Vans Warped Tour goes back to its roots
At the end of last year’s Vans Warped Tour, founder Kevin Lyman was a little worried.
He felt the traveling extravaganza he created in 1995 to showcase new talent, heavyweights from outside the mainstream and the indie-rock lifestyle was starting to lose its way.
“Last year, it felt a little fractured at times,” Lyman says. “Some acts weren’t really involved or engaged.”
As a result of the economy and some touring issues, attendance dropped sharply and Lyman says he decided to address the slide himself.
“I remember Ice-T told me, ‘You gotta go with your gut’ and that’s what I decided to do,” he says.
Lyman chose all the artists himself, taking two months to listen to hundreds of acts and pulling together the Warped Tour’s most diverse lineup in years – from the pop-leaning hip-hop of Gym Class Heroes to the power pop of A Day to Remember to the political punk of Against Me! and the hardcore of The Devil Wears Prada.
“We really focused on diversity this year,” he says. “I think we’re closer to the mix that we had in ’95 with Sublime and No Doubt and Quicksand than we have been in years.”
Lyman says the change has worked, with attendance back up to 2009 levels. This year’s tour makes its next-to-last stop Saturday at The Gorge.
Warped Tour, he tells the artists, is about hard work. And that is what makes the tour so rewarding, says Terrible Things frontman Fred Mascherino.
“I really do have to mentally prepare for it,” says Mascherino, who has done Warped four times before as part of Terrible Things, Taking Back Sunday and The Color Fred.
“It’s the toughest tour on Earth to do – the drives, the heat, the stress. … But it’s the best tour to get the word out about your band.
“Warped Tour has built up a trust with its audience. Even though the kids may say, ‘I don’t know half of these bands,’ they still trust that it’s gonna be a fun show. That’s why there’s big crowds every year.”
Allison Hagendorf, a VJ for the Fuse music television network who traveled with the tour for its first 10 days to interview artists and fans for her weekly series “Fuse Warped Wednesdays,” says most bands come ready for the mix of fun and business.
“It is like punk rock summer camp,” she says. “There’s no headliner, no egos. The catering lines are for everyone. There’s no VIP area. All bands are created equal. …
“They also understand that it’s an important platform to reach 600,000 kids in the summer, that it’s the biggest traveling tour and that a lot of major names have come from the tour.”
For each Warped Tour band, the day starts before 8 a.m., when they find out their set time for the day and learn how long they have to set up their equipment and merchandise tents.
The workday generally continues until after 8 p.m., when bands pack up their stuff and drive off to the next tour stop to start the cycle again.
Because of Warped Tour’s success, it’s not just bands that put in the effort, but businesses and nonprofit organizations looking to reach the same demographic.
“When you can reach that amount of people, that’s an opportunity you definitely have to take,” says Jason Blades, who represents the nonprofit To Write Love on Her Arms, which is dedicated to helping those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.
“We have to have a presence here. It’s one spot where you can meet a lot of kids willing to make a change, who want change for their generation. These are kids who are focused towards activism.”
And for Lyman, these are kids he cares for. He has always tried to keep the tour’s ticket prices down and this year he has moved to offer free water to concertgoers, as well as a $3 price cap for bottled water.
“I want them to feel like they are part of something,” says Lyman, adding that the tour also runs a food drive on the day of the show and a blood drive in the weeks leading up to it.
“This tour stands for something. A mother came up to me at a show the other day and thanked me for the tour because her daughter told her, ‘This is the one place that I belong.’ That’s why we do this.”