Aaron West and The Roaring Twenties

Dan Campbell, the singer and songwriter best known for fronting the pop-punk band the Wonder Years, launched Aaron West & the Roaring Twenties as his initial solo endeavor. Seeking sharper guitar technique and broader songwriting range, he started composing on acoustic, merging the intensity and drive of pop punk with an Americana and roots foundation. Those tracks diverged from the Wonder Years’ sound and had never been meant for public release, yet Campbell shared a handful with Ace Enders of Early November while their bands toured together on the 2013 Vans Warped Tour. Enders responded enthusiastically and volunteered to produce the material should Campbell decide to pursue a solo album. Campbell accepted the offer; because the songs were largely voiced through a semi-fictional character, he elected to release them under the invented name Aaron West & the Roaring Twenties instead of his own. After the Wonder Years’ tour concluded, he and Enders finished the record, which Hopeless Records issued in July 2014 as the concept album We Don’t Have Each Other, tracing the lowest stretch of Aaron’s life in sequence. The EP Bittersweet followed in 2016, and the band’s second full-length, Routine Maintenance, appeared in 2019.