Interview

Babble & Beat - This is the 13th year of the Warped Tour. What is the secret to it lasting this long, and keeping the fan base that is has?

Kevin - I think it’s interesting. It’s basically a business that grew for 11 straight years. In our 12th year we actually dipped a little bit. But our 11th year was a nominal year that we booked Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights, All American Rejects a year ahead of time – before their records came out, and before they had that massive success.

But then our audience changed a little bit. Two summers ago... we got a little more of that pop crowd, and we had four bands in the top-20 in sales, which [the tour] has never been that way. The dynamic of the show changed. Kids were much more single oriented. They stood in front of a stage all day. They passed out in the sun. It wasn’t that hardcore Warped fan that wants to go see a lot of bands.

Last year we went out and we had one band in the top-200; we had Underoath, and I looked at the show and realized that I needed to take it back to what the tour really was about. If you look at the 1995 lineup, we had Sublime, No Use For A Name, No Doubt, Quicksand – a very diverse lineup for that time and place.

When I was booking the lineup this year, I said I’m going to book a lineup [where kids can] come explore music, and that what I think we have achieved again. Kids are excited about coming here. I think the scenes in music are all changing and shifting. There is no dominant scene. Kids are searching, and I think the Warped Tour has given that a platform.

Babble & Beat - So is that why you cut back on the amount of bands this year?

Kevin - Everyone in America thinks quantity is important. Claim Jumper food is not the best but they give you a lot [laughs]. It got to be too much. It was when bands told me that they had been a band for six months, and hadn’t played the Warped Tour –I realized that it wasn’t getting that special to play [on the tour]. We wanted to make this a special place, where you strive to play a Warped Tour.

Babble & Beat - How was attendance last year?

Kevin - We dropped down. We did 560-thousand people. This year I looked at it as building a business model. It’s weird - I want to do it creatively, but I also have to do it as a business. We set out to do 600-thousand people this year. We spend a little bit more on talent, without really raising the ticket price – well, maybe a dollar, and I think we are going to end up with about 640-thousand people the way we are tracking.

Babble & Beat - There have been some people who say that the Warped Tour kills the smaller venues, and changes what Punk music is all about. What is your response to them?

Kevin -I’ve heard that, and it’s probably true that attendance in clubs for maybe a week or two around the Warped Tour goes down, but I also think it helps the club owners in the long run because these bands are all fighting to stay on the road now. Everyone has to stay on the road more than they probably should, and the bands that come through this fall will hopefully have a better draw.

Kevin - It’s tough for me because bands call me and say if they don’t get on the Warped Tour, they will be dropped. But I think if anything we help the clubs more than hurt them. Maybe for two weeks it’s not good around the Warped Tour, but the other 50 weeks a year it’s good.

Babble & Beat - The Warped Tour has been called ‘the tour that won’t die’. Do you think it will ever end?

Kevin -The kids will let us know when it ends. My biggest thing this year was to challenge myself and the kids with the lineup we did, because if the attendance dropped again this year I probably would have said maybe it’s time for someone else to take over and do their own thing, but you know what – it’s revitalized, it’s energetic, it’s vibrant. I got to start thinking of a title for the 15th year.

LINKS:
To read our Van's Warped Tour review, CLICK HERE.

Official Warped Tour Site
Official MySpace