PropertyOfZack Interview : : Kevin Lyman
PropertyOfZack had the pleasure of speaking with Kevin Lyman, the founder of Warped Tour, a few weeks ago for a great interview. Kevin and I discussed the excitement of this year’s lineup, the festival returning to its “roots,” the camaraderie between the bands on the tour, the details behind their new TV show, and so much more. Check it all out and enjoy!
Warped Tour kicks off in about a month and a half now. The kickoff party has been done and ticket sales are live. How are you feeling about this year’s festival as the date creeps closer and closer?
You always feel cautiously optimistic, you know? Like when you have a good pre-sale like we had today. We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re going to do well. There’s so much time between now and August fifth. Really with Warped Tour, you feel good about it, but there’s a lot of lesser in between there, a lot of the unknown. And Warped Tour is still known for selling 70% of its tickets in the last week of sales. It’s a walk up crowd; last-minute crowd, and I don’t see that changing no matter what we do.The lineup makes you do a double take this year, with headliners like New Found Glory, Rise Against, Taking Back Sunday, Yellowcard, etc. I know that you start putting that together right as the summer ends…
I start putting it together in like September, October or November.Did you know that you wanted to take this direction immediately? In terms of the sound?
Yeah. Well I’ve been kind of a student of what’s going on. I’ve been looking at the audience. The average gauge of warped tour… a lot are 13 to 19 years old. I started realizing that at 19, nowadays, you’re losing those kids to Bonnaroo or Coachella. They are college age now. Also Lollapalooza. From 19 to 24, you want to go out with your friends, you want to camp out, and you want to make multi-day festival kind of things. With this big movement in electronic music, that’s the age that’s going to those things. But at 24 years old, you’ve been going to that for a while. You’ve got jobs, you can’t go to the three day festivals. It gets expensive. And at 24, you’re starting to pay your bills. You still like music and you still like that festival atmosphere so maybe I can see if that age group wants to come back and enjoy Warped Tour. I feel like there is a lot of people going, “Shoot! Warped Tour is forty bucks? Yeah I want to go to that!” It’s like going to six or seven House of Blues Shows for the price of one. And then there’s the old punk bands, but I don’t think a lot of forty year olds and thirty to forty-five year olds like to come to Warped Tour because of the age gap with the thirteen to nineteen year olds.You’re always going to get criticism for a lineup, regardless of what it is.
Yeah… I haven’t booked a good band since 1996. That’s what some people say.There seems to be more excitement. Have you been happy with the festival overall for the last two years?
Yeah, the last couple of years, since I’ve gone to this really eclectic mix. I think it’s been a really fun time and I think that people are getting it. That sense of discovery is really back at Warped Tour. You could put all of that music in an iPod and put it on shuffle, which I do, and then go, “Wow. This is how it’s going to sound like walking around. It’s kind of cool.” You mix in the silent disco and the acoustic tent and, “Hey, it’s not a bad day for the price.”You mentioned earlier that you noted that more pop-punk or whatever you want to call it is back into the swing of things now. Did you see that at the festival last year?
I feel like there is always a reaction to something. Everything got really heavy for a while. Then all of the sudden, there is going to be a counter. It’s just natural. Then I saw with The Wonder Years last year. They’ve been around a while, it’s not like they are a new band. But all of the sudden, people were starting to gravitate to them. Really, where I thought this would work is when I’d have bands like Sum 41 and Simple Plan the last couple of years. You’d see people excited about seeing those bands. Maybe on their own, they aren’t drawing what they used to, but as part of a festival people really gravitate to go and see those bands.Something that makes more of those pop-punk fans is that it seems to them and the punk scene that there is a camaraderie between all of the bands. That makes fans excited too, that you know if you’re going to see a band like Man Overboard, that they have toured with bands like Polar Bear Club or Transit before.
It’s also those bands. The bands they looked up to or the bands they learned how to play music from, that they listened to. Man Overboard, they listened to New Found Glory. They listened to Yellowcard. You know they did. You know? Whereas they could be a fan of Bad Religion, but that wasn’t their influence necessarily. Bad Religion used to influence The Used and New Found Glory. They are all out on tour together. It’s hard, trust me, because my roots are in the old punk stuff, you know? When you really realize you are starting to get older is when I looked at New Found Glory. When I was talking to Chad from New Found Glory online, I go, “Did you ever think you would be the old guys on Warped Tour?” He goes, “Well we’re still going to bring it.” Which is cool to hear. Those guys are going to get up there and kick ass. And when you hear Ronnie Radke like, “Oh my God I can’t believe I am playing on the same stage as The Used.” That’s kind of cool.
