On November 24, 2007, Casey Calvert of Hawthorne Heights was found dead in their tour bus after a show with Escape the Fate, Amber Pacific, and others. This death in the emo music world was shaken and the organization To Write Love On Her Arms started an event called Heavy & Light to raise money for Calvert's family. The event was such a success, TWLOHA started making it an annual thing.

Well, Heavy & Light has been held for 3 years now and the list of performing acts keeps getting bigger and better. This year, along with my musical boyfriend Aaron Gillespie and Zach Williams, Bryce Avery (Rocket Summer), Stephen Christian (Anberlin), Aaron March (Copeland), and introducing Damion Suomi & Anis Mojgani performed to a sold out crowd in Orlando, FL at the House of Blues.

If you missed the show on Saturday, you can watch it here! The last song was pretty neat ending the night in a U2 cover of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"!


Alright, so after reading Spin's article on this event, after the whole Rolling Stone article, I'm pretty upset. Not only does it make founder Jamie look like a giant TOOL and money hungry, it stereotypes all TWLOHA supporters as "emo" and "depressing". The people who I look up to personally who support TWLOHA are anything but emo. Musicians like Hayley Williams of Paramore and Jon Foreman of Switchfoot are anything but emo, but rather hopeful. TWLOHA isn't about SELLING shirts, it gives hope, it gives a name to those who had no name. It says that it's ok to not be "ok". It means that there's millions of people who are JUST LIKE YOU going through the same thing if you just have hope. Isn't that what people want? Doesn't intimacy validate our existence?

Alright, I'll get off my soap box. But tell me, world, what do YOU think of this? What do you want to say in response?