While resting on the snow after a charity snowboarding event, an idea crept into a young Kevin Lyman’s mind. This idea would come to be known as Warped Tour.
Lyman worked at Citrus College in the 1980s running the Student Center and putting on “$2 Tuesdays,” small concerts with a PA system he found.
Lyman had done different events for charity that combined sports and music such as Board AID, an event where people would snowboard and skateboard for AIDS awareness.
He had heard about X Games coming and decided that he could put together his own tour that focused on music and philanthropy.
Twenty-five years later, Warped Tour still encourages several charities and philanthropic groups to come along with the tour. Groups such as peta2, The Red Cross, Appalachian Wildlife Refuge, Feed our Children
NOW! and many others can be seen while walking through the venues on tour.
The tour even gives special offers to those who donate blood or canned goods.
Originally, Lyman wanted to call the tour ‘The Bomb.” However, the day the tour was to be announced, the Oklahoma City bombing happened and it was back to the drawing board to find a new name. At the time, a magazine called Warped was popular among the skate and surf scene.
“I called my friend that ran the magazine and I said ‘I’ll never put out a magazine if you never put out a tour,’ and that became the Warped Tour, ” Lyman said.
While the music performed at Warped Tour no longer reflects Lyman’s personal taste, it does appeal to the crowd of people that attend it each year it changes as they do.
The tour was never supposed to last as long as it has. Originally, it was supposed to run for one year and then Lyman would pick up a career as an educator.
The first run of the tour had 13 bands for the entirety and a few acts that performed at just some of the 24 venues. Bands such as No Doubt and Sublime performed the first year in 1995.
“We pretty much owe our entire careers to the Warped Tour because they were the first ones to ever give us a break.” Marko DeSantis, a guitarist for the band Sugarcult, who performed at warped in 2001, 2002, and 2004, said. “We were an unknown band to the rest of the world and Warped Tour was kind of our way to shake hands with America and Kevin was nice enough to bring us along.”
By the time 1996 came around, Lyman signed Pennywise, NOFX and other popular bands but didn’t know how they were going to pay all of their acts. That is when his partner at the time suggested that Calvin Klein would be a good fit for a sponsor. Ultimately, they went with the Vans shoe company to be the main sponsor for that tour and every one since.
On Nov. 15, 2017, Lyman announced that the summer of 2018 would be the last full, cross-country run of the tour.
Alan Waddington, who’s been around the tour and works at Citrus College said, “I’m surprised this is the last year. When I saw Kevin at Pomona Warped last year he looked tired and a little frustrated and said he thought he could do the tour for about five more years. We bantered some theories about various age groups; I thought he would hand the tour over to his daughters.”
Vans Warped Tour has sold over 11 million tickets in its 24-year span. It is a year-round project, and the amount of effort and time it takes to organize and produce the tour each summer has taken a toll on Lyman.
He wanted to end the tour on his own terms.
“I’ve done everything I possibly can in the format that I’ve done it in,” Lyman said. “The music industry has changed, the festival landscape has changed. It’s not about selling tickets; it’s just for me personally, I want to grow.”
The spirit and legacy of Warped Tour will stay alive. It thrives in the hearts of the fans and is expressed through the energy and joy on stage. The thought of moving on from Warped Tour is not a scary one for Lyman, but an optimistic one.
“I hear a lot of people are talking about how they’re going to start the next Warped Tour, and I hope they do and I hope they do it better,” Lyman said.
What inspired him many years ago is now on its last chapter, but that doesn’t mean that he will slow down. As busy as Warped Tour makes him, he now more busy than ever.
He hopes to start the teaching career he wanted over 25 years ago.
