Hopeless Records Celebrates a 30-Year Legacy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In 1993, a guy referred to as “the Paul Newman of punk rock” was just a 22-year-old college kid losing his eyesight due to retinitis pigmentosa and wanting to start a record label. Louis Posen was a music video director in Van Nuys, California at the time, working with bands like Guttermouth and NOFX. As he’s going blind, he builds Hopeless Records from the ground up, signing bands like 88 Fingers Louie, Mustard Plug, Funeral Oration and Against All Authority in the early ages of what would become—perhaps unknowingly at the time—a 30-year, still-going operation. Few independent record labels that stemmed from that period have lasted this long, as the ever-changing tides of the mainstream and its countercultural undercurrents are always morphing into beasts with a penchant for leaving good people behind. But Hopeless was never going to fall into that fate; Posen was far too passionate about the bands who’d bought into his vision.

The early 2000s proved to be critical for Hopeless, as bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Thrice, Atom & His Package and Common Rider spent time on the roster and helped the label turn toward a harsher, heavier sound. The punk rock ethos of Southern California had splintered into a hardcore-leaning tint, and Hopeless had established itself as a label with the staying power to break bands and not just sign them. Cue some inclusions of ska and metal bands, and it was clear that Posen and his team was on the precipice of a massive, unprecedented breakout. And that’s exactly what the “Neon Era” was for Hopeless. The Wonder Years and All Time Low were the new kings in town, and they remain two of the greatest pop-punk/alt-rock artists working. Amber Pacific, There For Tomorrow and We Are The In Crowd were kicking around then, too, and Hopeless became the bread-and-butter, undisputed torch-bearers of scenes defined by Warped Tour and surging album sales.

The best—and my favorite—era of Hopeless happened in the mid-2010s, when the Wonder Years released the greatest pop-punk album of all time (The Greatest Generation) and the label added acts like Sum 41, Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday, New Found Glory and Bayside to their roster. It seemed like Hopeless was doing what many labels avoided: taking post-prime bands and giving them more support. And, in a genre like pop-punk, which often has an expiration date and cycles through more presentations than any other corner of music, there’s something hopeful about that—how Posen’s urgency was rooted in stretching the elastic of timelessness and challenging cultural misconceptions about how long a band has left to go. This period of prominence led to Hopeless adding Neck Deep, Pvris, Waterparks, Destroy Boys and Scene Queen to the label and going fully global. It’s an end-cap on three decades of touted reverence for bands who might not otherwise get a shot. It’s why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opted to honor Hopeless Records with a special exhibition chronicling the now-31 years since Posen inked the first signing.

This past Saturday (August 24), Hopeless was officially recognized at the Rock Hall with a day-long celebration. On the museum’s fourth floor sits a string of glass cases, each filled top to bottom with artifacts collected over the decades. Old copies of Alt Press (including one from 2015 featuring the Wonder Years on it, which I made a special trip to Hot Topic to buy when it dropped), guitars, out-of-print .45s, show posters (some handmade) and mementos from the road can be spotted. There’s even a letter that Nina Bernstein, the daughter of Leonard Bernstein, sent to Posen in praise of Hopeless and their punk version of West Side Story.

As Dan Campbell, the Wonder Years’ frontman, was about to kick off the day with a solo set, he delivered the journal that he wrote all of The Greatest Generation, No Closer to Heaven and the first Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties record in to the Rock Hall’s CEO, Greg Harris. That journal, along with everything else in those cases, will live in Cleveland, Ohio forever—in the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll, the movement out of which pop-punk, and Hopeless Records, were born.

Saturday was a brutally hot day, but you’d have never known that based on the crowd. Hundreds of fans came by to watch Campbell, Awsten Knight of Waterparks, illuminati hotties and Scene Queen deliver performances. Dozens of folks had their hair colored blue or purple to match Knight’s, while longtime Wonder Years mascot Hank the Pigeon was in attendance. Venture into the ground-floor level of the museum and you might find the very work shirt that Sarah Tudzin is wearing on the recently-released illuminati hotties album, POWER. When Campbell is introduced, he is introduced as the longest-tenured Hopeless Records artist. Since 2011, he’s released five Wonder Years albums, three Aaron West LPs and more EPs, singles, split-releases and compilations than anyone could count on two hands. It’s safe to say that no band better exemplifies the Hopeless Records spirit than the Wonder Years. Their last album, The Hum Goes on Forever, is simply one of the best alt-rock records made this century—and we have Posen to thank for that, for giving Campbell and his band a shot almost 15 years ago.

Hopeless Records have nurtured over 150 artists across three decades, and some of them have been Gold and Platinum-certified artists. Alongside that, the Hopeless Foundation (once called Sub City) has raised over $3 million for charity and heads the ongoing “Songs That Saved My Life” project—the proceeds of which go to suicide prevention organizations and mental health advocacy groups. When Posen had the idea to create a “mobile monument” for the label’s 30th anniversary, he cold-called Harris and delivered this pitch: “Hopeless Records, 30 years. You probably never heard of us.”

But Harris was familiar with Hopeless, and he wanted to not just feature that mobile monument—he wanted to make the label’s achievements a full-time component of the museum. And Posen is now reaping the rewards of Guttermouth daring him to release a 7” vinyl single of one of their songs. After NOFX member and Fat Wreck Chords founder Fat Mike advised him to make it a career, Posen spent $1000 on resources and bought a copy of How to Start An Independent Record Label. The rest was history, and you can see it all up close in Cleveland, Ohio as long as the museum continues to stand.

“When such a revered institution as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognizes and celebrates independent music like Hopeless and our artists to such a large degree, it makes it clear how important and impactful independent music is to our society and world,” Posen says.