Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, Future Teens, Dryjacket

Ten years ago, Dan Campbell, frontman of the Philadelphia rock outfit The Wonder Years, masterminded a new character as a tutorial for himself––could he achieve the pathos of his autobiographical ballads in the world of fiction?––but also in the inviolability of the human spirit.

Aaron’s story centered on one impossible, perfect question: when we have nothing left, why keep going? It started with just one song, an experiment with collaborator Ace Enders, of the Early November, about a man whose wife loses a baby. But soon Campbell realized the story couldn’t begin or end there, that there was an entire person he needed to know.

So Campbell took Aaron across the country, Long Island to southern California to Savannah, guided him through bar fights, a table of divorce papers, the church piano bench beside a nephew he’s grown to love like a son, beaches and highways and couches and phone booths, all in an attempt to understand what it is that allows a person to continue in the face of catastrophe.

When he has nothing else, he has his guitar, the stage, the lights. He has the music. After ten years, two albums, an EP, and a single, the answer to Aaron’s brutal seeking comes in the form of his triumphant third chapter, In Lieu of Flowers. 14 and 15 year old’s must be accompanied by an adult .