April 20th, 2011 
James Shotwell Handguns are currently on tour with Hawthorne Heights, and Pure Noise Records’ in-house booking agent, Tucker Leighty, is doubling as Handguns’ merch guy for the tour. Check out his notes on the tour thus far posted below.
“It’s strange how you can spend so much time in one area and not feel a strong connection to anyone, yet you can meet some of your best friends on a tour that lasts only a few weeks. Preparing for a tour is like going to your first day of school. You make preconceived judgments about everyone based on what they look like or what they’re wearing. Tour is no different. I make assumptions about people based on their genre of music, and level of popularity. Our current tour has a lot of people from a lot of different places and walks of life, and we had many van discussions imagining what each band would be like, and we were brutal. We had never heard of Self Centered, but we saw that they did a cover of a Ke$ha song and were immediately turned off. I checked out the wikipedia page for After Midnight Project and saw they had tour experience with bands like Papa Roach and 30 Seconds To Mars, and assumed they’d be cocky, quote-unquote “rockstars”. We all had mutual friends with the Veara guys and knew we would get along with them, and figured they’d be the people we’d buddy up with in their short tenure on the tour. And of course, we had the most conversations about what the Hawthorne Heights crew would be like, and we all pretty much had one idea in mind: old and jaded. It’s harsh to make such rude assumptions about people we’ve never met, but it’s human instinct. We’re all guilty of it to an extent.
We’re currently roughly 3 weeks into this 5 week tour, and I’ve had the time of my life with 26 people that I had never met and wouldn’t have met otherwise. That mysterious band that does the Ke$ha cover is filled with goofy, interesting, and fun-to-be-around guys that are absolutely loving the thrills of going on tour for the first time. The “cocky rockstars” in AMP are some o the most polite and hardworking people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Although Veara are no longer on the tour, they are all missed greatly, because they kept us laughing and understood our childish sense of humor. Those old, jaded guys in Hawthorne Heights? The Handguns camp still has discussions about them daily, only the subject matter has changed. We talk about how genuine and heartfelt they are, and how they’d do anything just to play music. All of them have DIY and hardcore roots, I’ve had conversations with them about bands like Gorilla Biscuits and Ignite (bands I would never assume had never crossed their radar). I should have known better, hell, they took us out on tour!
The music scene is a revolving door these days, with bands going in and out at a strenuous pace. It’s good to see people who honestly deserve it succeeding. It’s enlightening to see bands who care more about the contents of their music than the contents of their rider. Touring has not only made me some of the best friends in the world, from all over the world, but it’s repeatedly teaching me life lessons. I’ve learned not to judge a book by it’s cover, or in this case, not to judge a band by it’s genre. We all had one common ground, be it the bands on this tour, the bands on other tours, or you, the person reading this blog. We all love music. Keep supporting artists you love so they can continue to do what they love.”
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