This year’s Alternative Press Tour features Black Veil Brides, Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, I See Stars, VersaEmerge and Conditions. Pre-sales begin at 12 p.m. local time January 10th with general tickets on sale January 15th. Each ticket comes with a free one-year subscription to AP for you or a friend (but if you’re an AP Veteran such as myself, then the free subscription doesn’t apply to you).
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Circa Survive and Anberlin will begin the on a co-headlining tour starting on January 14th in Richmond, Virginia. Foxy Shazam will make an appearance on a select few dates. Tickets on sale November 24th. Read More
After completing their long adventure on the Vans Warped Tour, this fall The Summer Set will begin headlining their first tour alongside Stereo Skyline, Mod Sun, and Austin Gibbs. On a few select dates, the tour will also be joined by School Boy Humor and The Downtown Fiction. This ordeal has been titled The Travelin’ Show. Be ready. Read More
On December 1st “The Christmas Pageant” tour brought to you by Alternative Press featuring Family Force 5, Forever The Sickest Kids, Secondhand Serenade & Shorelines End will kick off in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Family Force 5’s mix of dance and rock, funky rhythms and percolating tunes is the reason they embarked on the AP tour from March to May promoting the album “Dance or Die” and headlining concerts throughout the US. In December ’08, the band won the Best Christian Rock Artist, Best Crunk Rock/Rap Artist along with Best Rock Album for “Dance or Die” at the Top In Rock Awards. Also on the tour, Forever The Sickest Kids’ style is a blend of classic-lined power-pop, punk energy and space-age electronics. Together, Family Force 5, Forever The Sickest Kids, Secondhand Serenade, and Shorelines end are going to make their fans’ holiday even greater.
Said to be released this January, All Time Low will be unveiling their fourth full-length onto Interscope Records. According to Alternative Press, the quartet will also be embarking on a fall tour, but only playing in intimate and relatively smaller venues, completely different than the ones they are usually found in. This tour, labeled the My Small Package Tour will be joined by A Rocket to the Moon following their Shout it Out Tour with Hanson. Also currently streaming online is their new track “Actors” which will appear on the new album.
Covering the Milwaukee stop of the Vans Warped Tour, I was able to experience the tour from the eye of the press. Thanks to our lovely Warped coordinator Bethany, we were able to receive interviews with Brian from The Summer Set, Derek – frontman of Mayday Parade, members of Shut Up & Deal, and finally with Texas native Bryce Avary, creator and genius behind the remarkable act known as The Rocket Summer; also the man I have been breaking my back to meet since I was a mere tweenager. In between catching the sets of Never Shout Never and Bring Me The Horizon (who are no strangers to the tour), we also caught up on the latest clothing lines whose apparel I expect to hit your back no later than in the next few months. Those companies included Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Umbrella Clothing, (infamous on the tour for having a double tent exhibiting a giant picture of everyone’s role model, Miley Cyrus), and Choonimals Clothing company.
The band who has moved from small town venues to stages on every date of the Warped was suburban Chicago’s hometown pride and joy, Breathe Electric. Other bands included Anarbor, Confide, Breathe Carolina, and Ice Nine Kills. A big part of the tour that makes up a fraction of the tents were the non-profit organizations such as Warped Eco, Invisible Children, Keep A Breast, and Music Saves Lives. And although nostalgia and bittersweet sadness will soon set in due to the fact that the tour is coming to a close within a few weeks, Kevin Lyman has once again created an outlet for kids (and a select few adults) to come out and enjoy the days of summer. Leaving fans with fond memories of skating, music, overpriced water, and two men in banana suits, we’re nothing if not ready to do it all over again next summer at the Vans Warped Tour 2011: sweet seventeen.
The Milwaukee stop of the Bamboozle Roadshow was hands down one of the best shows the Rave has and will see this summer. With 14 bands and four stages being played on at once, favorites of the night on the second stage included Stereo Skyline along with Great Big Planes. On the headlining stage in order was Forever The Sickest Kids, hellogoodbye, LMFAO, Third Eye Blind, All Time Low, and Boys Like Girls. A Los Angeles band that stood out on the second stage was Drive A, who you can find on the rest of the tour. Noise Apparel made an appearance at a merch table downstairs, with hilarious Chris and Markie drawing Read More
With the release of their first album, It’s All Happening, Iwrestledabearonce has brought a new standard of awesome to the airwaves. After their formation in 2007 they released their self-titled EP, causing thousands of metal, experimental, and hardcore fans (like yours truly) to take notice. Then in June of ’09 after signing to Century Media, the band released their first album, It’s All Happening, that included the track “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon” from their EP. With a mixture of every genre from jazz to grindcore, their slogan “Fuck Genres” could not sum it up any clearer. After a sea of same sounding bands, this group is a breath of fresh air amongst frontwoman Krysta Cameron’s deep growls and soulful wails paired with metalicious riffs (supplied by guitarists Steven Bradley and John Ganey) and curb stomping bass and drums (Mike Martin wields the bass while Mike Montgomery pounds the drums) would make any die-hard metal fan shed a tear. I not only love this band because of their uniqueness but because we need more awesome women like Krysta showing that girls can do metal just as hard as the boys can.
Starting on July 20th you can see them on the Vans Warped Tour as well as visit their Myspace found here.
On the same epic day I asked some kid to TWIRP (hello to you if you’re reading this), the Once It Hits Your Lips Tour was hitting the streets Milwaukee. It was made up of men from The Friday Night Boys, Anarbor, The Bigger Lights, and The Ready Set. Surprisingly, the tour was a relatively small event, being held on the smallest stage of the Rave. There were less than 50 people there, and that could possibly be due to the fact that it was on a Tuesday night, haha. Favorite highlight of the show would have to be Matt (merch man of the night) who gave us love advice and received a lecture from me on the dangers of smoking. Another moment of epic was hiding in a Kim Possible blanket with Slade and Josh (members of the tour), after running from gangsters and being ignored by McDonalds workers. As the teethbrushing Ke$ha would say, we went till “they kicked us out” and were forced to go outside. And as the snow continued to fall, we realized it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to leave coats in the car. But overall the setlists were good, the fan girls were kept at a minimum, and the musicians were polite and smelled alright.
On the 9th of February, Hopeless Records and Sub City are going to release the ninth volume of their Take Action Compilations. They went up on presale in January, and all profits made from the sales of the album will go towards charities. This year, Take Action is spotlighted by the “Driving for Donors” charity, who have traveled around America in their “Donormobile” with the hope of signing people up to the National Marrow Registry to help find bone marrow matches for people in need of a transplant. Since then, they have added over 22,000 donors to the registry. This album will include tracks from bands such as We The Kings, Mayday Parade, and Cobra Starship. Also, on the discs will be all of the bands we saw on the Once It Hits Your Lip tour that is still going on currently. These songs will include exclusive tracks not yet heard, and also remixes of certain singles. The Take Action Tour and foundation, is a love child of Sub City and Hopeless formed in 1999. It brings various bands together on a nation-wide tour for weeks. At all tour dates, they sell compilations, to help raise and promote awareness on important issues such as suicide Read More
“Hanging out behind the club on the weekend, acting stupid, getting drunk with my best friends, I couldn’t wait for the summer and the Warped Tour, I remember it’s the first time that I saw her there.” –Blink 182
Warped is the most important days of the year to kids like me. When everyone is shoved back into the cramped halls of their local high school, this summer tour is the epitome of heaven, only instead of God and angels, you have Kevin Lyman and sweaty kids with smeared “FREE HUGS” written on their chests. Every year I find that the Milwaukee date is always relatively small, giving you easier access to your favorite musicians, and the Chicago date is always packed to the core with bikini-sporting girls and stunningly scrawny men. Dragging fellow writers Jordan and Vada, along with myself, to both dates, we all had a different little take on this geniously crafted summer festival which is finally coming to a close on the 23rd of August. Read More
