A venue’s comeback story fuels mental health support at Christmas Burns Red 2024
“I want to heal the scene because it's a precious space. It would be tragic to me if people didn't understand how much more than music it really is. HeartSupport is an opportunity to put on display that we're truly available to each other.”
— Jeremy Weiss
“I want to heal the scene because it's precious to me. And I know that it's precious to a lot of other people. I want to see it continue for future generations, for my generation, for everybody. I want to see it grow and prosper, to make this bigger and better than it ever has been.”
— Kyle Kitching
The most recent Christmas Burns Red was hosted at the Pennslyvania venue Lancaster County Convention Center, and cheered on by local all-ages venue The Champ. HeartSupport was on-site for crucial connection. The event sparked a new era, with 2025 launching a partnership with a first-of-its-kind impact on the metal music community: a dollar of every single ticket sold at The Champ this year will go to support HeartSupport’s mission.
It’s no coincidence that this venue is the first to partner with the nonprofit organization in this way. It’s a natural continuation of the operators’ lifelong commitment to community.
When Jeremy Weiss remembers the vision that the Pennslyvania venue The Champ was founded with, he pictures a truly inclusive crew of people enjoying a diverse range of music.
“The Champ was a place where everyone's welcome,” Jeremy says earnestly. “Everybody's just expected to be a decent human being. That is it, right? That's the basis for everything. We don't really care about anything else. I really was attracted to that.”
Jeremy Weiss
That ethos applied especially to young people. When he bought out the venue from its prior owners and reinvented it, Jeremy understood that The Champ could be a place for the outcasts, the misfits, and the oddballs to safely engage with music and each other. He brought in bands like Haste The Day, Showbread, The Chariot, Texas In July, and other metalcore mainstays of the aughts.
Kyle Kitching was one of the kids who consistently showed up to see those shows.
“It was just this perfect scene of friends who could go to a show,” Kyle says, backing up Jeremy’s perspective. “We could go and not be ostracized by the big bullies who liked to run the pit or some old biker gangs that don't like to let kids have fun. That was amazing for a big group of people in this area. What it did for that big group of people is bring them all together and give them something to talk about and be a part of.”
That made it all the more devastating when the venue closed seven years ago.
A steep rent hike made it untenable to keep the doors open, especially since the venue’s all-ages status meant not selling alcohol.
Jeremy remembers, “Local council people, borough people, actually wanted it back. Parents were like, ‘hey, my kid was marginalized. This place was a place they could go. Like this might have done them a tremendous service.’”
The Champ went into hibernation. Even as Jeremy continued with other ventures in the music industry, he held to the sanctity of the venue’s branding, occasionally listing it as a presenter for concerts he promoted. Meanwhile, Kyle continued to go to shows, finding ways to dig deeper into the music world. The vision of what The Champ could be laid dormant.
To understand what happened next, you have to understand more about Jeremy and Kyle’s respective histories.
Jeremy has been in the music industry for decades, dabbling in everything from tour managing to booking shows to operating an independent label. Before he was a professional in the space, he was a punk rock aficionado, crawling his small town record store for anything edgy he could get his hands on.
“I was a kid in a smaller city trying, just falling in love with all this obscure music. I was very fortunate that there was a record store here because that was a huge luxury for any city,” Jeremy fondly recalls. “Pop music just wasn't cutting it for me. I was looking for something different. I was also looking for a smaller, more intimate community. I was looking for things that were more based on social justice.”
At just 15 years old, that desire led him to track down agents for his favorite bands and book them.
“The people booking the tours had no idea that I was 15. I would rent the hall. I would do all these things on the telephone. And then when they arrived, I was just like five foot one. Thank goodness I had a small growth spurt since then!” he laughs.
Those early origins led Jeremy to a lifetime of watching bands rise. He remembers discovering Silent Planet and Texas In July when both were in their infancy. And he recalls discovering August Burns Red and being the first person to sign them to his independent label, having no idea how much the moment would change his life. He would even end up on the road with the band for a while, witnessing the burgeoning growth of HeartSupport in the process.
“When Jake very first joined the band, I was touring with them for a couple of years. Jake has a huge heart. He's a very authentic person. And I can say that for all the members of that band,” Jeremy says. “So I'm always admittedly interested in what interests them — I give myself an extra nudge, you know, because I have a profound respect for them. So I definitely watched HeartSupport develop, and I was a minor contributor privately.”
Meanwhile, Kyle was forging an identity in small-town York, Pennsylvania based on an innate defiance against the norm.
“I went on this absolute journey to go and try and find the most underground, unknown hardcore bands that I could find,” Kyle remembers. “Lo and behold, it ended up being that there were a lot of underground, really good hardcore scene stuff happening right around me.”
Of course, some of that was hosted at The Champ. But even once the venue’s doors closed, Kyle’s love for venturing off the beaten musical path remained — whether it was exploring underground hardcore, rap, or indie.
Kyle’s early career was not in the music space, but in 2022, he started to wonder what it might look like to lean deeper into the hobby that had been so essential to his life. He started turning up at venues, offering to help with set-up. Soon, his path intersected with Jeremy’s when both ended up working at a venue in Harrisburg.
Jeremy and Kyle with Fred Mashcerino of Taking Back Sunday and Say Anything
Then a colleague at that same venue came to Jeremy and shared that a space had opened up at a nearby college.
Jeremy shares, “Kyle was the very first person I thought of. I was like, ‘If you'll partner with me, I'm in.’ Because I really love his vigor for music, his acumen for production, and his passion for a community, a scene.”
“It was such an honor for myself as somebody who was never the biggest presence in the room,” Kyle says. “I was never making myself known or anything like that. Jeremy and I probably never had a conversation when I was younger. So I was so honored to get the opportunity to be a part of this thing that had been very formative for myself and a lot of my friends. From there, we started working to bring back that scene and that feeling for everybody.”
Jeremy had been attending Christmas Burns Red since its inception, so when the chance came to be present this year, it made sense on every level. Both Jeremy and Kyle’s longstanding respect for Jake and what he was doing with HeartSupport made the 2025 ticket donation structure another no-brainer.
“August Burns Red are the godfathers of the metalcore scene. Like there's no question about it,” Kyle states. “I’m speaking as somebody who's been going to shows with these bigger bands since I was very young. Even when I wasn't working in the music industry, I was going to shows religiously. It's just what I did. I love music. Going to an August Burns Red show, you can immediately feel that inclusion.”
Kyle continues, “This is the perfect place for HeartSupport to be. For a lot of people, not only do they feel like they're going into a family's loving arms, but then they see that there's a real outlet for them to be able to go to while they're also here to go enjoy the show. That's huge for a lot of people”
“I would also say it's an opportunity to activate the help you want to give, right?” Jeremy says, referring to HeartSupport’s unique peer-support model. “So HeartSupport is not merely offering assistance to people who are having some trouble. It's a call to action for people who want to engage with others and help and love them.”
Jeremy and Kyle want that to be the kind of thing their community is all about. They’ve seen the need — and what happens when people step up to meet that need.
Jeremy continues, “The degree to which one might find themselves in distress can be very temporary. It can be circumstantial for that day, or for the less fortunate, it can be some type of continuing anxiety or distress. Either way, you guys could experience a turnaround in somebody's disposition within 20 minutes. And I wonder sometimes when you're in the bank, you're at the grocery store, you're at the mall, and somebody's acting curmudgeonly or really grumpy — I wonder what would happen if you weren't considered weird for asking, ‘What's going on, man? You all right?’ I love that about HeartSupport. It screams, ‘We're going to ask you what's going on, and we're going to ask you if you're all right.’”
The donations built into the ticketing structure for the rest of this year induct every attendee into that kind of culture by default.
“Our point is at the Champ to make sure that this music is available to everybody, so our ticket prices are already low. And especially for our fans who are coming to our shows, they see a dollar and they probably would be happy to see that on there to make sure that the people who need HeartSupport have it available to them,” Kyle explains.
Jeremy agrees. He says, “That dollar could call attention to what this is and make somebody actually feel as if they've done something.”
The result of their first night of collaboration at Christmas Burns Red was a truly magical night of community and connection, a full-circle convergence of August Burns Red history, The Champ’s comeback story, and HeartSupport’s core values of community-driven compassion. HeartSupport was on site to provide a real-time support wall. Every band involved in the two-day event donated merchandise to be part of a fundraising raffle. And every single attendee had the chance to be part of fundraising.
After watching the event unfold, Jeremy says, “I'd like to say to the HeartSupport community for being available to each other. Thank you for having the courage to discuss the things that are foremost in your mind. Whether that's sadness or joy, this is real connection. This is how people truly connect.”
“If you would have told me as a kid that in 15 years’ time, I would be a huge part of the kinds of shows I was going to, I would have never believed it,” Kyle says in awe. “It’s full circle, and now I just want to give that back. I see the younger folk who we're bringing out to shows, and I really do hope that it gives them the drive to be like, ‘This is a scene that is something I can be part of.’ Hopefully, they're the new me in 10-15 years. And they have the HeartSupport community, so all I can say is: use it. There's a chance for all of us to either use it, need it, or be the person who's contributing to it, giving advice, giving solutions. It’s there. So don’t be afraid to use it.”
