Since there is a lot of content on Little Bitty City One that I am quite proud of, I decided to bring some of those posts over to The CaroLøve- mostly for posterity. They will be labeled “Archival”.
I am still trying to get over just how incredibly charmed my day was on Saturday. I have gone to 10 Warped Tours in 12 years and I can’t even wrap my head around how amazing this year’s experience was. I knew going in to the festival that I had some kind of wrist band left at will call by Ducan, We The King’s tour manager, but I had no idea what that would entail.
I was there with my good friends, Jess + Dana, the coolest mother/ daughter duo. I actually met them waiting in line to talk to Travis of We The Kings at a Warped Tour a few years ago. It’s gotten to the point my family and I consider them part of ours. They actually were the ones responsible for my pass.
We didn’t actually know where to pick up our tickets, but since Dana and I have a knack for just going wherever we feel like it and owning it, we managed to walk through the closed venue to the other side to the guest list tent. There we found our wristbands, along with a guest list naming them as super fans and me as friend of the band. Hi. That was enough to make my whole entire day. But then we found out that our tickets gave us literal all-access to the tour. We had backstage passes and could be on any stage we wanted to while the bands were performing. We The Kings played almost immediately, so we hustled to the Journey’s Left Foot Stage (basically where we spent our day) and waited patiently, feet away from our faves as they got ready to go on.
Being on stage with your favorite band is such a bizarre experience. You don’t necessarily get the interaction that you would being in the audience (unless you’re on stage with Reel Big Fish, they’re incredible. 10/10 would recommend) but you get to see the crowd react to the music that permanently resides in your heart. My favorite picture I took that day, above, captures Travis capturing the crowd, and I want to cry every time I look at it. It’s beautiful. I also got to be on stage with Mayday Parade a little later in the day, and if you follow my snap chats, you might have seen the singing photographer- she was so intently working but she knew every word (and probably had no idea that I was taking a creepster video). It just cool to see a crowd of people who so intently love the same music you do.
Of course we bought some WTK merch so we could do the meet and greet as well. I love that every time I see WTK I get a mess of sweaty hugs. Travis, their lead singer is a huge inspiration for me. Honestly, the whole band is a ball of super-positive energy. I’ve seen them play shows where Travis had the flu and kept running off stage to barf. I’ve seen Danny, their drummer, play a show with one arm. Charles, their bass player, has been battling with cancer, but they have never canceled a show. At this point, I’ve seen them so many times that at least Travis knows me and I brought a gift for his baby girl. He actually hand wrote my favorite quote a few years ago so I could get it in his handwriting for a tattoo. It’s hard to describe how much this band means to me, unless you have ever felt that way about music.
Warped Tour in general is always a coming home experience for me, like I’m back with my people. I was talking to someone who grew up going to Warped Tour when his dad worked the show in Detroit. He’s now done the tour himself 4 years, and he was telling me how great an environment it is because it’s generally a pretty sober event where people are just all getting together to enjoy the music and each other, vs. an event like Coachella where there’s a lot of one-upness and, frankly, a lot of drugs. I had actually intended to take some outfit pictures of other festival-goers, but realized quickly, Warped Tour really isn’t about that. It truly is the music. And the people behind it.
I want to leave with one final thought: a huge thank you to the bands, the folks behind the bands keeping them sounding great, on schedule, safe, etc. (like Kenny Leath, in my picture below with all the tattoos), and to Kevin Lyman, the creator of the longest-running music festival in North America. Warped Tour means so much to so many and I cannot wait to keep attending with my future kids, with my future grandkids, and forever.
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