Warming Up for Warped: Behind the Scenes Pics

Steve van Doren, son of one of the founders of Vans shoes, has been partnered with Warped since 1995. Each year before the tour starts, Van Doren sets up hundreds of Vans sneakers on rehearsal day so each crew member can begin the tour with a fresh (and free) pair of shoes. Incredibly, Van Doren has traveled with Warped on every tour date until two years ago, when health troubles forced him to cut back his presence at the fest (he expects to be present for 40 percent of this year's tour). "I'm an older guy at 56 but I'm a teenager at heart," Van Doren said. "It's so great being out and seeing the young people, plus I get to see what the market is like. I'm always watching feet to see what they're wearing." As for the selection of bands, Van Doren says, "I just adapt to whatever Kevin [Lyman, Warped founder) throws out. I've been around skateboarding my whole life and that's the kind of music they listen to. I do enjoy alternative and punk rock, Pennywise is one of my favorite bands and I loved seeing the Specials a few years after the tour started. When the tour is over, sometimes I'll go home and I put on a CD and my wife is like, 'Uh, what's that?' And I'll say, 'This band is great! You just gotta watch them live and appreciate what they do and how hard they work.'"

Mike—who is featured on Fuse's upcoming series "Warped Roadies"—is returning to Warped Tour for his second year as a crew member. He described his first year experience to us: "It was eye-opening. Warped Tour is one of the biggest, craziest tours out there and being on the bus is an intense experience. It's like jumping into a tornado and going along for the ride. [But] it really becomes a family environment. That is the coolest part of it: Everybody becomes your best friend by the end. The people who aren't cut out for this get weeded out pretty quick, [but] the truth is, I've seen more faces this year than I've missed. More people than not come back." Mike says the thing that surprised him the most about Warped was, "How filthy you get with the lack of showers. We have a shower on our bus, but it's only enough for you to get damp, soap up and turn the water on long enough to get mostly un-soapy. We also do bird baths, the whole deal. Baby wipes are huge here. [Even] after today, it will smell. Especially with Matador Beef Jerky as a sponsor." Sounds pungent! For the record, Mike used to be in two bands: HolloH and Cozette, but now he just writes music on his own.

Although Kevin has done Warped Tour for many years, this is his first time tour-managing Pierce the Veil for the traveling fest. He said he's been with the band "literally one day, [for] one show last week. I did Warped in 2007 and 2008 with As I Lay Dying. [With Warped], you have to be on your feet all the time because things change on a whim. And you have to be up really early. There's good and bad [on the tour]. You gotta walk a lot, survey everything, find out where everything is, check in with right people. The easy thing is that your day is over early. The last bands go on at 7:30 or something so your days are over at 8. After that, there's usually a barbeque or after party. Every time I do Warped Tour I lose a bunch of weight because you're out and sweating," he said (prior to bringing the band five pizzas). "So I'm looking forward to losing some lbs."

Before tackling five pizzas.

Kenny—a silver-haired superhero of a roadie—said he's been with Warped Tour for 11 or 12 years. Much like everyone else I spoke with, Kenny's favorite thing about the tour is the sense of family it fosters. "It’s definitely the camaraderie, all the people you meet over the years [that keeps you] coming back. It's family time. Last year was like magic time. I don't know man, everybody came together. I can't put my finger on it, but it was a love-fest vibe thing. Honestly, it was groovy: That's the word. Everybody was grooving, it was a really good vibe last year. Plus Lucero was there." For Kenny, the only real drawback is that some of the places Warped hits aren't the best fit for their setup. "Some venues aren't ideal for what we do. We make it work, but [bad venues] make it harder than it should be. But it's something we overcome. The Gorge [in Washington] is rough. We used to do Randall's Island in New York and that was tough. Honestly, I thought it was waste dump of some sort that they turned into a park." Kenny is also one of the "Warped Roadies," and he explained why he was interested in doing the TV show. "I want to give kids who are thinking about doing this for their life a little heads-up of what they're in for. This tour is one of the roughest tours on there. But once you make this tour happen, you are set for any tour."

"This is going to be my 17th year, which is one year less than the tour's been going," Lisa told us. "Even after 17 years I'm excited to be out on Warped Tour. We're a well-oiled machine: It's organized chaos. We process hundreds of people, hundreds of bands and we set up seven to eight stages. It's 4pm now and we're ready to go. I could probably do this in my sleep, but I hope I never stop learning. I don't ever want to feel like I know everything." Considering Warped roadies construct the whole apparatus the same day the bands play, there isn't a huge danger of the job getting stale or rote. "A lot of venues this year are new. We don't know half the time if we're having an office inside or popping tents on the side of a building and running extension cords for power: We find that our when we get there. For years we were like, 'Let's do a production trailer so we travel with our production and we're ready to go.' But that's not exciting— I didn't take a 9 to 5 job because I don't want to be in the same place every day. I want to be somewhere different, experience a different challenge." Lisa also talked about how Warped was family, both figuratively and literally. "Kevin Lyman [Warped founder], his daughter is out here with us this year. She was born 13 days before the first Warped Tour started, now she's out here deejaying one of our stages and working in production with me. That's how family we are. Once you get into the fold, you don't want to leave."

Another one of the tour veterans on Fuse's "Warped Roadies," Andrew has been with the punk fest for five years now. He described how he got involved in the first place: "A friend of mine did it and it always looked like he had so much fun. Music has always been my first passion and I love traveling, too, so it was kind of a f**king no-brainer. Once you get out here, there's a lot more work to it [than you expect], but when you come back year after year it's like a family. It's actually a pretty small industry." We spoke with Andrew while he was loading a seemingly infinite number of boxes of t-shirts into an enormous semi. "I got a good sleep last night, but you just kind of forget the massive quantity of all the bullsh*t that [must be done]. Boxes and boxes coming in. I've been doing this all morning—it's like, Santa Maria!" Andrew first learned he was on the "Warped Roadies" show via an online trailer. "[The producers] gave me a call and asked me to come to L.A. to interview. We showed up, got along great and after that I didn't really hear anything. Then all of a sudden there's a trailer online saying we're doing a show. They contacted us [to confirm] after that."

Victoria is hitting Warped for the fourth time. She described herself as a "Jackie of all trades" last year, but her 2012 gig is promoting Matthew Lillard's new film, "Fat Kid Rules the World" (a fitting connection since Lillard starred in "SLC Punk!" and this year's Warped kicks off in Salt Lake City). "It's about this high school kid who is trying to find his way... he meets a guy and they start a band. It's about connecting to others and being inspired by music." Lillard, who directed the film, will be present for half of the Warped dates to promote the film. The movie is "touring" with the fest so that kids from smaller markets will ask theaters in their area to screen "Fat Kid Rules the World." Aside from the film project, Victoria said she was "just excited to be out here with my Warped family again. I feel this tour fosters a real sense of community that other tours don't. For instance, last year in Houston there was a guy with a huge cart full of stuff. He went over a bump in a field and everything went toppling. And 25 different people, I kid you not, came out to help him and they had no idea who he was. It's just a sense of camaraderie. It feels like home."

You know those rubber bracelets that say "I [heart] boobies"? Those come from the Keep a Breast Foundation, the breast cancer awareness campaign that Christina works for. This is her second year at Warped. She said the biggest surprise of her first year was "how much work is actually involved. [But] the crew that's on Warped, almost everyone wants to come back. It’s a big family. It's punk rock summer camp and the fun definitely outweighs the work. Some of my greatest friends I met on Warped Tour." Christina describes a typical day for her: "Every day we set up the whole tent, distribute information about the organization and educate people how to prevent cancer or catch it really early. We also accept donations." Christina says the organization probably gives out 400 to 600 bracelets a day on average. That's a lot of love for boobies right there.

"Brooklyn" has been with Warped for ten years now in a variety of capacities. "I made the movie 'Punk Rock Holocaust,' I produced the first season of "Warped Wednesdays" on Fuse, I was the water guy, I did the setup crew, I was a sh*tty stage manager, I was a medium stage manager and I was a really good stage manager for three years. I'm currently tour-managing the rapper Yelawolf, but right now he's in the studio so I get to come out for two weeks and kick it with my [Warped] family. I loved stage managing and I really like tour-managing Yelawolf. He's a really humble, respectful guy and we get along really well. His setup is two turntables and a microphone, so I can do soundcheck in 15 minutes." He also told us about Warped's efforts toward producing an eco-friendly tour. "We've been doing biodiesel for eight years on this tour. A lot of the buses, all the generators for the stages and some of the trucks are fueled via biodiesel. All the music and sound is powered by biodiesel: It reduces our carbon footprint. It is more expensive but there are tax incentives and ways to mitigate the cost." According to Brooklyn, 5,000 gallons of biodiesel were set to arrive for the first day of the tour, with another 8,000 arriving two days later. "This is my first year doing biodiesel for Warped, but I was a biodiesel pioneer on Warped Tour ten years ago. We toured on a school bus and ran it on biodiesel, pulling a trailer behind the bus that we would refill wherever we could get it. So I was the original."

After seven years of putting on Silent Discos for Bonnaroo, Silent Events owner Ryan Dowd is bringing the electronic experience to Warped. In case you aren't familiar, a Silent Disco is a deejayed dance event where the participants can only hear the music by wearing a pair of headphones—so to outsiders, it just looks like a bunch of people dancing to silence. This is Silent Disco's first year at the mostly punk fest. Dowd thinks that "even the type of kids who come to Warped secretly are getting in to some electronica. It's so hugely popular how could you not?" He described the Silent Disco experience as "very intimate but also really communal. You can take off the headphones and have a conversation with the DJ, where at any other club you're just shouting, 'What? What?'" He noted the "sport of people watching" is part of the fun. "When you're walking by and watching 300 kids throwing down and you don't hear what they're dancing to, it looks really cool." Wick-It the Instigator—who impressed Big Boi by mashing up one of his songs with the Black Keys—is one of this year's DJs, so if you're headed to Warped, you might want to grab one of the 300 pairs of available headphones and learn what it's all about.