Doing our best not to say goodbye to summer just yet, we have one final Warped Tour 2017 piece to throw your way. Like most of you reading this, a lot of the bands out on Warped this year accumulated plenty of lifelong memories over the past few months.
With some being great (tubing with friends, meeting new bands) and others not so great (getting stuck in a port-a-potty), we wanted to find out just what bands remember from their stay at Kevin Lyman’s punk rock summer camp.
To check out what bands like Dance Gavin Dance, Silverstein, Movements, CKY, Knocked Loose, Stick To Your Guns, I Prevail and more encountered out on the road – as well as some unexpected friendships they made on tour – be sure to look below.
Patrick Miranda of Movements
Best Moment: Jet skiing in Laughlin, Nevada. That was insane. We had an off day and rented some jet skis. It was sick. Us, Boston Manor, Trophy Eyes and the Gospel Youth were all hanging out over there and it was just so awesome. So that was the best part of my summer so far! Apart from the shows and whatever.
Worst Moment: We were somewhere in Florida where it was 100 degrees with 90 percent humidity and I was literally doing nothing and still drenched in sweat. I was just sitting down and pouring sweat. I didn’t even have to move! It was horrible. But, it was still worth it.
Unexpected Friendship: The band that I unexpectedly became friends with on this tour is the Acacia Strain. I did not expect to get to know those guys at all, but they all love Movements and I love The Acacia Strain. I’ve always loved their band but I always was kind of intimidated by them. So for them to like us and to want to get to know us and become friends with them has been awesome, so shout out to them.
Jess Margera & Matt Deis of CKY
Best Moment:
Jess: Getting killed by GWAR. I felt like I got knighted.
Matt: You became part of a very special club, being killed by GWAR.
Worst Moment:
Jess: Phoenix, Arizona.
Matt: 118 degrees – in the shade!
Jess: Two songs in, I just almost like, fell over and blacked out.
Matt: [It was] awful because we’re just a bunch of pasty white boys from the Northeast.
Unexpected Friendship:
Jess: American Authors, which is a band that my kids love, but I didn’t know them until now.
Matt: Yeah, I had no clue they were gonna be on this! They asked us for 12 t-shirts for them and all their crew – they made a poster, and put it on our bus and said, “Can we have 6 shirts in large and 6 in XL?” And so, them and their entire crew walked around in CKY shirts and played a show in CKY shirts. And it was like, man, how cool is this?!
Jess: So now I’m officially a hero to my kids.
Matt: And now we are American Author fans.
Will Swan of Dance Gavin Dance
Best Moment: Probably seeing War for the Planet of the Apes; that was a really good movie. I really enjoyed it.
Worst Moment: The one time I threw up. That sucked. I don’t like throwing up! It’s just not cool.
Unexpected Friendship: It was really interesting because I wanted to watch CKY coming into this tour – and I only expected to watch them and that’s it. And now, I could go up to their singer and a couple of their guys and be cool with them. And that’s amazing to me that that is even a thing. So that was really cool that CKY was nice enough to be cool with us and become friends with our band. That was really unexpected.
Derek Bolman of Sworn In
Best Moment: Standing side stage for the Acacia Strain and watching Vincent get three corn dogs in one song. [People] just crowdsurfed ‘em up and brought him snacks on stage. Seeing his face light up, that’s the most genuinely happy I’ve seen him in a long time. So that was my favorite moment from this tour.
Worst Moment: It was pouring rain, it was still about 100 degrees, pouring rain, I’m trying to walk back to our trailer and I first step in a big pile of mud in fresh shoes. So, already off to a bad start. And then, I step in another puddle, and…. Yeah, I was pretty upset. But then I took a shower outside in the rain and it made it a little better.
Unexpected Friendship: I met the guys in Counterparts for the first time on this tour. I didn’t think they would like me but they ended up being really cool guys. It’s cool to make new friendships just out of nowhere with people that you wouldn’t have thought to meet.
Bryan Garris of Knocked Loose
Best Moment: When Luna, my friend’s 7-year-old daughter, came out and helped us sing “Counting Worms” in Chicago.
Worst Moment: Either 1) all the rain or 2) when we played Kansas and none of the security guards wanted to do their job and I had to get down and help kids over the barricades so that they didn’t break their necks.
Unexpected Friendship: Boston Manor and Movements. Me and Pat from Movements have become extremely close and I just love both of those bands so much.
Nathan Hardy & Tyler Hill of Microwave
Best Moment:
Tyler: Either tubing the San Marcos, I think it was…
Nathan: It was south of Austin.
Tyler: Yeah, we had 2 off days, no one off day…
Nathan: I feel like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite with a bunch of steak in my mouth trying to talk. Hell yeah.
Tyler: We had an off day in Texas, so we went to Don’s Fish Camp in San Marcos and floated the river with Boston Manor and some of the guys from Movements and Knocked Loose. It was a good time.
Worst Moment:
Tyler: I think when we woke up in…
Nathan: Florida.
Tyler: [laughs] Flordia was rough. Or when we woke up in Buffalo and we opened the door and it’s raining so hard there’s a river running under the bandwagon. That sucked.
Nathan: Two weeks into the tour… I feel like usually your body needs to recuperate after you’re in the sun during a hot day so you wouldn’t really go out as much the next day or whatever but you can’t when you’re on Warped Tour. You just have to just keep going out into the sun. So I feel like two weeks into the tour, everyone’s body had to make an adjustment. I felt so sick and shitty. I would go outside when it was hot and I’d be lightheaded. But then it got better. Your body just adjusts to being outside all the time. Now we’re in California, living it up on the West Coast.
Unexpected Friendship:
Nathan: Knocked Loose. I guess we would’ve expected to be friends just because we were sharing a wagon, so hopefully we weren’t going to hate each other. Even though we’d never met them before the tour.
Tyler: Yeah, we met them the day we got on the bandwagon with them.
Nathan: But they’re actually… if we were at home, we’d hang out if we lived in the same place. They’re awesome. They’re pretty similar dudes, it’s pretty cool.
Jesse Barnett of Stick To Your Guns
Best Moment: The best moment for me to hear about was probably the worst moment for Adrian from Counterparts. He was in a port-a-potty and a forklift came, picked it up, and almost, actually not almost, actually knocked it over on its side and somehow no shit got on Adrian. Hearing that story was my favorite part of Warped Tour.
Worst Moment: We got into a bit of a situation with Warped Tour security in Denver – that sucked. It got handled alright, but having to deal with that was stupid.
Unexpected Friendship: It would be Hawthorne Heights. We became good friends with them in 2013 because we did the Warped Tour with them then as well, and we did it again this year. But that is a connection that a lot of people wouldn’t expect.
Shane Told of Silverstein
Best Moment: Warped Tour is over, and we just finished up our final show, which, to answer your first question of my favorite moment, it was today in Pomona, CA. Pomona, CA always comes out. California in general, Southern California, has always been so sweet to us and it was just a smash today, it was just smashing. So shout out to everybody here in Southern California for making this such a great way to end. No offense to some of the other places on the tour, we had fun at almost every show – except for the ones that rained, which was a lot of them actually – but today was a great way to end it and I am really happy to have had beautiful weather and smiling people and ended it there.
Worst Moment: As for the worst moment, I mentioned the rain… I believe it rained 12 days in a row and believe me after going through 12 days of that, I wanted to be anywhere but Warped Tour and I was getting very burnt out. Luckily we hit the east coast so we had a few great shows there and it was awesome, but I will never forget walking back to my trailer after a rainy show and there being so much water on the trailer tent behind our trailer that it caved in and the legs of the tent were all bent out. The water was so heavy I had to get a hockey stick – yes, we travel with hockey sticks wherever we go, we are Canadian – and I had to push all the water up which almost collapsed the tent but it didn’t. As far as worst moments go that is a pretty good worst moment.
Unexpected Friendship: There were many, but number one has to be Monique from Save Ferris, such a lovely lady and someone I am very proud to call my friend. It’s a really cool story how we met. We met one day when I was just chilling at my trailer drinking a beer, and she came up to me and said “I like you, do you want to be friends?” and I responded “Yup” and we said “Alright, we are friends” and we became friends! It’s funny because that is how you make friends when you are six, but now even at 36, it reverts back to then. Shout out to Monique from Save Ferris, my girl, the best!
Garrett Russell of Silent Planet
Best Moment: The best moment of Warped Tour was probably meeting a very brave transgendered boy who told me that our music has helped him a lot with his transition. Despite the religious opposition that he has experienced through various religious groups in his life, he still believes in God, that God loves him and that he was not a mistake nor is his gender inside. That was a very powerful and probably my favorite moment of Warped Tour meeting him in Indianapolis.
Worst Moment: Pissing myself, and it was really hot outside, I think it was somewhere in Texas. That was my least favorite part of Warped Tour.
Unexpected Friendship: Creeper. It took me a really long time to finally catch one of their sets but then I met them, started hanging out with them on their band wagon and chilled with them there and started talking to them. We were mutual fans of the band Architects who I have always loved, so that was really cool. The band Creeper is just so talented and cool, and even though we are on different stages, it was really cool to get to know them and they are great.
Steve Menoian of I Prevail
Best Moment: Our hometown show in Detroit: We went big on production. We got some confetti and streamers, so we did all that up. It was a big show, got to see our friends and family. It was super fun and hype.
Worst Moment: I think we were in Albuquerque and it was 120 degrees – which, you don’t know how hot 120 gets until you’re in it – and basically our computer which runs the whole brain of our show (it runs metronome, click, and keeps us on time) got so hot that it was like warping speed which slowed down the processing speeds. So we got to our first song and the first part hits and it was like at half speed and we didn’t know what was going on. We thought we were on shrooms like, “What do we do before the set?” We were looking at each other not knowing what to do. And that was super weird, we thought we were on drugs it was crazy. We call it an acid trip, I Prevail version.
Unexpected Friendship: There were so many, our stage got pretty tight. The dudes in Attila were super cool and there was a really cool rapper out here named Watsky who has a lot of cool buzz going for him and he has a really awesome band and his show is really tight. Those are the two big ones, but we hung out with a lot of bands. We hung out with the Beartooth dudes a lot. Futuristic, another rapper, we get along with the rappers a lot on this tour I don’t know what it was, and his DJ who gets in our pit every day and tells everyone what to do and pushes them around it was awesome. A lot of good bromances formed.
Blothar, Beefcake the Mighty & Pustulus Maximus of GWAR
Best & Worst Moment:
Blothar: The best part of Warped Tour was exposing ourselves to people who have never seen us before. The worst part, I don’t know, exposing ourselves to people who have never seen us before.
Beefcake: The best part about Warped Tour was catering. The worst part about Warped Tour was catering.
Pustulus: The best part is going home. The worst part was starting the tour.
Band You Wanted To Kill But Didn’t Get To:
Blothar: The one band I wanted to kill but didn’t get to was Save Ferris. I really want to strangle that singer, if you know what I mean.
Beefcake: I’d say Hawthorne Heights because I want to kill emo.
Pustulus: I just wanted to nap all day and drink alcohol.
