Workaholic Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman still owns the summer

Launched in , the Warped Tour has become the longestrunning annual tour in North America. Founder Kevin Lyman estimates that he’s only missed shows in years. “In  I missed a couple of shows. e place turned to anarchy as soon as I left,” he says. And so Lyman is up at a.m. trying to secure every last detail before hitting the road with this year’s lineup, which includes old-school punks Pennywise and Bouncing Souls and newer sensations Gym Class Heroes and Be Your Own Pet. According to the tireless Lyman, “Warped Tour is more like a summer vacation than a job.”

What are your Warped Tour travel essentials? An ice chest, some good beach chairs, good shoes and my beach cruiser. And I need my friends. It used to be a lot of my peers [NOFX, Strung Out, Pennywise] were out on the road with me, so it was much easier for me to hang out on tour. Now we get a few of those bands out, but you know, I’m either a disciplinarian or a mentor to most people, so I have my people that come out and spend a few days with me.

Which performances stand out? I always love the performances up at the Gorge in Washington. I always choose a band that’s kind of mellowish. Last year it was Pepper at sunset. We always put on something a little more ska or reggae, a little more vibe-y. I look forward to that every year. I already know that I have to look at what time the sun is going to be setting because I want the Aggrolites to be playing this year.

To what do you credit your longevity? We don’t mess with [the tour] too much. I really believe that there’s a comfort zone when you come to a Warped Tour. We change it within but we don’t do any drastic changes. There’s some familiarity. I think some festivals tried to change so much and then lost the core audience. I’m very careful to try to protect that.

How has your audience changed? We’ve become secondgenerational where a lot of times you’ll see dad in a Bad Religion shirt and a kid in a Yellowcard shirt. But it’s a common bond we’re connecting where people can come to a show with their kids and their kids look at them and think, “Hey we can hang out and have something in common.” And I see a lot of people coming back to the Warped Tour that maybe went away for a few years—people that can’t go out to see shows all the time like they used to. And they can go catch up [on] at least this niche of the music scene in one day. Because I think we all start feeling old when someone says a band that we don’t know.