While the once annual ‘Vans Warped Tour‘ is returning this year to celebrate its 30th anniversary for a trio of destination festivals, the single digit number of cities being hit aren’t the only big changes to have been made.
This time around, festival founder Kevin Lyman partnered with promoter Insomniac to relaunch the festival, which had laid dormant since 2019. Appearing on a newly released episode of the ‘Late For Load In‘ podcast, which is co-hosted by Chris Davis (of The Ghost Inside) and manager Josh Korel, Lyman addressed not only the backlash the drip-feed reveals for this year’s celebratory festivals incurred online, but also briefly touched upon the possibility of further ‘Vans Warped Tour‘ dates down the line. He stated [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“I think we’ll end up doing, you know, people are pretty excited [that] ‘Warped‘ is coming back as a brand right now. Will it go on? We think so, maybe, who knows? But you know what? It’s been fun to come back and kind of show that I can do it this way, and hopefully we give everyone a great show. And I think we are, I mean, you look at that lineup, and right when it comes out, it’s piece[meal]… I like how we roll it out, you gotta have strong will to do that, you know.
And then the people I’m working with even were like, ‘Oh my God, you know, you [are getting] negative comments.’ I go, ‘Well, if you don’t get a negative comment in our world, then you’re not successful.’ And then as that lineup started coalescing, as we were announcing more bands, and then I’m in the background watching those videos getting viewed.
And you could take the smallest band on that lineup, and, you know, I’m just they’re not the smallest, but there was a young girl named Megg who’s playing in Long Beach. She basically was funny. She was sending me these videos about, why she should be on ‘Warped Tour‘. I listened to her music. She’s got no manager, she got no record label. I put her on.
She’s gonna put on a great show. But I watched her video, and it has 171,000 views for her announcement. I can’t think that if there’s 171,000 views, she’s probably gonna have 500 or a thousand people watching her in Long Beach. That could kick off her career. Pulling all those numbers on those [artist announce] videos, just, they’ve been viewed like 25 million dimes or something.”
This year’s ‘Vans Warped Tour’ events will be held in the following cities with lineup details available through vanswarpedtour.com.
06/14-15 Washington, DC – Festival Grounds at RFK Campus
07/26-27 Long Beach, CA – Shoreline Waterfront
11/15-16 Orlando, FL – Camping World Stadium Campus
