

CP: When we came up and we were starting, you wanted to be on a record label. You wanted to have an attachment to that, because they usually had distribution, or you hoped they had distribution. Getting on a record label that had any sort of name was the goal. Now, you can be an independent artist. You usually don’t need a label. If you’re talking about a major label, and you’re at that level where you could sell millions of records, that’s different. But we’re essentially still in a DIY band. Currently, we own our own studio. We’re making music and releasing it when we want, without much interference from anything, and the distribution is a cell phone now.

Many people don’t even make records anymore. I know a lot of bands from our genre still love to make a record and that’s very important to us; I don’t think we’re ever going to give that idea up. However, a lot of bands are like, ‘Well, we’re going to put out four singles, and then that might turn into our record.’ It has shifted back to the '50s and '60s, where you put out many singles with a B side. I feel like that's kind of where it's reverting to.

DTC: What are your thoughts on the current emo scene? Are there any artists that you're particularly inspired by or that you enjoy?

CP: I think it's cool. My favorite bank—who now they're no longer younger, because they're established and they're much bigger—but Movements is one of the bands. They come from a scene younger than us, and I feel like they are the best torch carriers of what was built. They’re just the perfect representation of what I think our scene is. They’re incredibly talented.

This isn’t in the same scene, but Balance and Composure came after us. Hot Mulligan, who’s headlining our ‘Ohio is for Lovers’ festival, were just a young band playing emo music to 150 kids when I first saw them. Now they’re this massive band and they’re bringing in a young audience.

There’s always going to be a new band that comes out that kind of carries the torch. Like how Turnstile opened up the world to hardcore. They made what they’ve been doing forever open to a whole new generation of kids. I like to think that those kids are going to come in and be open minded to finding out about every band that fits under the umbrella of the punk, hardcore and emo scene. We are under a very big umbrella with, like the bands that we can play with, and the bands that we can tour. It’s fantastic.

DTC: What can fans expect from 20 Years of Tears?

CP: Just that. It’s a show where every band is a known band. Every band has a career and a legacy of 20 years or longer. Thursday will join us for two different legs [of the tour]. They are a band that I got from my bandmates. I got Thursday’s Full Collapse for Christmas because they were like, ‘You’re gonna love this band!’ You’ve got these legacy bands that have been around forever and Thursday is a little heavier.

This Wild Life will be opening the entire tour, and they’re semi-acoustic. It’s such a great warm up to the show. Then you have Emery, who’s aggressive and energetic. Armor for Sleep is just a great emo rock band. Anberlin is anthemic, and they are also one of those legacy bands. It’s just going to be a great, diverse night of music. It’s a long show, but it’s meant to be. You’re going to come and you’re going to get to see so many different kinds of bands, but bands at the top of their game.

For anybody who’s coming to this show, there is probably an 85 percent chance that you’ve at least heard of every band on the bill, if not love every band on the bill, because we all play together. We all toured together, we came up together. So it’s really just a celebration of music and friendship on our end, and we’re hoping that the fans get that same experience.

DTC: Does HH have any new projects coming or in the works, apart from the tour?

CP: We’re still in the middle of our ‘Is for Lovers’ festival season, which the tour is kind of based around doing our festivals. This year is the celebration of Silence in Black and White’s 20 year anniversary, so we will be supporting that anniversary all year long. We play the When We Were Young Festival, and then we have some unannounced things to finish our year. Really it’s about trying to play Silence in Black and White everywhere we can this year, and potentially continue into next year. That’s what happened the last time we did an anniversary tour where it lasted 18 months because we just kept going to new places.

Since this year is so busy, we would really like to take some downtime next year and actually stay in our studio and focus on writing. We want to create new music. We just have been touring so much because it’s what we know how to do, and it’s what we like to do, that when we have the downtime, all we’re really doing is working on the upcoming tours. The goal is to always try to write while we’re on the road, but it’s just a long and busy day, so you really have to block off time to write and be productive. We want to have some new music out, as well as play the album that has really kept us here for 20 years.