According to Hits Daily Double: On top of Victory’s lawsuit against the band for signing an agreement with Virgin while still under contract, Hawthorne Heights has now fired their manager John Germanario and booking agent Jeremy Holgerson. Insiders are asking if the band is receiving bad information from its attorney, Dan Friedman, and making too many enemies in an ever-shrinking business.

Eron of Hawthorne Heights responds to HitsDailyDouble’s recent article on absolutepunk about the band parting ways with their manager and booking agent.

Read the message below

Don’t believe the hype, especially from HITS Daily Double (the only “news” site that didn’t pick up our story on us suing Victory because Tony is a paying advertiser, but did pick up Tony’s countersuit against us…suspicious????). The decision to terminate our agreement with our booking agent and management was purely OURS and not due to poor legal counsel as HITS and Tony would have you believe. We made the decision because we want a fresh start in every sense of the word.

New label, new management, new booking, new record and more. When a football team fires the head coach, all support staff are let go as well (maybe this wasn’t totally accurate, perhaps a better analogy is a merger in the corporate world, many times the new regime replaces everyone from the old so there are no residual feelings about the former company). Same idea applies to us.

Our lawyer, Dan Friedman has been the ONLY person that I’ve met in this entire industry filled with scumbags that I would trust. All this is, is just the most recent tactic of Tony Brummel’s to hurt us in the eyes of the industry. He’s trying to hurt our reputation and the reputation of our lawyer, (which is completely uncalled for) and build his own back up. Interesting that part of our lawsuit against Tony is about him damaging our reputation in the industry…thanks for further support on this claim!

In regards to Tony suing JT personally, If Tony is that hard up for cash and feels the need to file more ridiculous lawsuits to generate income (because he can’t sell records any more), why doesn’t he go sue the other three major labels that we have also NOT signed “exclusive recording agreements” with, so he can extort some more money from them? Imagine how big and profitable Victory would be if they treated bands right in the first place (Thursday, Hatebreed, TBS, Atreyu, HH)…he would run the biggest rock label out there right now, not just the “#1 independent label.”

Now imagine how much money he would have saved in lawsuits alone. Lawsuits aren’t cheap and I can count 5 lawsuits right now that involve us and Victory and I’m not even going to go into the other lawsuits that he’s busy fighting between other bands and producers. Perhaps the unfair treatment of bands and the lawsuits that followed are what lead to him being low on cash and therefore unable to promote records properly now?

“If you or someone you know was injured in a car accident, you need someone with the most experience in the court room, call Dyer, Garafolo, Man & Brummel. We’ll sue everyone in site and get the money you’re owed from someone, anyone, it doesn’t matter who its from.”

So hurting our reputation, doesn’t repair your own, but if he can’t have us, no one will I guess. That’s mature.

Eron

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