Hot Rod Circuit

Hailing from Auburn, Alabama, the emo-inflected rock group Hot Rod Circuit featured Andy Jackson handling vocals and rhythm guitar, Casey Prestwood on lead guitar and vocals, Jay Russel providing bass and vocals, and Wes Cross behind the drums; their sound invited parallels to post-grunge emo outfits such as Jawbox and the Get Up Kids. Early on the quartet operated under the name Antidote and issued the album Mr. Glenbowski, which secured them Musician magazine’s 1998 Best Unsigned Band Award. Soon afterward they adopted the Hot Rod Circuit moniker and shifted their base of operations to Connecticut, where they delivered their first release under the new identity, the 1999 album If I Knew Now What I Knew Then, via New York’s Triple Crown Records. The band promoted the effort by sharing stages with the Get Up Kids, Jazz June, and At the Drive-In, then returned in fall 2000 with the follow-up If It’s Cool with You It’s Cool with Me. Their Vagrant debut, Sorry About Tomorrow, arrived in spring 2002, while Triple Crown simultaneously put out Been There, Smoked That, a collection that gathered the long-out-of-print 1999 self-titled EP together with additional unreleased early recordings. Road work alongside Dashboard Confessional and Saves the Day helped push the records, during which time the members began composing fresh material drawing on the college-rock acts they had grown up with, among them the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and the Lemonheads. The more seasoned Vagrant album that resulted, Reality’s Coming Through, was helmed by producer Tim O’Heir and reached stores in August 2004. Subsequent dates with Straylight Run, Piebald, and the Snake the Cross the Crown, plus an appearance at the 2005 Bamboozle Festival, followed, yet Russel departed that June, compelling the remaining members to withdraw from the Get Up Kids’ farewell tour. By autumn 2006 the group had signed with Immortal Records, and the reconfigured lineup—still anchored by Jackson and Prestwood but now joined by bassist Joe Balaro and drummer Dan Duggins—released The Underground Is a Dying Breed in March 2007.