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25 Years of Warped Tour | EP 1: When Kevin Lyman Met Steve Van Doren

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25 Years of Warped Tour | EP 3: They Played Warped?!

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The Summer Punk Went Pop: Oral History of the 2005 Warped Tour

On the first day of Warped’s final run, we present the firsthand story of its watershed year - when Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and others became stars.

By Chris Payne

Chris Payne

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This summer, the Vans Warped Tour — music’s last major traveling festival — is  calling it quits , citing fatigue, disinterested teens, and a marketplace shift towards blowout weekends over season-long treks. But 13 years ago, Warped nearly collapsed beneath the weight of its own success.

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The storm had been brewing for some time. Warped was 11 years old in 2005, and it’d played an integral role in bringing the likes of Green Day, Blink-182, No Doubt, Sublime, and even Eminem to suburban superstardom during the ’90s and early ’00s. An annual Warped trip had become a summertime staple for teens raised on bratty skate punk and ska, but by the middle of the aughts, it had morphed into something completely new. And bigger.

In 2005, a more sensitive, precocious, fashion-focused brand of punk exploded into popular culture. Its eventual poster kids spent the decade’s early years grinding it out in America’s VFW halls, the venerable ethos of Thursday, Saves the Day, and Jimmy Eat World their guiding light. Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance played Warped in ‘04 and after drawing fervent crowds, were signed on for the next year early; by the time June ‘05 rolled around, “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” and “Helena” were MTV staples, improbably climbing the Hot 100. 700,000 kids came out that summer, more than any Warped before or since (for context, last year pulled 300,000). Individual bands regularly sold over $30,000 of merch  per day . Bodyguards were needed for the first time. At summer’s end, the tour’s profits hit seven figures. But Warped’s summer-long slog paid another price; across 48 shows in 59 days, musicians and personnel grappled with oversized egos, volatile — if not occasionally hostile — environments, and a sideshow’s worth of distractions far from home, with a massive mainstream audience suddenly watching.

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On the first day of Warped’s final trek, we present the firsthand story of its watershed year.

I. “This Was Like the Moon Landing For This Type of Music”

Tyson Ritter, All-American Rejects vocalist-bassist:  2005 Warped Tour was everything people think about when they want to make Warped something of folklore. It was the real thing.

Kevin Lyman, Warped Tour founder & producer:  The Warped Tour’s only made money on tickets once, and 2005 was the year. If we turn a profit, it’s from sponsorships and merchandise.

Buddy Nielsen, Senses Fail vocalist:  It had everything to do with the scene’s success. This was like the moon landing for this type of music.

Lyman:  We’d done some early bookings. The year before, I had Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance on the smaller stage. The audiences weren’t huge at this point, but they were so engaged, so I said, “Gotta bring them on the main [stage].”

Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy bassist:  That was a surreal moment for us. That was when us and My Chemical Romance were both getting on  TRL  at the same time. It was wild because we’d never experienced that.  (Note: all Fall Out Boy quotes in this piece come from a  previous Billboard interview ).

Lyman:  TRL  was so popular… everyone was watching. They grabbed onto these bands, and radio was playing them.

Nielsen:  Senses Fail did Warped the year before. My Chem wasn’t My Chem yet, as we know them. Senses Fail wasn’t Senses Fail yet. On Warped Tour 2005, everybody was everybody. Fall Out Boy was Fall Out Boy. You had the most bands that were not only successful but, like,  pop music  successful.

Matt Watts, The Starting Line guitarist:  The whole scene started as a left-of-center, DIY thing. Lots of these bands started at VFW or Knights of Columbus Halls. It was such a personal connection with fans. In 2005, it hit a critical mass.

Nielsen:  It was the first time bands had security guards. Pete Wentz and Gerard Way couldn’t get around without them.

Ritter:  The difference between those bands and All-American Rejects? Fall Out Boy, three bodyguards. My Chem had a bodyguard.

Lyman:  The audience coming to Warped Tour transformed from that hardcore person who was out skating or going to the beach to a crowd that was watching TV all summer. We managed to get them off their couches for one day! But they weren’t ready to be in the sun for nine hours. They would stand in front of the stages all day long waiting for those hit songs. It wasn’t like you could just come, watch those bands and leave; you were there the whole day. By the time the band went on stage, these people hadn’t eaten, hadn’t drank water, hadn’t put sunscreen on, so many of them just collapsed. Our medical tents were full.

Lisa Brownlee, Warped Tour tour manager:  I often think of Kevin Lyman as a mad scientist, crossing boundaries that ought not to be crossed when putting together a lineup.

Al Barr, Dropkick Murphys vocalist:  Fall Out Turds and My Chemical Shit Pants — that’s what we called them — were both blowing up, and I kept going around Warped Tour the whole day going, “Jesus Christ, this singer must be so tired because he sings for every band!” Because it all sounded the same to an old timer like me. But that’s when I realized I sound like my dad! Those bands? Not my cup of tea at all. But they were working their asses off, just like we did, and nothing was handed to them. They worked for everything they got.

Lyman:  The core audience was pretty pissed. We talk about punk rock being all-accepting, but a lot of times, it’s still very niche and very “who’s in their club.” This was before Twitter, so they verbalized it to me on message boards. Well, the club got a lot bigger.

II. “They Were Connecting on a Much Deeper Level Than Most of the Other Bands”

Watts:  In the VFW halls, Fall Out Boy put in their 10,000 hours and beyond.

Nielsen:   From Under the Cork Tree  had just come out. Fall Out Boy was huge.

Watts:  They put out the right record at the right time.

Wentz:  It was like, Warped Tour happening at the same time [and hearing], “You guys are super famous, but maybe just on Warped Tour!”

Watts:  Pete Wentz is a captivating dude. Patrick Stump is a great writer.

Justin Pierre, Motion City Soundtrack vocalist-guitarist:  I thought Patrick Stump had an amazing voice. I was very upset at how effortless it seemed. I would have to work 10 times as hard just to pull it off. He was kind of a weirdo, kind of a nerd. I really liked that. There was an unspoken nerd quality we kind of shared. I [recently] found a  picture online  of us coming back from a Target run… I really dug Patrick a lot.

Watts:  Once “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” caught on, it opened up the floodgates.

Andy Hurley, Fall Out Boy drummer:  I remember going to a water park right after we’d gotten to number one on  TRL  that day. I was like, “Yeah, we’re number one!” going down the slides and no one in the park knew at all who we were.

Wentz:  They were like, fucking losers!

Lyman:  Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, I put them on at three or four in the afternoon. All the kids would be in the venue by then, but I knew their fans couldn’t hold up til the end of the day.

Watts:  My Chemical Romance was connecting on a much deeper level than most of the other bands.

Lyman:  A lot of merchandise was being sold. This is where Kate Truscott — who [now] helps run my company — was recognized because she was the merchandise person for My Chemical Romance. They were selling half a semi-truck of merchandise a day at that point. It was crazy.

Kate Truscott, My Chemical Romance merch manager:  I was out on the road with Chevelle, working for a company called BandMerch. I got a call that this new band needed somebody because they were suddenly doing way bigger numbers than anybody expected. They had some guy doing their merch and frankly, he was blowing it. Heather Hannoura [now Heather Gabel] did some shirts for us. Some of the stuff I was selling then is still for sale at Hot Topic. There were gloves with bones on them. They had fingers and no one bought them, so I would cut the fingertips off and then kids loved them!

Watts:  There were tons of kids coming out dressed in My Chem-appropriate attire. I use the term “goth vibes” responsibly: dark hair, black or red t-shirt, eye makeup.

Truscott:  One part of the summer, [guitarist] Frank Iero thought he was having some sort of brain bleed; He was blowing his nose and this red stuff was coming out. A doctor looked at it and was like, “Dude, that’s makeup.”

Lyman:  Some days, I heard they were doing $30,000 to $50,000 in merchandise.

Truscott:  Our highest day was $60,000, which to my knowledge, is a record that’s yet to be beaten by any band on Warped. It was in Detroit, a 30,000-person show at the Silverdome. Headed to banks on days off, our tour manager would be like, “What’s in your backpack? You can’t walk to the bank with $250,000 on you!”

Watts:  When you see bands changing pop culture, you see fans embracing their style.

Truscott:  The only band that had more items for sale than us was the Murphys. They used Warped as a warehouse sale every summer [ Laughs ].

Lyman:  Dropkick Murphys were probably the highest paid band on that year’s tour. Them and the Offspring were probably both making $15,000 to $17,000 [per show]. I had to book Fall Out Boy, $1,500. Atreyu, $1,500. Story of the Year, probably $750. I was delivering this whole package of bands. I don’t have the exact price, but I could probably tell you it was about $125,000 a show, talent-wise. You had to try to be right on the edge.

Nielsen:  Everybody was literally printing money. Everybody was stoked.

Lyman:  Fall Out Boy tended to go out, hang around the parties a little more… My Chemical Romance, I don’t think anyone in the band was really a partier.

Truscott:  There was nothing salacious. Frank is still married to the girl he was dating back then. [Guitarist] Ray [Toro] is still with the same girl. Gerard’s had a couple different girlfriends, but it was like, three in the 20 years I’ve known him, and now he’s married.

Lyman:  They were always nice to the women on our tour, the girls working with these bands.

Truscott:  I had a boxset of the  Charmed  DVDs. Gerard came by asking what they were about. I’m like, “It’s about witches that own a bar,” and he was like, “I can get behind that.”

Ritter:  You’d stroll this alley of buses and see Gerard doing a sketch in front of the headlights on the ground in front of his bus. He was too shy to talk to the group, but he could still sit out in front of his bus drawing a piece of art, which I thought was so fun. He would get in front of the headlights and show off his talent.

Truscott:  Gerard was always doing art. He hung out by himself a lot, drank coffee. A lot of coffee.

Pierre:  I think someone was like, “Oh he’s sober, too! You should hang out!”

Truscott:  We all lived on the same bus together. They turned the back lounge of our bus into a studio. My bunk was right up against it. I remember when they were writing “I Don’t Love You” [from 2006’s  Welcome to the Black Parade ]. Bob [Bryar] put a drum kit in the back and Gerard was doing vocals. It was four in the morning and I remember hearing the lyrics and opening the door like, “That’s a fucking brutal song!”

III. “Rockstar Shit Was Going On”

Lyman:  We were at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit and 30,000 people showed up. That might’ve been the second biggest Warped show of all time. We had this massive show at the sports arena at Long Beach State, outside of L.A.. That was probably the biggest show.

Truscott:  I was selling merch out of a 10 foot by 10 foot tent. The crowd would push into it, start crushing into us. I had to get up on the table a couple times and say nobody was getting anything until everybody calmed down. There was a day in Camden, NJ — the site was too small for the crowd there — I had to stand on my table and wave down security because kids were moshing and throwing themselves inside our tent.

Watts:  There’d be signings all day. There was no barrier between the artists and the fans.

Ritter:  All-American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, and My Chem — we’d do signings all day, every day. You’d try to get through 400 people in two hours. It became a chore, literally sitting for 400 people that walked by you asking, “Hi, how are ya?”

Pierre:  I always liked hanging out, signing things, meeting the people that liked our music. That was my favorite thing I did, next to performing.

Watts:  I bought a Metro scooter —  basically a fake Vespa — for like $500. I would cruise around after shows to find hotel swimming pools and go swimming a bunch. Because the shower situation at Warped is sometimes less than ideal.

Brownlee:  I couldn’t get from stage to stage fast enough to see the bands I wanted to see. The bill was so stacked.

Ritter:  When you play Warped, you get thirty minutes. These were thirty-minute sets.

Watts:  There are no “set” set times. It’s sort of drawn from a lottery in the morning.

Nielsen:  How did our sets sound? Fucking terrible [ Laughs ]. Back then we were still figuring it out. Generally nobody really sounds that great at Warped Tour. It’s windy and hot.

Lyman:  We had a massive storm July 15 at Race City Motorsport Park in Calgary, Alberta. We had a lot of storms through the years, but that one was crazy. It looked like just clouds coming, but it was actually clouds of dust and wind. It blew tents 25 feet in the air. When it hit, the Transplants were onstage. I’ll never forget them playing while I was trying to hold all the tents down.

Barr: Transplants were on that tour. I spent a ton of time with my friend [Transplants vocalist] Skinhead Rob [Aston].

Nielsen: You had [Transplants drummer] Travis Barker walking around with his television show Meet the Barkers .

Barr: One day I was going over to see Skinhead Rob, and this guy from MTV was getting thrown out of their bus because he had asked Travis and Rob if they got dressed up in monkey suits for fun. Rob just lost his shit on the guy.

Lyman:  Billy Idol was trying to make a reconnection with fans, so they wanted him to play some Warped dates in between his own tour routing.

Nielsen:  Billy Idol! Billy Idol was fucking hilarious. He did not know what Warped Tour was. You never wanted to be playing near him because you had to deal with him starting late and his set going over 10 minutes. He didn’t give a shit.

Lyman:  You don’t start the stage next door until the other band is done. In Minnesota, it was a nightmare. My stage managers weren’t communicating and there was a meltdown onstage and they started both stages, so you had Billy Idol singing “Rebel Yell” and then Fall Out Boy singing something. It was merging into this mashup by my tour bus.

Nielsen:  He’d come out of the bus shirtless talking to himself like, “WHITE WEDDING!”, practicing his vocals. Billy Idol was fucking wild, just on another planet.

Barr:  I remember walking around thinking, who is this heavy, ferocious punk band playing? And I’m like, oh my god, it’s the Offspring. Now the Offspring are a great band but they’re not a ferocious punk band. But on the backdrop of all these pop-punk and emo bands…

Nielsen:  [Frontman]   Dexter [Holland] was flying in a plane from show to show. One time he took our tour manager: “Come fly to the next show!”

Lyman:  He didn’t know these bands but he’d invite them to go to the next city with him. If you were sitting here in Cincinnati and he would say, “Hey Kevin, I want to take so-and-so to Chicago with me. Can you put them on by 6 so we can be at the airport by 8?” He would fly the band, pick up a couple hotel rooms for them, and go party in the city.

Nielsen:  Rockstar shit was going on.

Lyman:  Then you had Avenged Sevenfold. You knew they were gonna be big because they were the first band that ever showed up on Warped Tour with a smoke machine.

Nielsen:  You’d look up in the sky and see a cloud of smoke and be like, “Avenged Sevenfold must be on!” Broad daylight, it looks like the stage is on fire.

Lyman:  Avenged Sevenfold always liked to gamble — dice and poker. The Offspring, too, but not Dexter. Cee-lo, I’m sure the Murphys were in the middle of that.

Barr:  I myself wasn’t, but our crew were big into poker. They’d play with Avenged Sevenfold almost every night.

Watts:  The first night of tour, I remember our drummer, Tom Gryskewicz cleaning up against… I think it was one of the Transplants dudes. Tom came back to the bus with money and we were all like, “What did you do?” I think he probably ended up losing it back to those dudes at some point.

Spencer Chamberlain, Underoath vocalist:  A band — who we won’t name — needed money. We let them borrow money and they all came back with new clothes and tattoos.

Aaron Gillespie, Underoath drummer-vocalist:  Oh my god, that’s right! They were struggling on the tour…

Chamberlain:  They were struggling with something else. But we can’t say, because people might know. They went to the Christian band, knowing we’d be giving.

Gillespie:  Did we give them a bunch of money or a little bit?

Chamberlain:  A bunch.

IV. “I’ve Got These Girl Bands, Can I Set Up?” 

Lyman:  Shira? My God. How do these people come into your life, you know?

Shira Yevin, Shiragirl vocalist; Shiragirl Stage founder and producer:  I was on the tour in 2003, working for the Truth campaign as an emcee. I noticed there were very few, if any, females onstage. I didn’t understand why. I lived in Brooklyn at the time, and was friends with all sorts of all-girl punk and hardcore bands. My band approached Kevin in 2004.

Lyman:  Shira just showed up with her stage. Just showed up. In Englishtown, NJ, with this pink truck: “I’ve got these girl bands, can I set up?”

Yevin:  He said, “Okay, great idea, maybe next year. It’s the tour’s tenth anniversary, we got a lot going on.” I said, “Next year?!”

Lyman:  She’s from New Jersey, so you know how progressive people from New Jersey won’t take no for an answer.

Yevin:  We ended up crashing the tour. I drove in with my pink RV and just set up — super scrappy punk rock. Kevin walked by and loved it: “Shira, this is great. So are you on for the whole tour now?”

Lyman:  Next thing you know, she’s hanging over by my bus, hitting me up about how she’s going to do the Shiragirl Stage in 2005.

Shiragirl Talks Hitting the Road For Final Warped Tour, Shares Punk Pop Anthem 'Summers Comin'…

Yevin:  2005 was the year we made it legit. His team helped us get sponsorships for the stage. MySpace was our media partner. We hand-painted their logo on our truck. We did the whole application process for the Shiragirl Stage through MySpace. In the 2005 music scene, MySpace was a big platform for how new artists came up. The Dollyrots played that year and were amazing. L7’s bassist Jennifer Finch had this side project called The Shocker — it was really cool to have them on Shiragirl. They repped old-school Warped.

Truscott:  We were a pretty strong bunch of babes, the other women on Warped Tour. We stuck together and the guys were really supportive of us. It was probably the opposite of what everybody would expect me to say — that it was really hard and that I had to really earn my stripes. But that wasn’t a big issue. They saw me work hard and we all respected each other. I remember there was a day some kid stole from me at My Chem’s merch table. A bunch of the other guys saw it and chased him down and brought him back to me.

Yevin:  We were not taken seriously. At first, especially. We showed up in this beat-up truck and there were bets against how long we would last. By the end, they respected us a lot more.

V. “I Know a Lot of Real Hard Motherfuckers”

Watts:  The cookouts were probably the highlight of Warped Tour. The sun goes down and it’s not 100 degrees anymore!

Pierre:  Everybody had to come to lunch and dinner, if you wanted to eat. It made me kind of nervous, like high school in a way. If I’m by myself, shit, where do I sit? I kind of know these people, but I kind of don’t. I heard that people thought I was a huge asshole because I didn’t talk to anyone, but I was too nervous.

Watts:  Justin was a little bit more introverted, but he was always incredibly welcoming to us. I remember Motion City Soundtrack hitting their stride that year.  Commit This to Memory  had just come out. They were one of the few indie-alternative, left-of-center-leaning bands. They came from a different world, but still hit all the boxes for a fan going to Warped Tour.

Pierre:  I bonded with Gerard over Coke Zero, which had just come out. I was in their bus for some reason: “Oh my god, you got Coke Zero?” If I’m drinking Coke Zero in ’05, I think I was sober then, because that’s when I basically went from alcohol to caffeine. I would drink four or five Monster Energy Drinks a day. It was really bad. I’d reward myself after playing a show with two Monster Energy Drinks [ Laughs ].

Watts:  This was before people were on their cell phones 24/7. So it was one of the last times in my life I remember just hanging out with a bunch of people and not having a phone, not being interrupted by anything like that. Just shared experiences, shared connections.

Senses Fail's Buddy Nielsen Fights to Survive a Chaotic Present & His Band's Toxic Past

Nielsen:  There used to be huge parties afterwards, sort of a teen movie set thing.

Ritter:  It was like  Grease  on the road. Everybody was looking for their Sandra Dee.

Nielsen:  There’d be 20,000 people at each show and afterwards, two or three thousand would wind up getting backstage. It was a different time. You weren’t as worried about five thousand people partying at the end of the night — epic bonfire parties with every band and also people that found a way to stay. If you stayed long enough, security left, so…

Ritter:  I was 20. I’m 34 now. So think I remember my M-O was, okay the show’s over, who’s gonna get me stoned?

? Lyman:  Warped kind of self-regulates on drugs and alcohol because it’s such a hard-working tour and you don’t know when you’re gonna play. I was out every night; if someone goes a little hard at a party, what’s the best cure for that? Put them on 11:30 the next morning. Be the first band up. That’ll cure people.

Gillespie:  We drank, but we weren’t like, partying hard.

Watts:  There was definitely drinking, but there weren’t a lot of drugs. We were never a drug band, so if there was, it didn’t hit our orbit.

Nielsen:  I was pretty much YOLO-ing every moment of every day. I was 21 running around smoking weed, drinking beer, hanging out.

Lyman:  During this period, there were maybe some pills going around Warped, but I don’t know.

Ritter:  It was all about the nomadic journey of the night. You’d bounce from bus to bus, picking up a beer, hitting on a girl, hitting on whoever you were hitting on.

Barr:  I’ll omit their name, but there was a band that got drunk and decided to disrespect Steve O’Sullivan, who was head of Warped Tour’s security at the time. We were in Phoenix, his wife was pregnant with their first kid, and he was riding in the car with her and this band was drunk and standing in the way. They asked him to move and got in his face, in his wife’s face. The next day I assembled a group of characters you’d look at and say, “I don’t want to fight one of these guys, let alone have one of them come into my tent.” I know a lot of real hard motherfuckers. [We confronted the band and] said, “So you’re the band that decided to disrespect Steve O’Sullivan and his pregnant wife? Shut your little tent down, you’re gonna find Steve, and you’re gonna throw yourself down at his knees and apologize to him. If we don’t hear you’ve done this in the next twenty minutes, we’re gonna be back.” Five minutes later, Steve pulls up on his golf cart like, “What did you do? They were so apologetic and so polite!”

Nielsen:  People would throw water. It was like, dude, it’s 90 degrees out — don’t throw it. Every day, you’re getting nailed with water being thrown from the crowd.

Lyman:  Buddy from Senses Fail, to be honest, was a shithead mostly. He hadn’t grown up yet.

Nielsen:  We were playing Phoenix and someone threw a fucking jug of water. I caught it by the handle and whipped it back into the crowd as hard as I could and literally watched it bee-line a hundred yards and slam this girl right in the face. This poor young girl, I think she was like 16 years old. I ended up knocking out one of her teeth, totally by accident. I wound up corresponding with her father and her afterwards. I remember we invited her to a show, gave her some merch and were really sorry.

Lyman:  Buddy was one of those kids that we knew we had redeeming qualities. So we kept working with Buddy. You don’t want to write him off, you know? Another member of Senses Fail [now ex-member] got taken behind the bus, because he wore a shirt that had the C-word on it. I know the Dropkick Murphys and the Transplants were involved. He got taken behind the bus and they said, “Look, you’re going to either get rid of that shirt because you see all the women running this, or you’re going to eat the shirt. If you ever wear it again you’re going to lose option one.”

VI. “This Was Paramore ’s First Tour”

Lyman:  We had [the traveling punk and hardcore tour] Taste of Chaos [in early 2005] and Livia Tortella [of Atlantic Records] goes, “Hey, Kevin you’ve got to check out this girl Hayley Williams and Paramore.”

Gillespie:  We were friends with Paramore. We met Hayley when she was 16 and [drummer] Zac [Farro] was 14. Hayley opened up acoustic for us on Taste of Chaos.

Lyman:  I put her on right before Killswitch Engage. She held her own. I was like, “Okay, we have to figure this out for Warped.” But I didn’t have anywhere to put them because I already booked the tour…  So I turned Shira on to her and she figured it out for the Shiragirl Stage.

Yevin:  The label flew me down to see the band in Orlando, and once I saw it, I got it. They were amazing — 16 years old! Hayley’s dad was the tour manager.

Lyman:  I remember the station wagon… Dad was still driving them around at that point.

Yevin:  This was Paramore’s first tour.

Chamberlain:  Paramore were like our little brothers. We hung out with them. They had similar viewpoints on life and we just got along with those kids. I think we all knew they were gonna be big.

Yevin:  They were actually signed to Atlantic, but their music was put out by Fueled By Ramen. So they had label support, but they were a new band. They were doing a lot of the Christian rock festivals. They came out on Warped right when their first album was coming out. The kids just loved it. The early crowds were huge.

Chamberlain:  Zac was like a little mini-Aaron. He would hit [the drums] so hard that the drum riser broke once.

Yevin:  Hayley was just one of the guys. That was sort of her thing. She wore the same t-shirt every day, the red and blue striped shirt  she wears in the “All We Know” video . She was very sweet, polite, very reserved. No makeup. Just came on, did her set, went back in the van, read her book. It was a little bit of a culture shock for us. We were these radical feminist punk rock riot grrrls. They were a very reserved band. They prayed before they went onstage. They kinda kept to themselves, but they killed it onstage.

Gillespie:  Hayley’s the real fucking deal. Deserves everything she’s got.

VII. “Sonny Moore’s Halo Name Was Skrillex”

Chamberlain:  ’05 was the first Warped Tour with [Tampa/L.A.-based post-hardcore band] From First to Last. We’d taken them on their first tour with [vocalist] Sonny Moore, so we were already buddies.

Nielsen:  This was when Wes Borland was in From First to Last. That blew my mind. Why the hell is a guy from Limp Bizkit here? I remember hanging out with Sonny and giving him a hard time, as a joke. And then he fucking turns into Skrillex [ Laughs ]. Ridiculous.

Chamberlain:  They used to come to our tour bus to play  Halo . Sonny Moore’s Halo name was Skrillex.

Gillespie:  He was having trouble with his voice back then.

Chamberlain:  He was such a sweetheart, and he had a lil’ personality on him, too. He would ask me, “How do you guys sing every night?”

Lyman:  The following year, he kind of changed to a kid named Skrillex. He came to Pomona, Cali. and played one of his first shows… Then I tried to book him that following summer and I think I could have got him for $1,500. I said, “He’s just sitting playing music on a computer, who the hell’s gonna care about this?” But I liked him a lot. Then by that next year, he was making $100,000 a gig or something.

VIII. “Equal Parts Relief and Sadness”

Ritter:  I think we played 19, 20 days in a row. By the end of it I wasn’t even talking. I was just giving sign language to people, clicks and whistles!

Truscott:  It ended in Boston: pouring rain, muddy, muggy New England summer day. Everybody was just done.

Pierre:  When it ended? Equal parts relief and sadness.

Yevin:  We were just grateful to have survived on our end. And we knew we were gonna do it the next year. There were bets against us saying we weren’t gonna make it. But we did. We got an MTV Warpie Award — “most punk rock way to win a place in the family.”

Lyman:  What were our profits that year? That year was seven figures.

Warped Tour 2018 Lineup: All Time Low, Simple Plan & 3OH!3 Return for Final Run

Watts:  The Starting Line toured with Fall Out Boy again in the fall, on the Nintendo Fusion Tour alongside Motion City Soundtrack, Boys Night Out, and Panic! At the Disco. I wonder what venues that tour would get if it happened in 2018; Panic! is bigger than they ever were. Same thing with Fall Out Boy. We’d be happy to be along for the ride. We’d play outdoors if we had to!

Chamberlain:  I think a lot of the younger bands now are kind of why Warped Tour’s ending. Warped Tour was a place where kids went to see bands they loved and discover new bands. Somehow over the last couple years it changed to bands on their first record with two busses, bodyguards, personal assistants. I think kids weren’t feeling as connected.

Gillespie:  It was so about discovery.

Chamberlain:  It got to be about how big of a rockstar you are.

Gillespie:  And that’s not why Kevin started it.

Lyman:  Relationships in this business were a lot different then. You could talk to someone and plan on working with them for a few years, you know? And they would understand that the first couple years, they weren’t helping you sell tickets. But hopefully that third year, they were actually helping to pull other bands like them along. A Day To Remember played one show in 2005, on the Ernie Ball battle of the Bands Stage. And then they fell into that same cycle, playing four more years… Now, that doesn’t exist in this world. Bands say, “Oh, we need Warped Tour to get to an audience” and then they decide to change their direction as a band.

Brownlee:  If you have been on Warped Tour as long as I have (and you’re as old as I am), it’s very difficult to have recall memory on specifics, including years. I wish I had the foresight to keep a journal for times like these… Our memories are a series of embellished half-truths. But in terms of the Vans Warped Tour, truth has always been stranger than fiction.

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Here's the Lineup for the Last-Ever Warped Tour

BY Josiah Hughes Published Mar 1, 2018

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Les grand fêtes telus: august 1 - 4, 2024, august 7, 2024, sum 41 - tour of the setting sum, august 8, 2024, rock la cauze: august 8 - 10, 2024, january 31, 2025, sum 41 - final show, latest coverage.

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Here's What Really Caused The Downfall of Warped Tour

Founder Kevin Lyman explains how the scene that built Warped Tour ripped the festival apart from within.

It's always sad when a big yearly festival or event comes to an end, and such was certainly the case with Vans Warped Tour , the massive traveling punk rock event that took the world by storm for 25 years. Sadly, 2018 was the year's last as a touring festival, with this year's three fests across the country acting as its memorial. When the fest ended, rumors circulated about what ended the festival -- most notably financial losses. But now, the man behind Warped Tour has stated that it was something much more human behind the festival's downfall -- the loss of punk rock community.

In the latest episode of Inside Track -- our podcast in which the true stories behind rock's most important moments are told by the people who lived them -- Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman explains what led to him winding down the traveling festival after 25 years.

"Ultimately, when I started to think about winding this down after 25 years, it was, ‘I think we’ve lost the sense of community,'" says Kevin. "It took a community to make Warped Tour go. Some of that was self-inflicted… I thought you addressed the fans that complain on Twitter! I was addressing everyone and tried to keep that conversation going, but you realize that you can’t really negotiate, debate, or educate on social media!"

Not only did Kevin find that the unity that built Warped Tour was no longer present, but preconceived notions about bands resulted in great musicians turning down the gig, lest they come off as a "Warped" act.

"This is what kind of pissed me off," says Kevin. "Because in 1997, ‘98, Pennywise couldn’t judge a band until you met ‘em in the parking lot. You’d be in line at catering because of this community setting with no dressing rooms. You’d meet these people, and they were musicians too. Then I started watching this community tear itself apart from within, with this band — not even meeting these people, just disagreeing with them or with how they look — bashing that band online.

"People would come up to me on Warped Tour, and say, ‘Well, I don’t want to be on Warped Tour because Attila are on Warped Tour,’" he continues. "Have you met the guys in Attila? We’re not here to judge each other’s music. The fans will judge each other’s music.’ Atilla brings people. Do I personally run around screaming ‘Suck my fuck?’ No. Do you? No. But they’re good musicians and they’re not bad people. I’ve never seen them do a bad thing to someone."

"Every year, I’d send offers, and just — ‘We don’t want to tour with those bands. We don’t wanna be a Warped-esque bands,'" sighs Lyman. And it’s like, dude, Warped-esque bands — you mean Bad Religion . A Day To Remember . Paramore … it got very frustrating."

Listen to the full episode below:

And don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to Inside Track to hear more of the insane, wonderful, highly-unlikely and totally true stories behind some of the greatest moments in rock history:

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Vans Warped Tour 25th Anniversary Details Announced

Also, in partnership with the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, the traveling tour will curate a special exhibit called "Forever Warped: 25 Years of Vans Warped Tour"

As the 25 th anniversary of Vans Warped Tour gets closer, the famed punk-rock festival has announced two additional cities to hit this summer, plus new details about what fans can expect to see once they’re on site. In addition to the previously announced June 8 date in Cleveland, Ohio, Warped Tour 2019 is due to hit Atlantic City, N.J. on June 29 and 30 and Mountain View, Calif. on July 20 and 21.  

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">25 YEARS OF THE VANS WARPED TOUR<br>Feb 25 • Pre-Sale Tickets On Sale<br>March 1 • Lineups Announced<br> March 1 • Tickets On Sale<br> <a href="https://t.co/rSuGQJH0ta">https://t.co/rSuGQJH0ta</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/vanswarpedtour?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#vanswarpedtour</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/warpedtour?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#warpedtour</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/foreverwarped?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#foreverwarped</a> <a href="https://t.co/YZ4OUv50Xj">pic.twitter.com/YZ4OUv50Xj</a></p>&mdash; Vans Warped Tour (@VansWarpedTour) <a href="https://twitter.com/VansWarpedTour/status/1089885986493026312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 28, 2019</a></blockquote>

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Also, in honor of the tour’s 25th anniversary (and final traveling tour setup), fans can expect to enjoy an exhibit in partnership with the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Titled “Forever Warped: 25 Years of Vans Warped Tour,” the exhibit will showcase the tour’s history since it began in 1995. Instruments and other artifacts will be on display from essential Warped Tour bands including No Doubt , Rancid and Fall Out Boy . Joan Jett 's stage clothing will also be on display.

"With the [Vans Warped Tour] 25th Anniversary events, we want to bring the atmosphere of a classic Warped Tour show, but on a scale that our fans simply could not get with a national tour," Lyman said in a statement . "The bands, the special attractions, everything – we want to bring back elements that have made the Warped Tour, Warped Tour, over the past 25 years."

The lineup, which will be announced on March 1, will feature more than 50 bands over various stages. The tour will also feature skateboarding, motocross and other extreme sports.

The tour will end in the Bay Area, which "probably close to half the bands on the first Warped Tour had some tie to," Lyman said.

The Vans Warped Tour is known to be the longest-running touring music festival in North America. Presale tickets will go on sale Feb. 25. For more information, visit the Vans Warped Tour website .

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GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Upon winning the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album for 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' Kendrick Lamar thanked those that helped him get to the stage, and the artists that blazed the trail for him.

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly . Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

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He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly .

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube . This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg , Doggystyle . This is for Illmatic , this is for Nas . We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal , Anna Wise and Thundercat ). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift 's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN ., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers .

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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A Guide To Modern Funk For The Dance Floor: L'Imperatrice, Shiro Schwarz, Franc Moody, Say She She & Moniquea

James Brown changed the sound of popular music when he found the power of the one and unleashed the funk with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." Today, funk lives on in many forms, including these exciting bands from across the world.

It's rare that a genre can be traced back to a single artist or group, but for funk, that was James Brown . The Godfather of Soul coined the phrase and style of playing known as "on the one," where the first downbeat is emphasized, instead of the typical second and fourth beats in pop, soul and other styles. As David Cheal eloquently explains, playing on the one "left space for phrases and riffs, often syncopated around the beat, creating an intricate, interlocking grid which could go on and on." You know a funky bassline when you hear it; its fat chords beg your body to get up and groove.

Brown's 1965 classic, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," became one of the first funk hits, and has been endlessly sampled and covered over the years, along with his other groovy tracks. Of course, many other funk acts followed in the '60s, and the genre thrived in the '70s and '80s as the disco craze came and went, and the originators of hip-hop and house music created new music from funk and disco's strong, flexible bones built for dancing.

Legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins learned the power of the one from playing in Brown's band, and brought it to George Clinton , who created P-funk, an expansive, Afrofuturistic , psychedelic exploration of funk with his various bands and projects, including Parliament-Funkadelic . Both Collins and Clinton remain active and funkin', and have offered their timeless grooves to collabs with younger artists, including Kali Uchis , Silk Sonic , and Omar Apollo; and Kendrick Lamar , Flying Lotus , and Thundercat , respectively.

In the 1980s, electro-funk was born when artists like Afrika Bambaataa, Man Parrish, and Egyptian Lover began making futuristic beats with the Roland TR-808 drum machine — often with robotic vocals distorted through a talk box. A key distinguishing factor of electro-funk is a de-emphasis on vocals, with more phrases than choruses and verses. The sound influenced contemporaneous hip-hop, funk and electronica, along with acts around the globe, while current acts like Chromeo, DJ Stingray, and even Egyptian Lover himself keep electro-funk alive and well.

Today, funk lives in many places, with its heavy bass and syncopated grooves finding way into many nooks and crannies of music. There's nu-disco and boogie funk, nodding back to disco bands with soaring vocals and dance floor-designed instrumentation. G-funk continues to influence Los Angeles hip-hop, with innovative artists like Dam-Funk and Channel Tres bringing the funk and G-funk, into electro territory. Funk and disco-centered '70s revival is definitely having a moment, with acts like Ghost Funk Orchestra and Parcels , while its sparkly sprinklings can be heard in pop from Dua Lipa , Doja Cat , and, in full "Soul Train" character, Silk Sonic . There are also acts making dreamy, atmospheric music with a solid dose of funk, such as Khruangbin ’s global sonic collage.

There are many bands that play heavily with funk, creating lush grooves designed to get you moving. Read on for a taste of five current modern funk and nu-disco artists making band-led uptempo funk built for the dance floor. Be sure to press play on the Spotify playlist above, and check out GRAMMY.com's playlist on Apple Music , Amazon Music and Pandora .

Say She She

Aptly self-described as "discodelic soul," Brooklyn-based seven-piece Say She She make dreamy, operatic funk, led by singer-songwriters Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham. Their '70s girl group-inspired vocal harmonies echo, sooth and enchant as they cover poignant topics with feminist flair.

While they’ve been active in the New York scene for a few years, they’ve gained wider acclaim for the irresistible music they began releasing this year, including their debut album, Prism . Their 2022 debut single "Forget Me Not" is an ode to ground-breaking New York art collective Guerilla Girls, and " Norma " is their protest anthem in response to the news that Roe vs. Wade could be (and was) overturned. The band name is a nod to funk legend Nile Rodgers , from the "Le freak, c'est chi" exclamation in Chic's legendary tune "Le Freak."

Moniquea 's unique voice oozes confidence, yet invites you in to dance with her to the super funky boogie rhythms. The Pasadena, California artist was raised on funk music; her mom was in a cover band that would play classics like Aretha Franklin’ s "Get It Right" and Gladys Knight ’s "Love Overboard." Moniquea released her first boogie funk track at 20 and, in 2011, met local producer XL Middelton — a bonafide purveyor of funk. She's been a star artist on his MoFunk Records ever since, and they've collabed on countless tracks, channeling West Coast energy with a heavy dose of G-funk, sunny lyrics and upbeat, roller disco-ready rhythms.

Her latest release is an upbeat nod to classic West Coast funk, produced by Middleton, and follows her February 2022 groovy, collab-filled album, On Repeat .

Shiro Schwarz

Shiro Schwarz is a Mexico City-based duo, consisting of Pammela Rojas and Rafael Marfil, who helped establish a modern funk scene in the richly creative Mexican metropolis. On "Electrify" — originally released in 2016 on Fat Beats Records and reissued in 2021 by MoFunk — Shiro Schwarz's vocals playfully contrast each other, floating over an insistent, upbeat bassline and an '80s throwback electro-funk rhythm with synth flourishes.

Their music manages to be both nostalgic and futuristic — and impossible to sit still to. 2021 single "Be Kind" is sweet, mellow and groovy, perfect chic lounge funk. Shiro Schwarz’s latest track, the joyfully nostalgic "Hey DJ," is a collab with funkstress Saucy Lady and U-Key.

L'Impératrice

L'Impératrice (the empress in French) are a six-piece Parisian group serving an infectiously joyful blend of French pop, nu-disco, funk and psychedelia. Flore Benguigui's vocals are light and dreamy, yet commanding of your attention, while lyrics have a feminist touch.

During their energetic live sets, L'Impératrice members Charles de Boisseguin and Hagni Gwon (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), and Tom Daveau (drums) deliver extended instrumental jam sessions to expand and connect their music. Gaugué emphasizes the thick funky bass, and Benguigui jumps around the stage while sounding like an angel. L’Impératrice’s latest album, 2021’s Tako Tsubo , is a sunny, playful French disco journey.

Franc Moody

Franc Moody 's bio fittingly describes their music as "a soul funk and cosmic disco sound." The London outfit was birthed by friends Ned Franc and Jon Moody in the early 2010s, when they were living together and throwing parties in North London's warehouse scene. In 2017, the group grew to six members, including singer and multi-instrumentalist Amber-Simone.

Their music feels at home with other electro-pop bands like fellow Londoners Jungle and Aussie act Parcels. While much of it is upbeat and euphoric, Franc Moody also dips into the more chilled, dreamy realm, such as the vibey, sultry title track from their recently released Into the Ether .

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Living Legends: Billy Idol On Survival, Revival & Breaking Out Of The Cage

"One foot in the past and one foot into the future," Billy Idol says, describing his decade-spanning career in rock. "We’ve got the best of all possible worlds because that has been the modus operandi of Billy Idol."

Living Legends is a series that spotlights icons in music still going strong today. This week, GRAMMY.com spoke with Billy Idol about his latest EP,   Cage , and continuing to rock through decades of changing tastes.

Billy Idol is a true rock 'n' roll survivor who has persevered through cultural shifts and personal struggles. While some may think of Idol solely for "Rebel Yell" and "White Wedding," the singer's musical influences span genres and many of his tunes are less turbo-charged than his '80s hits would belie.  

Idol first made a splash in the latter half of the '70s with the British punk band Generation X. In the '80s, he went on to a solo career combining rock, pop, and punk into a distinct sound that transformed him and his musical partner, guitarist Steve Stevens, into icons. They have racked up multiple GRAMMY nominations, in addition to one gold, one double platinum, and four platinum albums thanks to hits like "Cradle Of Love," "Flesh For Fantasy," and "Eyes Without A Face." 

But, unlike many legacy artists, Idol is anything but a relic. Billy continues to produce vital Idol music by collaborating with producers and songwriters — including Miley Cyrus — who share his forward-thinking vision. He will play a five-show Vegas residency in November, and filmmaker Jonas Akerlund is working on a documentary about Idol’s life. 

His latest release is Cage , the second in a trilogy of annual four-song EPs. The title track is a classic Billy Idol banger expressing the desire to free himself from personal constraints and live a better life. Other tracks on Cage incorporate metallic riffing and funky R&B grooves. 

Idol continues to reckon with his demons — they both grappled with addiction during the '80s — and the singer is open about those struggles on the record and the page. (Idol's 2014 memoir Dancing With Myself , details a 1990 motorcycle accident that nearly claimed a leg, and how becoming a father steered him to reject hard drugs. "Bitter Taste," from his last EP, The Roadside , reflects on surviving the accident.)

Although Idol and Stevens split in the late '80s — the skilled guitarist fronted Steve Stevens & The Atomic Playboys, and collaborated with Michael Jackson, Rick Ocasek, Vince Neil, and Harold Faltermeyer (on the GRAMMY-winning "Top Gun Anthem") —  their common history and shared musical bond has been undeniable. The duo reunited in 2001 for an episode of " VH1 Storytellers " and have been back in the saddle for two decades. Their union remains one of the strongest collaborations in rock 'n roll history.

While there is recognizable personnel and a distinguishable sound throughout a lot of his work, Billy Idol has always pushed himself to try different things. Idol discusses his musical journey, his desire to constantly move forward, and the strong connection that he shares with Stevens. 

Steve has said that you like to mix up a variety of styles, yet everyone assumes you're the "Rebel Yell"/"White Wedding" guy. But if they really listen to your catalog, it's vastly different.

Yeah, that's right. With someone like Steve Stevens, and then back in the day Keith Forsey producing... [Before that] Generation X actually did move around inside punk rock. We didn't stay doing just the Ramones two-minute music. We actually did a seven-minute song. [ Laughs ]. We did always mix things up. 

Then when I got into my solo career, that was the fun of it. With someone like Steve, I knew what he could do. I could see whatever we needed to do, we could nail it. The world was my oyster musically. 

"Cage" is a classic-sounding Billy Idol rocker, then "Running From The Ghost" is almost metal, like what the Devil's Playground album was like back in the mid-2000s. "Miss Nobody" comes out of nowhere with this pop/R&B flavor. What inspired that?

We really hadn't done anything like that since something like "Flesh For Fantasy" [which] had a bit of an R&B thing about it. Back in the early days of Billy Idol, "Hot In The City" and "Mony Mony" had girls [singing] on the backgrounds. 

We always had a bit of R&B really, so it was actually fun to revisit that. We just hadn't done anything really quite like that for a long time. That was one of the reasons to work with someone like Sam Hollander [for the song "Rita Hayworth"] on The Roadside . We knew we could go [with him] into an R&B world, and he's a great songwriter and producer. That's the fun of music really, trying out these things and seeing if you can make them stick. 

I listen to new music by veteran artists and debate that with some people. I'm sure you have those fans that want their nostalgia, and then there are some people who will embrace the newer stuff. Do you find it’s a challenge to reach people with new songs?

Obviously, what we're looking for is, how do we somehow have one foot in the past and one foot into the future? We’ve got the best of all possible worlds because that has been the modus operandi of Billy Idol. 

You want to do things that are true to you, and you don't just want to try and do things that you're seeing there in the charts today. I think that we're achieving it with things like "Running From The Ghost" and "Cage" on this new EP. I think we’re managing to do both in a way. 

** Obviously, "Running From The Ghost" is about addiction, all the stuff that you went through, and in "Cage" you’re talking about  freeing yourself from a lot of personal shackles. Was there any one moment in your life that made you really thought I have to not let this weigh me down anymore ? **

I mean, things like the motorcycle accident I had, that was a bit of a wake up call way back. It was 32 years ago. But there were things like that, years ago, that gradually made me think about what I was doing with my life. I didn't want to ruin it, really. I didn't want to throw it away, and it made [me] be less cavalier. 

I had to say to myself, about the drugs and stuff, that I've been there and I've done it. There’s no point in carrying on doing it. You couldn't get any higher. You didn't want to throw your life away casually, and I was close to doing that. It took me a bit of time, but then gradually I was able to get control of myself to a certain extent [with] drugs and everything. And I think Steve's done the same thing. We're on a similar path really, which has been great because we're in the same boat in terms of lyrics and stuff. 

So a lot of things like that were wake up calls. Even having grandchildren and just watching my daughter enlarging her family and everything; it just makes you really positive about things and want to show a positive side to how you're feeling, about where you're going. We've lived with the demons so long, we've found a way to live with them. We found a way to be at peace with our demons, in a way. Maybe not completely, but certainly to where we’re enjoying what we do and excited about it.

[When writing] "Running From The Ghost" it was easy to go, what was the ghost for us? At one point, we were very drug addicted in the '80s. And Steve in particular is super sober [now]. I mean, I still vape pot and stuff. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but it’s incredible. All I want to be able to do is have a couple of glasses of wine at a restaurant or something. I can do that now.

I think working with people that are super talented, you just feel confident. That is a big reason why you open up and express yourself more because you feel comfortable with what's around you.

Did you watch Danny Boyle's recent Sex Pistols mini-series?

I did, yes.

You had a couple of cameos; well, an actor who portrayed you did. How did you react to it? How accurate do you think it was in portraying that particular time period?

I love Jonesy’s book, I thought his book was incredible. It's probably one of the best bio books really. It was incredible and so open. I was looking forward to that a lot.

It was as if [the show] kind of stayed with Steve [Jones’ memoir] about halfway through, and then departed from it. [John] Lydon, for instance, was never someone I ever saw acting out; he's more like that today. I never saw him do something like jump up in the room and run around going crazy. The only time I saw him ever do that was when they signed the recording deal with Virgin in front of Buckingham Palace. Whereas Sid Vicious was always acting out; he was always doing something in a horrible way or shouting at someone. I don't remember John being like that. I remember him being much more introverted.

But then I watched interviews with some of the actors about coming to grips with the parts they were playing. And they were saying, we knew punk rock happened but just didn't know any of the details. So I thought well, there you go . If ["Pistol" is]  informing a lot of people who wouldn't know anything about punk rock, maybe that's what's good about it.

Maybe down the road John Lydon will get the chance to do John's version of the Pistols story. Maybe someone will go a lot deeper into it and it won't be so surface. But maybe you needed this just to get people back in the flow.

We had punk and metal over here in the States, but it feels like England it was legitimately more dangerous. British society was much more rigid.

It never went [as] mega in America. It went big in England. It exploded when the Pistols did that interview with [TV host Bill] Grundy, that lorry truck driver put his boot through his own TV, and all the national papers had "the filth and the fury" [headlines].

We went from being unknown to being known overnight. We waited a year, Generation X. We even told them [record labels] no for nine months to a year. Every record company wanted their own punk rock group. So it went really mega in England, and it affected the whole country – the style, the fashions, everything. I mean, the Ramones were massive in England. Devo had a No. 1 song [in England] with "Satisfaction" in '77. Actually, Devo was as big as or bigger than the Pistols.

You were ahead of the pop-punk thing that happened in the late '90s, and a lot of it became tongue-in-cheek by then. It didn't have the same sense of rebelliousness as the original movement. It was more pop.

It had become a style. There was a famous book in England called Revolt Into Style — and that's what had happened, a revolt that turned into style which then they were able to duplicate in their own way. Even recently, Billie Joe [Armstrong] did his own version of "Gimme Some Truth," the Lennon song we covered way back in 1977.

When we initially were making [punk] music, it hadn't become accepted yet. It was still dangerous and turned into a style that people were used to. We were still breaking barriers.

You have a band called Generation Sex with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. I assume you all have an easier time playing Pistols and Gen X songs together now and not worrying about getting spit on like back in the '70s?

Yeah, definitely. When I got to America I told the group I was putting it together, "No one spits at the audience."

We had five years of being spat on [in the UK], and it was revolting. And they spat at you if they liked you. If they didn't like it they smashed your gear up. One night, I remember I saw blood on my T-shirt, and I think Joe Strummer got meningitis when spit went in his mouth.

You had to go through a lot to become successful, it wasn't like you just kind of got up there and did a couple of gigs. I don't think some young rock bands really get that today.

With punk going so mega in England, we definitely got a leg up. We still had a lot of work to get where we got to, and rightly so because you find out that you need to do that. A lot of groups in the old days would be together three to five years before they ever made a record, and that time is really important. In a way, what was great about punk rock for me was it was very much a learning period. I really learned a lot [about] recording music and being in a group and even writing songs.

Then when I came to America, it was a flow, really. I also really started to know what I wanted Billy Idol to be. It took me a little bit, but I kind of knew what I wanted Billy Idol to be. And even that took a while to let it marinate.

You and Miley Cyrus have developed a good working relationship in the last several years. How do you think her fans have responded to you, and your fans have responded to her?

I think they're into it. It's more the record company that she had didn't really get "Night Crawling"— it was one of the best songs on Plastic Hearts , and I don't think they understood that. They wanted to go with Dua Lipa, they wanted to go with the modern, young acts, and I don't think they realized that that song was resonating with her fans. Which is a shame really because, with Andrew Watt producing, it's a hit song.

But at the same time, I enjoyed doing it. It came out really good and it's very Billy Idol. In fact, I think it’s more Billy Idol than Miley Cyrus. I think it shows you where Andrew Watt was. He was excited about doing a Billy Idol track. She's fun to work with. She’s a really great person and she works at her singing — I watched her rehearsing for the Super Bowl performance she gave. She rehearsed all Saturday morning, all Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning and it was that afternoon. I have to admire her fortitude. She really cares.

I remember when you went on " Viva La Bam "  back in 2005 and decided to give Bam Margera’s Lamborghini a new sunroof by taking a power saw to it. Did he own that car? Was that a rental?

I think it was his car.

Did he get over it later on?

He loved it. [ Laughs ] He’s got a wacky sense of humor. He’s fantastic, actually. I’m really sorry to see what he's been going through just lately. He's going through a lot, and I wish him the best. He's a fantastic person, and it's a shame that he's struggling so much with his addictions. I know what it's like. It's not easy.

Musically, what is the synergy like with you guys during the past 10 years, doing Kings and Queens of the Underground and this new stuff? What is your working relationship like now in this more sober, older, mature version of you two as opposed to what it was like back in the '80s?

In lots of ways it’s not so different because we always wrote the songs together, we always talked about what we're going to do together. It was just that we were getting high at the same time.We're just not getting [that way now] but we're doing all the same things.

We're still talking about things, still [planning] things:What are we going to do next? How are we going to find new people to work with? We want to find new producers. Let's be a little bit more timely about putting stuff out.That part of our relationship is the same, you know what I mean? That never got affected. We just happened to be overloading in the '80s.

The relationship’s… matured and it's carrying on being fruitful, and I think that's pretty amazing. Really, most people don't get to this place. Usually, they hate each other by now. [ Laughs ] We also give each other space. We're not stopping each other doing things outside of what we’re working on together. All of that enables us to carry on working together. I love and admire him. I respect him. He's been fantastic. I mean, just standing there on stage with him is always a treat. And he’s got an immensely great sense of humor. I think that's another reason why we can hang together after all this time because we've got the sense of humor to enable us to go forward.

There's a lot of fan reaction videos online, and I noticed a lot of younger women like "Rebel Yell" because, unlike a lot of other '80s alpha male rock tunes, you're talking about satisfying your lover.

It was about my girlfriend at the time, Perri Lister. It was about how great I thought she was, how much I was in love with her, and how great women are, how powerful they are.

It was a bit of a feminist anthem in a weird way. It was all about how relationships can free you and add a lot to your life. It was a cry of love, nothing to do with the Civil War or anything like that. Perri was a big part of my life, a big part of being Billy Idol. I wanted to write about it. I'm glad that's the effect.

Is there something you hope people get out of the songs you've been doing over the last 10 years? Do you find yourself putting out a message that keeps repeating?

Well, I suppose, if anything, is that you can come to terms with your life, you can keep a hold of it. You can work your dreams into reality in a way and, look, a million years later, still be enjoying it.

The only reason I'm singing about getting out of the cage is because I kicked out of the cage years ago. I joined Generation X when I said to my parents, "I'm leaving university, and I'm joining a punk rock group." And they didn't even know what a punk rock group was. Years ago, I’d write things for myself that put me on this path, so that maybe in 2022 I could sing something like "Cage" and be owning this territory and really having a good time. This is the life I wanted.

The original UK punk movement challenged societal norms. Despite all the craziness going on throughout the world, it seems like a lot of modern rock bands are afraid to do what you guys were doing. Do you think we'll see a shift in that?

Yeah.  Art usually reacts to things, so I would think eventually there will be a massive reaction to the pop music that’s taken over — the middle of the road music, and then this kind of right wing politics. There will be a massive reaction if there's not already one. I don’t know where it will come from exactly. You never know who's gonna do [it].

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Graphic: The Recording Academy

Hear All Of The Best Country Solo Performance Nominees For The 2023 GRAMMY Awards

The 2023 GRAMMY Award nominees for Best Country Solo Performance highlight country music's newcomers and veterans, featuring hits from Kelsea Ballerini, Zach Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris and Willie Nelson.

Country music's evolution is well represented in the 2023 GRAMMY nominees for Best Country Solo Performance. From crossover pop hooks to red-dirt outlaw roots, the genre's most celebrated elements are on full display — thanks to rising stars, leading ladies and country icons.

Longtime hitmaker Miranda Lambert delivered a soulful performance on the rootsy ballad "In His Arms," an arrangement as sparing as the windswept west Texas highlands where she co-wrote the song. Viral newcomer Zach Bryan dug into similar organic territory on the Oklahoma side of the Red River for "Something in the Orange," his voice accompanied with little more than an acoustic guitar.

Two of country's 2010s breakout stars are clearly still shining, too, as Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini both received Best Country Solo Performance GRAMMY nods. Morris channeled the determination that drove her leap-of-faith move from Texas to Nashville for the playful clap-along "Circles Around This Town," while Ballerini brought poppy hooks with a country edge on the infectiously upbeat "HEARTFIRST."

Rounding out the category is the one and only Willie Nelson, who paid tribute to his late friend Billy Joe Shaver with a cover of "Live Forever" — a fitting sentiment for the 89-year-old legend, who is approaching his eighth decade in the business. 

As the excitement builds for the 2023 GRAMMYs on Feb. 5, 2023, let's take a closer look at this year's nominees for Best Country Solo Performance.

Kelsea Ballerini — "HEARTFIRST"

In the tradition of Shania Twain , Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood , Kelsea Ballerini represents Nashville's sunnier side — and her single "HEARTFIRST" is a slice of bright, uptempo, confectionary country-pop for the ages.

Ballerini sings about leaning into a carefree crush with her heart on her sleeve, pushing aside her reservations and taking a risk on love at first sight. The scene plays out in a bar room and a back seat, as she sweeps nimbly through the verses and into a shimmering chorus, when the narrator decides she's ready to "wake up in your T-shirt." 

There are enough steel guitar licks to let you know you're listening to a country song, but the story and melody are universal. "HEARTFIRST" is Ballerini's third GRAMMY nod, but first in the Best Country Solo Performance category.

Zach Bryan — "Something In The Orange"

Zach Bryan blew into Music City seemingly from nowhere in 2017, when his original song "Heading South" — recorded on an iPhone — went viral. Then an active officer in the U.S. Navy, the Oklahoma native chased his muse through music during his downtime, striking a chord with country music fans on stark songs led by his acoustic guitar and affecting vocals.

After his honorable discharge in 2021, Bryan began his music career in earnest, and in 2022 released "Something in the Orange," a haunting ballad that stakes a convincing claim to the territory between Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell in both sonics and songwriting. Slashing slide guitar drives home the song's heartbreak, as Bryan pines for a lover whose tail lights have long since vanished over the horizon. 

"Something In The Orange" marks Bryan's first-ever GRAMMY nomination.

Miranda Lambert — "In His Arms"

Miranda Lambert is the rare, chart-topping contemporary country artist who does more than pay lip service to the genre's rural American roots. "In His Arms" originally surfaced on 2021's The Marfa Tapes , a casual recording Lambert made with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall in Marfa, Texas — a tiny arts enclave in the middle of the west Texas high desert.

In this proper studio version — recorded for her 2022 album, Palomino — Lambert retains the structure and organic feel of the mostly acoustic song; light percussion and soothing atmospherics keep her emotive vocals front and center. A native Texan herself, Lambert sounds fully at home on "In His Arms."

Lambert is the only Best Country Solo Performance nominee who is nominated in all four Country Field categories in 2023. To date, Miranda Lambert has won 3 GRAMMYs and received 27 nominations overall. 

Maren Morris — "Circles Around This Town"

When Maren Morris found herself uninspired and dealing with writer's block, she went back to what inspired her to move to Nashville nearly a decade ago — and out came "Circles Around This Town," the lead single from her 2022 album Humble Quest .

Written in one of her first in-person songwriting sessions since the pandemic, Morris has called "Circles Around This Town" her "most autobiographical song" to date; she even recreated her own teenage bedroom for the song's video. As she looks back to her Texas beginnings and the life she left for Nashville, Morris' voice soars over anthemic, yet easygoing production. 

Morris last won a GRAMMY for Best Country Solo Performance in 2017, when her song "My Church" earned the singer her first GRAMMY. To date, Maren Morris has won one GRAMMY and received 17 nominations overall.

Willie Nelson — "Live Forever"

Country music icon Willie Nelson is no stranger to the GRAMMYs, and this year he aims to add to his collection of 10 gramophones. He earned another three nominations for 2023 — bringing his career total to 56 — including a Best Country Solo Performance nod for "Live Forever."

Nelson's performance of "Live Forever," the lead track of the 2022 tribute album Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver , is a faithful rendition of Shaver's signature song. Still, Nelson puts his own twist on the tune, recruiting Lucinda Williams for backing vocals and echoing the melody with the inimitable tone of his nylon-string Martin guitar. 

Shaver, an outlaw country pioneer who passed in 2020 at 81 years old, never had any hits of his own during his lifetime. But plenty of his songs were still heard, thanks to stars like Elvis Presley , Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings . Nelson was a longtime friend and frequent collaborator of Shaver's — and now has a GRAMMY nom to show for it.

2023 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Complete Nominees List

• 1 Vans Warped Tour 25th Anniversary Details Announced
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• 4 Living Legends: Billy Idol On Survival, Revival & Breaking Out Of The Cage
• 5 Hear All Of The Best Country Solo Performance Nominees For The 2023 GRAMMY Awards

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All 25 Warped Tour Lineups, Ranked

Warped Tour is one of the biggest names in the concert canon. Those who haven't gone want to and those who have gone wait for the day they can go again. For a majority of its run, it was the largest traveling music festival in the United States. A number of past Warped Tour lineups have been impressive, but which year was the best? Help decide below! 

Starting as an eclectic alternative rock festival in 1995 and gradually morphing into a punk rock festival by the next year, the tour gained momentum when Vans, the wildly popular shoe manufacturer, was signed on as the tour's main sponsor in 1996. As Warped Tour became increasingly popular with each passing year, more sponsors signed on, slowly growing the tour's scope of influence. Sadly, 2018 proved to be the final year of the famous tour as announced by Warped Tour's founder, Kevin Lyman. 

You'll find every Warped Tour lineup here! Vote below on the best Warped Tour lineups, keeping in mind factors like the bands performing, production value, and overall spectacle. If you're an avid concert-goer, you can also check out this list of the best Coachella lineups ! (Disclaimer - some years certain dates had slightly different lineups). 

Warped Tour 2005

Notable Peformers: My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Thrice, Billy Idol, The All-American Rejects, Bowling for Soup, Dropkick Murphys, Hawthorne Heights

Dates: June 18 to August 14

Warped Tour 2004

Notable Performers: NOFX, My Chemical Romance, The Used, Fall Out Boy, Billy Talent, Yellowcard, Motion City Soundtrack, New Found Glory, Good Charlotte, Anti-Flag, Bowling for Soup 

Dates:  June 25 to August 19

Warped Tour 1998

Notable Performers:  Bad Religion, Godsmack, Rancid, Less Than Jake, Blink-182, Beck (some dates), Unwritten Law, Reverend Horton Heat, Incubus 

Date:  July 4 to August 9

Warped Tour 1999

Notable Performers: Cypress Hill, Blink-182, Dropkick Murphys, Pennywise, Black Eyed Peas, Suicidal Tendencies, Less Than Jake, Bouncing Souls

Dates:  June 25 to July 31

Warped Tour 1997

Notable Performers:  Blink-182, Reel Big Fish, Descendants, Less Than Jake, Sugar Ray, Pennywise, Social Distortion, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones 

Dates:  July 2 to August 5

Warped Tour 2000

Notable Performers:  Weezer, Flogging Molly, Green Day, Anti-Flag, No Doubt, Papa Roach, The Muffs, Suicide Machines, NOFX, Good Riddance

Dates: June 23 to August 6

Warped Tour 2007

Notable Performers:  Bad Religion, Pennywise, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Killswitch Engage, Yellowcard, Ambelin, Flogging Molly, Hawthorne Heights

Dates:  June 28 to August 25

Warped Tour 2001

Notable Performers:  Pennywise, New Found Glory, Dropkick Murphys, The Vandals, Sum 41, Rancid, Less Than Jake, The All-American Rejects, Good Charlotte 

Dates:  June 29 to August 12

Warped Tour 1995

Notable Performers:  Sublime, No Doubt, Quicksand, Fluf, Deftones, No Use for a Name, Supernova, CIV, Deftones

Dates: August 4 to September 5

Warped Tour 2006

Notable Performers: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts,   Less Than Jake, The Academy Is..., Anti-Flag, Billy Talent, Motion City Soundtrack, Paramore, Rise Against, NOFX

Dates:  June 15 to August 13

Warped Tour 2018

Notable Performers:  Korn, Prophets of Rage, Limp Bizkit, Reel Big Fish, Pennywise, All Time Low, Taking Back Sunday, We The Kings

Dates:  June 21 to August 5

Warped Tour 2011

Notable Performers:  Paramore, Jack's Mannequin, Bowling for Soup, Relient K, MC Lars, Less Than Jake, Anti-Flag, Simple Plan 

Dates:  June 24 to August 14

Warped Tour 2003

Notable Performers:  The Ataris, Dropkick Murphys, Rancid, The Used, Pennywise, Less than Jake, Suicide Machines, Andrew W.K., Yellowcard, Glassjaw 

Dates: June 19 to August 10

Warped Tour 2002

Notable Performers: New Found Glory, Simple Plan, Flogging Molly, Anti-Flag, Reel Big Fish, Yellowcard, Goldfinger, NOFX, Jimmy Eat World, Bad Religion, Good Charlotte

Dates:  June 21 to August 18

Warped Tour 1996

Notable Performers:  Fishbone, Pennywise, CIV, Rocket From The Crypt, Dance Hall Crashers, Down By Law, The Figgs, Guttermouth, Blink-182, Fluf, Red 5, Sensefield, Far 

Date:  July 4 to August 8

Warped Tour 2008

Notable Performers:  Katy Perry, Amberlin, Jack's Mannequin, Angels and Airwaves, Reel Big Fish, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Broadway Calls, The Devil Wears Prada 

Dates:  June 20 to August 17

Warped Tour 2016

Notable Performers:  Falling In Reverse, Less Than Jake, Good Charlotte, Sleeping With Sirens, New Found Glory, Yellowcard, Ghost Town, Bad Seed Rising, We The Kings

Dates:  June 24 to August 13

Warped Tour 2013

Notable Performers: Chiodos, New Beat Fund, Gin Wigmore, MC Lars, Craig Owens, Dia Frampton, Charlotte Sometimes, Big Chocolate, Echosmith, Motion City Soundtrack, Reel Big Fish 

Dates:  July 15 to August 4

Warped Tour 2019

Warped Tour 2010

Notable Performers:  Alkaline Trio, Motion City Soundtrack, Anti-Flag, Dropkick Murphys, Andrew W.K., Penny Wise, Reel Big Fish, The All-American Rejects, Suicide Silence, We The Kings

Dates:  June 25 to August 15

Warped Tour 2012

Notable Performers:  Falling in Reverse, The Used, Yellowcard, Dead Sara, Rise Against, Yellowcard, MC Laws, Machine Gun Kelly, Anti-Flag

Date:  June 16 to August 5

Warped Tour 2009

Notable Performers:  Less Than Jake, Underoath, Bad Religion,  T.S.O.L., The Adolescents, Sing it Loud, TAT

Dates:  June 26 to August 23

Warped Tour 2014

Notable Performers:  Breathe Carolina, Falling in Reverse, Mayday Parade, Less Than Jake, We The Kings, Yellowcard, The Ghost Inside, The Mighty, Finch

Dates:  June 13 to August 3

Warped Tour 2017

Notable Performers:   Andy Black, Beartooth, Dance Gavin Dance, I Prevail, New Years Day, Falling In Reverse, Streetlight Manifesto, Neck Deep

Date: May 27 to November 1

Warped Tour 2015

Notable Performers:  As It Is, Bebe Rexha, New Years Day, Knuckle Puck, Metro Station, Candy Hearts, Motion City Soundtrack, Memphis May Fire 

Dates:  June 19 to October 18

Lists about the phenomena of the summer music festival - who to see, how to dress, and what to expect beyond heat, crowds, and bigger crowds.

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2019 Warped Tour Cities and Dates Revealed for 25th Anniversary

The cross-country version of the Warped Tour made its last go in 2018, but will return in 2019 at select cities for just three special 25th anniversary events across the United States. Founder Kevin Lyman teased the locations and dates of the fest late last year and now the details have been locked in.

The first 2019 Warped Tour date will be June 8 in Cleveland, Ohio followed by June 29 and 30 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The event will reconvene three weeks later in Mountain View, Calif. on July 20 and 21.

Pre-sale tickets will be available on Feb. 25 while the lineup announcement will come on March 1, the same date ticket sales will begin. See the poster below for more info.

When Lyman teased Warped's 25th anniversary plans, some fans became confused as they had believed that 2018's run would be the fest's last as advertised. It was the final cross-country installment and he released the following clarifying statement :

It was truly an honor to do a final cross-country run of Warped in 2018; tos ee fans from all eras of the tour come out for a day to celebrate an event that meant so much to them.I walked away from the final show with a true sense that the Vans Warped Tour became the community I had always hoped for. I sit here reflecting on the tour’s incredible history, what the final run means for our community, and look forward to what’s to come as we commemorate the tour’s historic 25th anniversary in 2019.[...] The enduring spirit of the Vans Warped Tour remains as bright as ever, continuing to inspire creativity and ambition in new and exciting ways as we prepare for a 25th anniversary celebration in 2019.

We'll be sitting here waiting for the March 1 announcement with the rest of you.

2019 Warped Tour Dates

June 08 – Cleveland, Ohio @ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame June 29 – Atlantic City, N.J. @ Atlantic City Beach June 30 – Atlantic City, N.J. @ Atlantic City Beach July 20 – Mountain View, Calif. @ Shoreline Amphitheatre July 21 – Mountain View, Calif. @ Shoreline Amphitheatre

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Warped Tour 2005

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Warped Tour 2005 was the 2005 and 11th installment of the annual Summer Warped Tour music festival . Vans Shoes was again the tour's primary sponsor.

• 1.1 Bishop Stage
• 1.2 Mike Stage
• 1.3 Hurley Stage
• 1.4 Volcom Stage
• 1.5 Smartpunk.com Stage
• 1.6.1 Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands 9 Winners
• 1.7 Kevin Says Stage
• 1.8.1 Rockbox Block
• 1.9 Shiragirl Stage
• 1.10 AZPunk.com Stage
• 1.11 East Coast Indie Stage
• 2 Tour dates
• 3 References

Warped Tour 2005 Bands [ ]

All bands confirmed for the entire tour unless otherwise noted.

Bishop Stage [ ]

• Alexisonfire (Played 7/12-7/14)
• Billy Idol (Played 7/6-7/7, 7/10 and 7/16-7/20)
• Fall Out Boy
• Good Charlotte (Played 7/28)
• Hawthorne Heights
• My Chemical Romance
• Relient K (Played 7/6-8/15)
• Senses Fail
• Simple Plan (Played 7/15-7/17)
• The Starting Line
• Story Of The Year (Played 8/3-8/15)
• Thrice (Played 6/29-8/15)

Mike Stage [ ]

• The All-American Rejects (Played 6/18-7/10 and 7/15-7/26)
• Avenged Sevenfold
• Billy Talent (Played 7/12-7/14)
• Dropkick Murphys
• Gogol Bordello (Played 7/3-7/8 and 7/15-7/23)
• Matchbook Romance
• Mest (Played 7/4-8/15)
• Millencolin (Played 7/28-8/14)
• No Use For A Name (Played 6/18-7/23)
• The Offspring (Played 6/18-7/12, 7/16-8/11, and 8/13-8/15)
• The Suicide Machines (Played 7/31)
• Transplants

Hurley Stage [ ]

Volcom stage [ ], smartpunk.com stage [ ], ernie ball stage [ ].

[1]

Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands 9 Winners [ ]

Kevin says stage [ ], code of tha cutz stage [ ], rockbox block [ ].

• Brother Reade
• Lordz of Brooklyn

Shiragirl Stage [ ]

Azpunk.com stage [ ].

• All Too Much (Played 6/29)
• The Dames (Played 6/29)
• John Denvers Last Flight (Played 6/29)
• Johnny Blood & The Transfusions (Played 6/29)
• Line of Fire (Played 6/29)
• The Revenge (Played 6/29)
• Sigma (Played 6/29)
• Swing Ding Amigos (Played 6/29)

East Coast Indie Stage [ ]

• 33 West (Played 8/8 and 8/10)
• A Wilhelm SCream (Played 8/9-8/14)
• AKA (Played 8/6)
• Body Part Trophy Case (Played 8/11)
• Break the Silence (Played 8/4-8/7)
• Crash and Burn (Played 8/11-8/14)
• Deagle (Played 8/4)
• Driving East (Played 8/9)
• The Esoteric (Played 8/4-8/14)
• Fall of Transition (Played 8/7 and 8/10)
• Flat Stanley (Played 8/5)
• High Speed Chase (Played 8/14)
• It Starts Today (Played 8/4-8/7)
• Just R Luck (Played 8/8)
• Last Great Hope (Played 8/5)
• Longspur (Played 8/4-8/14)
• Mourningstar (Played 8/4)
• New Crash Position (Played 8/4-8/7)
• None More Black (Played 8/12)
• The Ratchets (Played 8/12-8/14)
• River City High (Played 8/8-8/11)
• Rude Buddha (Played 8/9)
• The Spacepimps (Played 8/11)
• Split Fifty (Played 8/4-8/14)
• Stradlatter (Played 8/13)
• Time Tells All (Played 8/10)

Tour dates [ ]

References [ ].

• ↑ Welcome to Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands
• 1 Warped Tour 2004
• 2 Warped Tour 2008
• 3 Warped Tour 2014