Th
is year’s Vans Warped Tour lineup is decidedly Rock-centric, with a lean toward Metalcore, Hardcore and edgy Indie Rock. For a festival tour that started out in the mid-1990s being focused on Punk and Ska — music that had a strong underground following at the time — it’s quite a shift.
But Warped founder and organizer Kevin Lyman says there’s a simple reason why Metalcore and other aggressive Rock genres have taken a lead role in the lineup.
“Those bands speak to the kids (today) the same way Bad Religion or Dead Kennedys spoke to me,” says Lyman, 54, who became a fan of Punk as he headed from his teenage years into adulthood, and in fact worked numerous Punk shows in his early days in the music business.
He founded the Warped Tour in 1995 after working for three years with the original Lollapalooza tour (owned then by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell), and early on gave Punk and Alternative Rock bands a platform for reaching thousands of kids at each tour stop in an era when radio airplay was out of reach for all but a few of the most accessible Pop Punk bands (e.g. Green Day and, a bit later, Blink-182).
It’s notable that the lineup for the first Warped Tour included No Doubt, a band that at the time had released a largely ignored self-titled debut album, and Sublime, who pioneered today’s hugely popular Reggae/Punk genre.
The second year of Warped featured three other acts that would soon become household names — Blink-182, Beck and 311. When year two of Warped was over, the tour — which Lyman originally wasn’t sure would do well enough to even return for a second year — was established as the Punk Rock event of the summer and on its way to what is now a 21-year unbroken run of annual outings.
Lyman has shown a special knack for booking bands on Warped Tour that soon broke through into the mainstream and became large venue headliners in their own rights. He still considers helping develop new talent one of the missions of Warped Tour. The list of now-popular acts that played the festival early in their careers is long and includes Avenged Sevenfold, The Black Eyed Peas, Deftones, Katy Perry, Fall Out Boy, Incubus and Staind.
Whether any acts on this year’s Warped Tour will break out and become major stars in the near future is anyone’s guess. Lyman has also moved away from booking established headlining-type acts and has focused on bands and solo artists that have yet to make a big impact commercially.
About the closest thing to what one might consider “name acts” in the 2015 Warped Tour lineup are Black Veil Brides (fronted/founded by Cincinnati native Andy Biersack), Pierce The Veil and Asking Alexandria. Black Veil Brides and Pierce The Veil were booked early, Lyman says. They gave him the drawing cards he needed for this year’s tour, and he was able to fill out the rest of the lineup from there.
The lineup overall has a decidedly rocking personality. But Pop Punk and Indie/Alternative Rock are also well represented by bands like Never Shout Never, The Wonder Years and Family Force 5. Meanwhile, there is only a smattering of Punk, and hardly any Hip Hop or Electronica — genres that are major parts of today’s music scene.
Lyman feels he has enough acts fall outside the core Rock styles to give fans musical variety and the musical surprises he likes to build into the tour.
“You’ll have some fused Rock with some of these Electronic influences,” he says. “I think one of the leaders (in that style) was Breathe Carolina last year, and now you’re seeing more bands with that type of thing, but they’re still Rock bands, drum and guitar heavy. I think it’s also a fun lineup. I want to throw some twists in there, like (Dance Pop duo) Koo Koo Kanga Roo. It makes no sense, but it does make sense. I like when you’re walking around Warped, you’re going to be thrown for a loop by someone.”
While music is the draw for Warped Tour, the experience has become something bigger than just a traveling music festival. Going back to its early days, the tour provided a sense of community to kids who came out to the shows, first giving Punk fans a chance to see dozens of their favorite bands, meet other like-minded fans and celebrate various styles of music that were still outside the mainstream.
Warped Tour continues to give fans opportunities to learn about and get involved with various nonprofit organizations (25 such groups have a presence at this year’s tour) and to familiarize themselves with vendors that offer products appropriate for the Warped Tour audience.
“I have said it for years: the Warped Tour is like that lifestyle county fair that comes to your town once a year, where you can learn about your nonprofits, where you can learn about the brands that you may want to learn (about), because they’re usually on the edge,” says Lyman, who has taken to calling Warped “Misfit Summer Camp” because it appeals to fans who are underserved by the music mainstream. “When you walk around those booths, those are (companies) that can become the next Hurley or the next Volcom or the next Glamour Kills or the next Vans.”
“For one day (fans) get themselves out, and maybe it carries over to their lives,” Lyman continues. “They can join the nonprofits. They can get involved in something. They can find other kids who like music or similar music. It’s as much a socialization of that, I think in some ways, as it is a music festival.”
The 2015 VANS WARPED TOUR comes to Riverbend Thursday. Tickets available at riverbend.org. Full lineup info at vanswarpedtour.com.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2015.