Q&A: Hawthorne Heights drummer Eron Bucciarelli

CFF: I read that Hawthorne Heights helps the local music scenes by having local bands open at your shows. How are you finding them or how are they finding you?

Bucciarelli: We refer to local promoters to find bands in the local communities because it's too daunting of a task for us to sit down and search through all the bands from one market to the next. The whole idea is to have a bunch of local openers on this tour. It serves a couple purposes: It lets our fans know that there are other good bands out there in their area. Hopefully, in turn after supporting us, they will support their local bands next time they play a show in their town, which will start a pop in the music scene, with a fan base to fall back on.

CFF: Are you only printing 1000 CDs?

Bucciarelli: No, we start out with an initial limited edition 1000 printed CDs. What we we're trying to say is that if you want a physical copy of our cd then you have to buy it from our web store or you have to come out to one of our shows. It is not going to be available at Target or Walmart or Best Buy. It doesn't really make sense to pay a distributor to put the music in stores when year after year physical music sales go down and down. Big chains are carrying less and less every year. They only carry the top 40 kind of thing. In our business model it doesn't make sense to put music in those stores. If you want a physical copy you have to get directly from us or of course through Amazon, Rhaposody or iTunes.

CFF: Are you guys planning to sign any other artists/bands to Carboard Empire?

Bucciarelli: I think for the moment we are just going to focus on ourselves. I think we want to make sure we have all the kinks out before we start messing with other peoples' lives and careers. Ultimately – maybe a year or two down the line – maybe even longer, we'll talk about signing other bands as well.

CFF: Hawthorne Heights has a Tumblr where you hold live chats and post pictures from your tour. Is this the best place for fans to keep up to date with you?

Bucciarelli: Yeah, we have pretty much every social media account, and they're all tied in with each other. You can use Facebook, facebook.com/hawthorneheights, you can use Twitter which is twitter.com/#!/hawthornehgts, and then you can hit us up on our Tumblr which is just hawthorneheights.com and redirects to our Tumblr site. So there is tons of ways to stay in touch with us and find out when where coming to your town.

CFF: Anything you'd like to say to the students at UCF?

Bucciarelli: Please check out our new EP, it's called "Hate." Come see us live because without our fans we wouldn't be able to survive. We would love to hang out with you guys.