The Oral History of A Day to Remember’s Homesick

It’s 2009, and the scene is aching for something new.

Just years earlier, New Found Glory, Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance had taken alternative music by storm – pushing pop-punk and emo to unimaginable heights. Their heart-on-sleeve tunes made an imprint on suburban teenagers everywhere, and now one question remains: Who’s next to carry the torch?

Enter A Day to Remember: the scene’s answer to its thriving genres at the time. The Ocala, Florida band’s fusion of pop-punk and metalcore – a cross-section of the Vans Warped Tour sound in the 2000s – was the perfect amalgamation of passionate sing-alongs and mosh-lite breakdowns. This musical approach was part survival tactic and part personal preference, as the band sought to stand out in the Florida metal scene while showcasing their love for both genres.

Just two years prior, the group released its Victory Records debut, For Those Who Have Heart, which was a raw showcase of their dynamic genre-hopping. But the follow-up, Homesick, was about to crown A Day to Remember as the scene’s next darlings. It was an instant classic, pushing both sides of their sound to the max – and full of big hits that every scene kid would grow to adore.

Alternative music was looking for its next archetypal moment – a complement to marching bands in the city, going down, down in an earlier round, and throwing your hands up to the anthem. It would soon be found in a series of “dah-dah-dahs.” Vocalist Jeremy McKinnon would then signal the beginning of a new era: “Let’s go!” 

That summer, the band would see their popularity skyrocket off the back of “The Downfall of Us All,” “Have Faith in Me,” and “If It Means a Lot to You.” They would jump from the Smartpunk.com Stage to the Hurley Stage on Warped Tour – just a step away from the ever-coveted Main Stage (they would eventually headline the tour in 2011).

But how exactly did Homesick become one of the scene’s most famous albums? How did combining Blink-182 and Underoath, New Found Glory and Killswitch Engage, work so seamlessly? We take it back to those who were there: the members of A Day to Remember, the producers who made Homesick happen, and the journalists who were as much fans as they were critics.

The Cast

• Jeremy McKinnon, Vocalist for A Day to Remember
• Neil Westfall, Guitarist for A Day to Remember
• Kevin Skaff, Guitarist for A Day to Remember
• Tom Denney, Guitarist for A Day to Remember
• Joshua Woddard, Bassist for A Day to Remember
• Chad Gilbert, Producer / Guitarist for New Found Glory
• Andrew Wade, Producer
• Dan Mumford, Freelance Artist
• Eli Enis, Writer for Kerrang!
• Jennyfer Walker, Writer for Kerrang!
• Kiel Hauck, Writer for It’s All Dead
• Alex Sievers, Writer for The Music
• Anna Acosta, Writer for Chorus.fm
• Morgan Freed, Podcaster for the CD Burners
• Finn McKenty, YouTuber for Punk Rock MBA

It’s Not Easy Making a Name for Yourself: The Background

2008 was a busy year for A Day to Remember. The band had played Warped Tour that summer, then supported New Found Glory on the Easycore Tour.

Yet, Victory Records had already pushed the band for a new record to follow 2007’s For Those Who Have Heart. To satisfy the label, they would reissue the album with bonus tracks and their cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.” There was no break in sight for the group, who would finish writing for the next album on the Easycore Tour, then enter the studio that fall.

The kinetic energy of non-stop writing and touring took its toll on the band. Yet, they would instead be refined by fire. The resulting record touched on tour life and missing home, and it didn’t pull any punches. A Day to Remember would push their sonic duality even further to the extremes, with heavier breakdowns and catchier choruses.

Much of this was thanks to the help of producer Chad Gilbert, New Found Glory’s guitarist who the band befriended on the Easycore Tour. Homesick was recorded at the studio of Andrew Wade. This would be the second of many collaborations with Wade, which began with their first record, And Their Name Was Treason. They would then send the finished product to Killswitch Engage’s Adam Dutkiewicz for mixing.

Working with bigger names certainly helped A Day to Remember. But it was clear from Homesick that this band had it – the songwriting chops and shining personality. It would be the beginning of their ascent to the top of the scene.

Jeremy: We loved pop-punk, we loved hardcore bands, and we couldn’t decide what to be. So we said fuck it. Let’s do them both.

Kevin: We always sound like four different bands all in one. That’s what’s fun about being in a band because you get to write whatever you like. There are a lot of people that don’t just like hardcore or just like pop music, and we’re five of those people so it’s kind of fun that we get to do them all.

Eli: By dressing like Zumiez employees while providing the soundtrack to a Hot Topic store, A Day to Remember introduced people to metalcore who were otherwise turned off by “scary breakdown music.”

Kiel: A Day to Remember had a knack for breaking down walls between music fans of various genres and bringing them together.

Jeremy: Victory Records comes in, and they were the only label that’s interested. We realized that if we were going to put a huge portion of our lives into something, we at least wanted the opportunity to sound how we wanted it to sound. And they were the only label that was going to do that.

Monika: They appeal to a wide demographic audience. They can play pop, punk, and hardcore, and it’s a great sound.

Joshua: As long as we’re together and making our music, we can conquer the (music) world. I’m not saying that in a cocky way. I believe in this band and what we’re doing.

Jeremy: We didn’t start this band with the intentions of making money, or becoming well known. We were just five friends who loved playing music, having a good time together. Now it’s four years later, and people are mentioning us as one of the most important bands of 2008. It’s all just surreal.

Tom: Homesick was the first record that I feel like we nailed it. It was the first time I felt like we did what we were all trying to accomplish as far as songwriting goes.

Jeremy: Tom and I pretty much wrote it [Homesick], and the other guys oversaw it and then Chad Gilbert produced it. We worked in pre-production with Andrew Wade and Chris Rubey, so a lot of really awesome people worked with us.

Tom: We were stressing in the back of the bus. It was just me and Jeremy in the back, doing pre-production and writing. It was a lot of work – it really took a lot out of me.

Joshua: [Andrew’s] the guy who recorded a few tracks on our re-release, and he’s done a lot of pre-production stuff with us forever.

Jeremy: We’ve always worked with Andrew on all our albums, so it was kind of like a comfort thing with him. We could be at home [and] record with him, and he helped with pre-production on every record, so, really, he’s actually almost a part of A Day To Remember when it comes to our sound – when it comes to writing the record and putting the finishing touches on it.

Neil: [It’s] the heaviest and the poppiest stuff we’ve ever written.

Jeremy: We wanted to make sure it was heavier and poppier at the same time, because I mean, we didn’t want to do the same thing twice, so we just tried to take it to the next level.

Neil: We got in contact in Chad when New Found Glory wanted us to tour with them across the U.S. last year. We said we would do this tour if you would work on this record with us and produce it and he said okay.

Jeremy: Chad really helped us when it came to making our songs flow in terms of structure and stuff. He even helped us write a few really catchy parts – he definitely just made the record, all around, way better.

Tom: Having Chad and Andrew there for the creation of most of the songs, writing the songs together with them, it created an environment that I wasn’t used to. And by doing so, I feel like it created more songwriting opportunities, and songs turned out differently for the better.

Chad: They were doing some melodic things before, but on the new record I wanted to prove that Jeremy could sing better than he did on the last record. And they’re heavier live, so I wanted to have that on the record, too.

Morgan: Those two things, produced by New Found Glory, mixed by Killswitch Engage, that is the album you’re getting.

Neil: Our band was much different than Killswitch but we used the same tools they used: We were heavy and melodic at the same. So we figured he would understand what we were going for as far as tones and stuff like that when it came to what we were doing.

Finn: You just can’t fuck with the level of talent associated with the band at this time. It’s really just one of those things of a bunch of incredibly talented people who happen to be in the same place at the same moment in time, and you can’t duplicate that.

Jeremy: It actually came kind of naturally. We do what we do every time. We wrote what we wanted to write at that time. So, I mean, it wasn’t a real challenge, and Chad and Andrew just made it way easier, because we did it on the road and it turned out like I never imagined it would.

Tom: We were touring a lot, like 200-250 days a year leading up to recording that record. And we were writing constantly on tour. I think that influenced the record a lot – obviously, it’s called Homesick.

Alex: Homesick is a youthful record; it’s all about self-doubt and self-belief, seeing the world and touring, family and friends, and ignoring naysayers and carving out your own path.

Jeremy: We were in a different place on this record. So we wrote about what we were going through at that time, which is being away from home, being away from the people you love and dealing with situations like that.

Tom: It wasn’t a choice to write Homesick about the struggles of being gone and all that. It just manifested itself, and I think that’s why it turned out that way.

Here’s to Another Banner Year: The Album

Following its recording the previous fall, Homesick dropped on February 3, 2009 – and it quickly earned its spot as a scene staple. The record sold 22,000 copies the first week and a whopping 200,000 copies by the following summer. By 2016, it was certified gold in the U.S., one of the commercial landmarks from its era – even if it still pales in comparison to multi-platinum triumphs of The Black Parade and From Under the Cork Tree.

The 40-minute romp of Homesick was magic from the opening notes of “The Downfall of Us All.” But it wasn’t the first song to make an impression – that would be “NJ Legion Iced Tea,” which dropped in January just weeks before the record as a whole. Both tracks were the perfect showcase of the band’s progression: heavier riffs, tighter production, and poppier vocals.

These two tracks may only feature sparse screaming, but the album was chock full of commanding metalcore – with mosh calls that would become scene staples. Talk to any metal fan under the age of 40, and they’ll know the big ones: “This is a battleground,” “everybody’s out to get me,” “disrespect your surroundings” (not to be confused with the meme-worthy “disinfect your surroundings” that would turn McKinnon into the cleaning guy).

For those who couldn’t handle the screaming, there were plenty of ear-pleasing hooks to latch onto – with the pop-punk-leaning “Have Faith in Me” and “Homesick,” let alone the acoustic balladry of “If It Means a Lot to You.” Homesick had something for everybody, and it became a gateway to metal for an entire generation of teenagers who sought songs about breakups and growing up but wanted something a little edgier than Fall Out Boy.

2009 would be a monumental year for this era of the scene. Homesick was the biggest standout, with August Burns Red’s Constellations, Blessthefall’s Witness, We Came as Romans’ To Plant a Seed, The Devil Wears Prada’s With Roots Above and Branches Below, and Asking Alexandria’s Stand Up and Scream not far behind.

Warped Tour would quickly be transformed from a pop-punk masterclass to a showcase of what I like to call “scenecore” – a moment in time when metalcore could dominate the Main Stage thanks to its accessible pop formula and colorful, in-your-face merch. Pop-punk and metalcore were once separate like oil and water, but at the turn of the decade, A Day to Remember and their peers had made them one of the same.

Jeremy: The first idea came at 5 in the morning, when I was driving. All of a sudden this guitar riff pops into my head – it was the chorus to “Downfall of Us All.” Out of nowhere, literally, the entire song was just in my head. I knew exactly the entire thing. As soon as I got to my mom’s house, I picked up a guitar they had in their living room, and I figured it out.

Chad: When they first played me the demo of “Downfall,” they wanted it to be the first song on the record. Overall, in my opinion, first songs are often the first thing people hear, so it should almost encompass the whole record. I’m so psyched on it. I’m glad it’s the opening song.

Jeremy: We were playing the Foundation in Lubbock, Texas. We were outside, practicing a breakdown, waiting to walk onstage and started doing this a capella breakdown together. I was like, “Whoa, how sick would it be if we started the record like this?”

Tom: That was a Jeremy idea. I think he explained it like, “I want to have a bunch of people mouth the breakdown and then go into the breakdown.” I was like, “What?”

Finn: [It’s] one of the most iconic intros ever.

Tom: All the interesting, weird little things on our records like that were usually a Jeremy idea. He has really cool ideas when it comes to things like that that adds to songs and makes them stand out more. So I trusted him. Like, worst case, we can just delete it.

Eli: If you were a teen or tween in 2009 who wore Vans, requested Hot Topic apparel on your holiday wishlist, or attended Warped Tour, then ‘da-da-da-da-da-da’ will likely lurk in the catacombs of your memory until the day you die.

Jeremy: This song was written at a time when I was feeling the pressures that come along with writing a record. I was worried about pleasing every person, and I just decided, “Why not write a song about what I’m feeling?” No matter what you do, you can’t please everyone.

Alex: This record is built off the strength of about four great fucking songs. “The Downfall of Us All,” “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of?,” “Mr. Highway’s Thinking About the End” and the superbly well-balanced gem of “NJ Legion Iced Tea” (my personal fave) are where the real goods are at.

Jeremy: A few weeks before Homesick came out, we needed to post a song from the record to show people what they could expect. We chose this song [“Welcome to the Family”] because we felt it was that perfect stepping stone from [2007’s] For Those Who Have Heart to Homesick. I think it showed our old fans that we didn’t change, but we became more comfortable with our sound, which helped us gain new fans.

Alex: In another life, with the most constant screams of the record, this could’ve easily been a b-side Acacia track – even with that infectious, driving “I don’t believe that everything” chorus sandwiched between those more brutal moments.

Andrew: Fun fact: The heartbeat sound at the end of “Welcome to the Family” is mine.

Jeremy: A few of our songs are actually movie quotes. “Mr. Highway’s Thinking About the End” is from The Good Son, while “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of?” is from Night at the Museum.

Eli: There’s a Warped mosh-pit tour de force in the middle of it, featuring a scream-off between Mike Hranica’s screech and Jeremy’s thunderous bellow. But it quickly slips back into an uplifting stride before everyone’s had time to windmill.

Anna: I’m hard-pressed to think of many other albums that had so many memorable moments that had very little to do with the actual music – from the cough in “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of” to the gang vocals-turned-punchline that open the record to the meme-ready “disrespect your surroundings” on “Mr. Highway’s Thinking About the End.”

Morgan: The thing about that – just naming that song that and the band in general – I feel like they’re pretty unserious. They bring a playfulness. It’s like, from pop-punk – the music is way heavier, but they bring an accessibility.

Neil: We shot it [the music video] the beginning of December and we’ve been sitting on it since. It took forever to get MTV on board for it.

Jeremy: A good friend of ours, Kyle Crawford, actually, just hit me up one day, and he was like, “Hey, you should totally make a video where you guys are playing kickball, and you play a bunch of kids and just kick the shit out of them.” I was like, “That’s a great idea. Let’s look into it.”

Kiel: Whether the band is flexing their drop D tuned guitars on “You Already Know What You Are” or taking a poppier approach on “Homesick” or “Have Faith in Me,” the album truly serves as an intersection for fans of almost any corner of the scene.

Jennyfer: I’m in it for the ballad-y ones that arrived with the release of 2009 album Homesick, and Jeremy stating on its title track: “Hey mom, I wrote you some soft songs” (thanks for encouraging those, Mrs. McKinnon).

Jeremy: I’m more proud of this song than any on the record. I really felt like I wrote exactly what I wanted to say. My parents were really happy when they first heard it: My dad is always worried about me and my mom really did ask me to write her some soft songs. I finally did.

Eli: “Have Faith In Me” and “Homesick” are the best of that bunch. They’re stadium-ready power-ballads with lyrics primed for use as high-school yearbook quotes.

Jeremy: [“Have Faith in Me”] is about trust and being there for people when you say you will be. I’m the kind of person who says what I mean, and this song is about keeping your word.

Jennyfer: It just blows my mind how a band, who are at times, brutally heavy, and others just bouncy and fun, can write something so delicate. Songs so emotional they have the ability to ruin me.

Alex: For a vast majority of Homesick, the pop-punk side of things could not exist without the other heavier side. Ying and yang, all that kind of shit.

Jeremy: [“If It Means a Lot to You”] took me the longest to write. It took almost a year, but it was another song that kind of stumped me. I really needed this song to say exactly what I wanted, and I finally got it there. We didn’t know if it would be on the record right up until the end of recording.

Jennyfer: That “Now everybody’s singing la-la-la-la-la-la-la” outro will never not give me chills. And that’s just on record, when they play it live I’m a straight-up wreck.

Finn: [It’s] actually to this date still their most popular song by a good margin.

Tom: I did write a song for Homesick that was my favorite song out of all of them that didn’t make it. We had to shelf it. It ended up coming out on the next record. It was the song “All Signs Point to Lauderdale.”

Jeremy: I had a pretty detailed idea [for the cover] that I had for Dan Mumford to draw out for us, and he’s an amazing artist. He does some really detailed work, so it was sick to be able to get somebody who’s that good at what they do to work with us and work with him on an idea.

Dan: I was only a year or so into the world of freelancing, and working on this album was an incredibly fun experience. The band requested that we put lots of secret codes throughout, making the whole piece a puzzle of sorts for people to work out.

Jeremy: It’s an interpretation of different paths in life, and how one road can change a person’s life.

They Won’t Even Miss You at All: The Legacy

While critics largely panned Homesick as watered-down metalcore with cookie-cutter hooks, the scene widely embraced it for what it was: a moment in time for an entire scene.

High schoolers who steered clear of heavy metal were suddenly A Day to Remember fans, while numerous scene kids had a common consensus: Homesick had become one of their favorite records. Even gym bros added the album to their playlists alongside As I Lay Dying and Lamb of God. This record was everything to everyone.

Yet, the members of the band wouldn’t ride the coattails of Homesick for long. Before joining Warped Tour in summer 2009, A Day to Remember was at yet another crossroads: guitarist Tom Denney was ready to settle down and left the band. Kevin Skaff would replace him, with Denney continuing to assist with writing new material.

Just a year later, the group was ready for the follow-up, What Separates Me from You, which would continue to catapult the band to scene headliners (and also feature their first radio hit, “All I Want,” and national television debut). Even if Homesick would be their nostalgic legacy album, A Day to Remember was always thinking ahead – and this mindset is a big reason why they continue headlining theaters 15 years and four albums later.

A Day to Remember proved that you could merge genres seamlessly, while staying true to your love for both styles. This was a band that went from playing church naves and legion halls to headlining tours with Bring Me the Horizon and Pierce the Veil in just a few short years, and they did it on the strength of their integrity, honesty, and – quite simply – great songs.

Homesick was a product of its time, yet it stands the test of time. It’s a record that acted as a gateway into heavy music for an entire generation, and for those who grew up on it, it’s still as good as it gets.

Jeremy: When it really kicked off for us was that record Homesick. That was the first that we experienced, liked, real support.

Kiel: The largest crowd I ever saw for a performance at Warped Tour was for A Day to Remember at Indianapolis in 2009. That afternoon, I watched from the top of a small hillside, looking down into a grassy valley where the Hurley Stage sat as a massive crowd moshed like a single organism. It was out of a fear of missing out that I downloaded Homesick a day later to see what all the fuss was about.

Finn: This is where I became a huge fan of the band. I had heard them before, but for whatever reason, I just kind of didn’t pay attention. But a friend of mine gave me a copy of the album, and he was like, “You need to listen to this. I think you’re gonna love it.” And he was right.

Anna: When Homesick dropped, I was a senior in high school. While they weren’t my absolute favorite band, they were up there. I wasn’t writing about music yet at the time, but I loved the record.

Jeremy: Everybody in the world knew who we were after that record who listened to this kind of music. That record was a staple for that time period.

Anna: Its sound – at least, amongst the places where hardcore and pop punk intersect – could have been released today. At the same time, the songs in retrospect listen like a time capsule of sorts. They hold up as a perfect example of where the scene’s music was at the time – a microcosm that takes every existing element and represents it perfectly.

Eli: With 40 minutes of music, Homesick had managed to bridge the gap between two competing subgenres at the height of Warped Tour’s commercial success.

Kiel: It’s an album that quite literally set the tone for the next 10 years of the scene, and it did so simply by having fun.

Finn: It was everything that they had tried to do on their first two albums but better in just every way.

Alex: This thing took everything to a new level. It’s the core reason why A Day To Remember have the huge career they currently have: This album allowed the following records and their many other successes to come, still remaining some of their most-loved live material too.

Jeremy: We had a moment…where we’re standing backstage in a hallway, and everybody starts to do the chanting thing from the beginning of “Downfall.” We’re waiting to walk out, and I just look at everybody like, “Oh my God, is it going to be like this forever?”

Kiel: In those early days, I viewed A Day to Remember as a diet knock-off of the bands I loved, like Underoath, Chiodos, or Story of the Year. I’m still not totally sure I was wrong, but there was something about the way things came together for the band on their sophomore breakthrough that just made sense.

Alex: My friends who loved artists like Paramore, Simple Plan, Fall Out Boy, Mayday Parade, and All Time Low could easily get into it with the major-key, overly polished choruses. Whereas my other mates who were loving far heavier groups like Suicide Silence, The Devil Wears Prada, and August Burns Red could also fuck with it too, what with all of the china-loving breakdowns, heavy screams, and dropped guitar riffage.

Eli: The most important effect Homesick had on rock music was its normalization of convention-breaking. They showed an entire generation of young musicians that fusing alternative genres was not only possible, but that it could be a successful methodology.

Jeremy: We never meant for any of this shit to happen. We really did just write a bunch of random stuff that we liked that nobody else did at the time, and eventually people caught on. And we’ve just kind of taken that stance the entire time.

Alex: Homesick wasn’t only a big deal for the band members themselves and their career sky-rocketing forward post-release, but a massive deal for so many listeners too. It was a huge gateway record for new fans of pop-punk and metalcore.

Eli: In making an album about missing their home, A Day to Remember created a new one for so many others.

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