You may be pulling out your winter coat and throwing wood in the fire, but Warped Tour has just announced their 2013 tour dates. Start envisioning those long summer nights, and dreaming up your ideal line up, because before you know it, it will be Warped Tour season again. We for one, can not wait. Check out the dates after the jump.
Boston pop-punk band Transit have been getting really into acoustic performances this year, having performed on the Acoustic Basement stage almost every day at the Vans Warped Tour this past summer. The unplugged renditions of their own songs were incredibly well-received by fans and newcomers, as were the few covers that they played.
Today the band released a video of themselves covering one of their “personal favorite” songs, “Motorcycle Drive By” by Third Eye Blind. Filmed and recorded at Maximum Sound Studios near Boston, MA, this is a heartfelt rendition that fits well with the band’s sound, showing where some of their inspiration comes from. Check out the video below:
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It’s time to get out of this town. It’s haunting, this presence. If the verse lyrics from post-hardcore band Vanna‘s Safe To Say ever referred to their hometown of Boston, Mass., we’d never guess it now. After kicking off 2012 with tours through Europe and the U.S. from February to April, then almost immediately turning around and jumping on the Warped Tour, Vanna front man Davey Muise and guitarist Joel Pastuszak told us about how great it was to be home at the Warped Tour stop in Mansfield, Mass. Apart from touring, in the last six months Vanna have picked up new members Pastuszak and Erik Gross, and have begun working on a fourth LP after releasing their third full-length album, And They Came Baring Bones in 2011. Muise and Pastuszak talked to us about friends, family, and tour craziness over the last few months.
OS: You guys are playing back in your hometown, that’s got to be great. What’s it like to be back?
DM: It’s awesome to be back, all of our families are here and you know, we’re just looking forward to our New England date to prove to the rest of the tour that we are a ˜worth it’ band [laughs].
OS: You haven’t played with Four Year Strong in a long time, how does it feel to be touring with some hometown friends again?
DM: It’s cool, it’s cool ˜cause like Four Year [Strong], Transit, A Loss For Words, Man Overboard, Make Do, and Mend (even though they’re kind of from Jersey), it’s a lot of New England bands on this tour and it just feels really really good to tour with bands from New England; slash I apologize to everyone who’s not from New England on this tour because we can get pretty rowdy and obnoxious. It’s cool; it’s definitely cool to have everybody out. Four Year’s killing it, A Loss For Words is killing it, all the New England bands are doing so well, I’m just proud of my friends.
JP: We pretty much just took over the whole tour.
Hello Everyone!
TM James here again. Wednesday morning, I woke up in a hotel just outside Cincinnati, OH, and thought to myself, “Wow, it’s really over.” The time was 8:05 AM, my flight was just hours from departure, and I had a pain in my stomach reminiscent of the final days of summer camp. A month had passed like a week and I was no longer beside Larry g(EE) and his bandmates, but the memories of our adventures on Vans Warped Tour 2012 were still fresh in my mind. It would take weeks to share everything, so Larry and I decided to pick five of our favorite moments and share them with the masses. This is what I will never forget about my summer on the world’s largest traveling music festival:
1. Bonner Springs, KS – Starting in Detroit, the initial dates of our month on Warped Tour passed like a busy blur of handshakes, bass lines, and checklists. The shows were good, but the band was still adjusting to the challenge of being a soul band on what most consider a punk-heavy festival, and it was not until we rolled through a tiny, uneven parking lot in Kansas that we first hit our groove. I clearly remember standing on the side of the stage in the early, albeit hot afternoon and finding myself unable to stop smiling as the band hit the bridge of “Higher.” There was an energy in the air unlike any other and it lifted our sweat-drenched souls to new heights. Michigan may have been the beginning, but this was the first day things really came together.
Some of the craziest music fans reside in the middle of the country
It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to call New Jersey pop punk act Man Overboard a touring machine. Their schedule for 2012 has so far included dates in the United Kingdom, United States, continental Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. As if that weren’t enough, this summer they played every single date on notoriously brutal The Vans Warped Tour. We caught up with guitarist Justin Collier at their Mansfield, MA Warped Tour stop to talk stage dives, Russian punk shows, and why little girls love New Found Glory.
OS: You guys played a killer set earlier today, even though you had a pretty early time slot.
JC: I think that a lot of bands get really bummed out when they first come on the tour and find out they have to play either really early or really late. They think that if they play first, then nobody’s going to be there, and if they play last, then everybody’s going to be gone already. Even though some kids at our signing today told us that they missed our set because they didn’t get there until 1 p.m, I think a lot of kids do get there early. Some of the people who arrive early and don’t have anyone to watch will think, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that band. I’ll check them out.” And that’s half the battle of Warped Tour. That’s what you’re here for”to get new fans.
OS: But by now, you guys have become a fairly established act on the tour, and it doesn’t seem like you need to try incredibly hard to get a lot of people out to see you. There were a certainly a lot of people out there this morning.
JC: It’s different in different places, you know? When you play somewhere like Boston and there are 20,000 people out there, it’s a little easier than when you play Kansas and there are only 5,000 people for all of the bands on the tour. Being from a city like Boston or Philly, where I’m from, there are always good shows. There would be bands that I’d see in Philly and I’d think, “Wow, they’re huge,” but I’d see them somewhere else and realize that they weren’t as big as they seemed.
OS: Being from a place with very intense scene loyalty, like the Philly or Jersey area, how do you feel when you tour abroad? You guys have toured in some very distant places recently, like Russia and Ukraine. What effect do those experiences have on the feeling of musical place you get from your hometowns?
JC: It makes me really appreciate being from the city of Philadelphia. I think that I didn’t before, but now I do, because there are things like R5 Productions and other really great companies, people, and collectives that do shows and events and all kinds of cool stuff. I have a very high standard of how punk shows should be run, but then we would go somewhere like Russia and, not to their discredit, they just haven’t been bred the same way that Phildelphians and Bostonians have been bred to run punk shows. I’m used to some pretty cool shit, but other places are just different and you have to get used to it. It’s always an adventure going somewhere else anyway.
The well laid plans of mice and men often falter. Most interpretations agree on the same principle; that which can be planned to the most cautious detail can still go awry. It’s from this famous quote out of John Steinbeck’s novel that metalcore band Of Mice & Men have defined their title. Of Mice & Men, formed in 2009, have undoubtedly upheld the theme of their moniker through the years, encountering various adversities in the form of internal disputes, lineup changes, and even heart surgeries. However, after three years of navigating stormy waters, it seems the hardcore quartet have finally stepped on level ground.
Following their set at the Warped Tour stop in Mansfield, Mass., Of Mice & Men took a moment to discuss with us past hardships, current achievements, and future endeavors. When asked about the obstacles overcome, drummer Valentino Artega stated, We’re stronger as a whole. Lead guitarist Phil Manansala chimed in, Yeah, I’d say all those things the band have been through have just really built a solid foundation of what we want to do with the band. Despite all the disturbances, OM&M are now focused on the reissue of their second studio album, The Flood, originally released in June of 2011. Front man Austin Carlile, who recently suffered from a viral infection in his heart this past March, told us, We’re doing a re-release of The Flood. It’s four songs, and they’re four really fast, sad, angry, pissed off songs.