SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Do these songs bring up anything for you?
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
SIMPLE PLAN: (Singing) So shut up, shut up, shut up - don't wanna hear it. Get out, get out, get out...
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST #1: (Singing, inaudible) I wouldn't have it any other way.
AVRIL LAVIGNE: (Singing) Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way...
DETROW: If hearing those songs is taking you back to the early aughts and your moody Napster-downloading teenage days, you will be psyched to hear the Warped Tour is back this year to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALL TIME LOW: It's been a while. We're happy to be here. And if you know the words, sing with me.
(Singing) Manage me. I'm a mess.
DETROW: The long-running alt rock festival, which over the years featured bands like Against Me!, NOFX and Sum 41, kicked off earlier this summer in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SIMPLE PLAN: Warped Tour, D.C., we are Simple Plan. Everybody, make some noise.
(CHEERING)
DETROW: The 2025 version of Warped is slimmed down in terms of stops, with just three. But the stages are still packed with acts, 90-plus at the D.C. show alone.
TORI KRAVITZ: I like to call it the punk rock summer camp.
DETROW: Tori Kravitz is a music publicist. She went to her first Warped Tour in 2010 at age 15, where she got to see one of her favorite bands at the time, The Pretty Reckless.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
THE PRETTY RECKLESS: (Singing) I don't think I can be anything other than me.
KRAVITZ: And it was the thing I would count the days to every summer. And then it was also really my introduction and my foot in the door in music journalism. I was able to get one of my first press passes at Warped Tour and interviewed bands there.
DETROW: Before long, Warped Tour hired her.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KRAVITZ: Hey, guys. It's Tori, your 2015 Monster Energy Pit reporter, and I am here right now with Set It Off.
UNIDENTIFIED BAND MEMBER #1: Yo.
KRAVITZ: How are you guys doing today?
UNIDENTIFIED BAND MEMBER #2: We're doing fantastic.
KRAVITZ: Yes.
I was the voice for the festival to the fans. I was literally the reporter in the pit every single day. It was me with my DSLR camera doing video blogs, recapping every single show of the tour.
DETROW: Kravitz is back on the job as the pit reporter this year, which meant she was at June's D.C. show.
KRAVITZ: There were multiple moments where I was tearing up because there were things I never thought I would see again. You know, I watched the fans run through the door first thing in the morning, going straight to the inflatable schedule to get their set times and the rows of tents and the merch and the bands doing their signings. It was all there. So the fans - some of us are a little older, but we still have the same spirit.
DETROW: Back when those older fans at this year's show were teens or even younger, in the early days of Warped Tour, things were not always smooth.
KEVIN LYMAN: The first year, we literally had nothing.
DETROW: Kevin Lyman is the founder of Warped Tour. The idea for the festival came to him while he was working as a stage manager for another music festival, Lollapalooza.
LYMAN: And I think a lot of people thought I was - you know, I heard this thing is, what is Kevin Lyman doing trying to duplicate Lollapalooza? And I said, no, I'm trying to create something for my - that I think would be fun for a certain segment of people. And, you know, I was working 320 nights a year in the clubs of Los Angeles, and I was starting to see the music where the metal kids and the punk kids and the reggae kids and the skating kids were all kind of listening to their music, and it wasn't just a category. It was kind of a blend of everything. And I thought, wow, if we could all pool our resources and our fan bases, maybe we have something here. I - we barely made it past the first week.
DETROW: Yeah.
LYMAN: I mean, there was no one showing up. We had a promoter forget we were actually going to be in this town that day, and we did a free show for whoever walked by.
DETROW: Oh, man.
LYMAN: But it was just scrappy.
DETROW: And that 1995 lineup was stacked - Sublime, Guttermouth, the Deftones and No Doubt, just to name a few.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST #2: (Singing, inaudible).
DETROW: I'm just thinking about the 6 trillion moving pieces of a touring music festival. What was the biggest challenge for you in those early years of, like, this - I got to get this right? This is where you're spending your brain energy.
LYMAN: It was one, trying to convince, you know, people to be involved, those sponsors and partners and everything, that this lifestyle is relevant, and these fans are very relevant. We need to bring this music forward. I mean, Warped was also a blend of action sports. We always had an activism side - that we were kind of more of a lifestyle county fair than maybe just a music festival...
DETROW: Yeah.
LYMAN: ...Because this music was more known on the coasts. But there was kids in Boise, Idaho, and there was kids in Billings, Montana, those kids that maybe just didn't quite fit into what was perceived as the normal - the alternative kids, I guess - that needed somewhere to gather and build their community.
DETROW: Yeah.
LYMAN: And I just felt it was important to do that.
HANIF ABDURRAQIB: So much of my lifestyle growing up on the punk scene, you're almost, like, made to feel like you're isolated or that you are one of a few.
DETROW: Hanif Abdurraqib is a writer and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio.
ABDURRAQIB: Warped Tour was this really beautiful thing because you just got to encounter people who were almost like funhouse mirror images of yourself.
DETROW: It was also a place to catch artists on the rise, like in 2005 when there was a little-known band in the lineup, Paramore.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PARAMORE: (Singing, inaudible).
DETROW: When Abdurraqib caught them at the Cleveland stop, he says it was epic.
ABDURRAQIB: They played this tent in Cleveland, and they played in this - it was storming. The tent blew over, and they didn't stop playing. They were just so relentless, you know? And I'll never forget the tent blowing away, and they just kept going as if nothing happened. And I remember thinking, well, I don't know if this band is going to be good, but they're definitely going to be interesting. And thankfully, they evolved into a band that was both good and interesting.
DETROW: For more than two decades, Warped Tour was a staple of the punk and alt rock scene. But as time went on, that community changed. And after the summer of 2018, Kevin Lyman retired the full cross-country version of the tour. But he brought it back the next year for a brief 25th anniversary run, and now a 30th. I asked him who this iteration of the tour is for. Is it just a nostalgia play for elder emos?
LYMAN: It was interesting. We put the tickets on sale, and everything sold - everything - the first two shows sold out without announcing a band - I mean, 40,000 people in D.C., 80,000 in Long Beach, California. So I think a lot - so I was thinking, well, you know, if it's just a nostalgia play, there may not be a future to do other things. But after that first show and really starting to pull it together, about a third of the people that were at the show, it was their first festival, and a lot of people, it was their first concert. Talking to people - that's what I spent my whole time doing, talking to people. I like to go walk around the crowd. I talk to people. So I was inspired to see that we needed to bring people back to live events.
DETROW: Ten, 15, 20 years down the line, what are you hoping the legacy of the Warped Tour is?
LYMAN: Well, for me, it was that you went to that parking lot. I always tried to make the parking lot feel, like, accessible, that it was more of a kind of a backyard party, you know, that you could be part of it in some ways. And now there's (ph) a lot of people come up and say, I inspired me to start a band. It inspired me to start a brand. It inspired me to go into the business or start a nonprofit. I hope that people look back at it and say, wow, it was a catalyst. It was a great day out, but 10% of the people walked out inspired to do something in their local communities or on a larger level, and that there was different ways to do things. That's ultimately what I want.
DETROW: That's Kevin Lyman, creator of the Warped Tour. Kevin, it was great to talk to you.
LYMAN: Thank you, Scott.
DETROW: Warped Tour is in Long Beach this weekend and Orlando in November.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
