The warped tour is a well established travelling rock festival based in the US including a few stops in Canada, and even the UK and a few other international locations on a few different occasions. It began in 1995 and has been an annual event ever since, making it the largest touring music festival in North America, as well as the longest running touring music festival in North America.
The festival encompasses a number of different genres of music from ska to hip hip, but the main focus is on rock, punk and metal. With so many once dedicated rock music festivals seeing a trend towards more popular genres of music such as pop and electronic, the Vans Warped Tour sticks very strongly to it's roots. The festival often includes performances from repeat artists such as NOFX, Anti-Flag and The Casualties, and other notable acts to grace the stage have been Echosmith, The Used, Yellowcard and The Dropkick Murphys. The warped tour is an important contributor the US music scene and has been attributed for bringing some now household names such as Paramore, Blink-182 and My Chemical Romance to the spotlight. There is a huge inflatable lineup at each festival that states the running order and stage locations of each artist which changes from city to city as no two festivals have exactly the same setup.
As well as traditional performances, there is a battle of the the bands on the tour every year, open for participants in lesser known or even completely unknown bands to enter. In 2005, over 10,000 bands entered. Those who are successful in the battle have the chance to perform the Ernie Ball Stage at the events. Some of the musicians performing on the tour like to give out music lessons to aspiring musicians in the crowds, and there is a dedicated mobile studio bus that helps with educating festival goers.
To coincide with the start of the tour, and to build up a lot of hype for the event, there is an official compilation album release which includes music from the 50 of the artists performing on the tour that year. This is simply called “Warped Tour Tour Compilation” and is distributed annually.
The festival also focusses a lot on charity and activism. There are opportunities to donate blood in exchange for for backstage passes, information and stands about non profit charities who are advocating their cause, and a strong encouragement to recycle. 25 cents from every ticket to the tour sold is donated to the Hollywood Heart charity, and the profits from the festival have also been contributed towards the Hurricane Katrina relief in the past. All festival busses uses bio-fuel in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the festival.
The tour stops at a large number of major cities all over America during the course of the summer, and local details can be found on the festival website (vanswarpedtour.com). The festival organisers allow children to take a parent with them for free, and all ages are welcome to the tour.