One of Ohio’s biggest bands is gracing Cincinnati again with an unforgettable evening. The popular emo band Hawthorne Heights is hosting its annual Ohio Is For Lovers Festival on September 7th at the Riverbend Music Center. The one-day event will feature numerous acts from all genres of the alternative music spectrum.
While the host is not the headliner, the driving force behind the festival is Hawthorne Heights. The group is originally from the Dayton area, but several members once called the Cincinnati area home. Hawthorne Heights broke out in 2004 with the release of their album The silence in black and whiteThe album included the festival’s namesake song “Ohio Is for Lovers.” Since then, the group has had continued success with other titles such as “Saying Sorry”. and “Niki FM.”
As a continuation of their legacy and a way to celebrate alternative rock music from the early 2000s, Hawthorne Heights founded the festival in 2022. The original festival consisted of only three cities, but since then the festival has expanded to multiple locations across the country. The one common denominator? Cincinnati is always the grand finale of it all.
This year’s lineup includes other popular post-hardcore acts of the 2000s such as Silverstein and Senses Fail. Audiences can also see high-energy pop-punk acts such as Knuckle Puck and Real Friends. And finally, the show is headlined by arguably one of the most notable emo acts of the early 2010s, Hot Mulligan.
In addition to the national acts, the festival will also feature many local acts. Bands such as Better Anyway, Touchdown Jesus and Glassworld will also perform in front of the hundreds of attendees. When asked what this opportunity means to them, Better Anyway’s guitarist Cody Eanes described how it feels to CityBeat.
“Hawthorne Heights was a band I grew up with. My brother would bring their CDs home to me when I was in middle school/senior high school and I couldn’t get enough of them. To me they were the epitome of emo and highly regarded during that time. The fact that they asked us to play at this festival means so much to me because they’re inviting us into their world where they play with so many of their friends.”
The Ohio Is For Lovers Fest takes place on September 7th at 1:30 p.m. Info: riverbend.org.
This story appears in the August 21 print edition of CityBeat.
