Skip to main contentThe Exploding Hearts had everything going for them. Four Portland boys in their early 20s who met at Beaverton's Arts and Communication Magnet Academy, the band mastered an infectious, insanely catchy pop-punk sound and enjoyed a growing national buzz. It may be physically impossible to listen to the Exploding Hearts without cracking a smile.
Early Sunday morning, disaster struck.
The band's tour van rolled over on Interstate 5 north of Eugene, killing band members Matthew Fitzgerald, Jeremy Gage and Adam Cox. Ratch Aronica, the Hearts' manager, and band member Terry Six survived, reportedly with relatively minor injuries.
"We just rolled and rolled," Aronica said Monday morning. "Terry and I got lucky. The other three guys didn't."
Aronica says Cox and Gage, both thrown from the vehicle, died instantly. Fitzgerald, the driver, died after medical efforts to revive him failed.
The fatal crash came on the home stretch of an all-night drive from San Francisco, where the Exploding Hearts had played two headlining shows over the weekend. Aronica says S.F. rock scenesters treated her boys "like royalty," and the prominent Bay Area indie label Lookout! Records scouted the band. An issue of the national rock zine Shredding Paper with the Exploding Hearts on its cover came out during the band's show at the nightclub Bottom of the Hill.
"The things that were happening for them--it all seemed so perfect," says Aronica, who suffered a fractured occipital lobe in the crash. "It just doesn't make sense that it was all taken away."
At press time, a number of benefit/memorial shows were in the works. The band's songs can be downloaded at www.explodinghearts.com.
WWeek 2015