Warped Tour Founder & Vets Explain What Makes the Traveling Fest So Special: ‘Best Summer Camp on the Planet’

When Warped Tour kicked off in 1995, we’re guessing founder Kevin Lyman didn’t have any idea he’d be mounting a 30th-anniversary edition of his traveling rock fest in 2025 — or that he’d be named Billboard‘s 2025 Visionary at Monday’s (Nov. 3) Billboard Live Music Summit for all the ways he’s helped revolutionize the industry. In fact, he joked onstage that he thought he’d be receiving a different honor: “When you called, I thought it was maybe the ’64 Under 65’ now, and I finally made the list.”

During a panel titled “How Warped Tour Built A Lasting Legacy – And Returned In 2025” at West Hollywood, California’s, 1 Hotel, Lyman was joined by Steve Van Doren, an executive from the tour’s presenting sponsor Vans, as well as Warped vet Fletcher Dragge from the SoCal punk band Pennywise and first-time performer-but-longtime attendee Devin Papdol from L.A. pop-rock band Honey Revenge for a conversation moderated by Billboard editor Taylor Mims.

Below, find the best quotes from each panelist about what makes Warped Tour so special and how it’s evolved across three decades.

Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman

It was always about trying to get people out to their first festival. You know, having the show end by sunset was a big part of it too. Because to me, 90% of the problems were caused by 10% of the people under cover of darkness at shows. So if we could bring it into the sunshine, we eliminated some of the problems we had, maybe of certain things in punk rock, but it gave people a chance to listen to the music and really observe. … Everything we did from the reverse daycare center [letting parents attend for free in a “Parents’ tent” so teens could attend], all these things I developed were how to get these young people turned on to this music at a younger age, so they can stay with us. I always said they stayed with us until they were 19, and then they wanted to go to a festival and burn up their student loans and do modeling in the desert.

Vans’ Steve Van Doren

I wanted to get skateboarding from Florida, Texas and California to the rest of the country. He [Lyman] wanted to get music in the rest of the country, 35 to 45 stops each year. I thought it’d be perfect. And no room for rock stars — learned that one early. Everybody’s treated the same. Being able to meet [Pennywise’s] Fletcher in the early days, where he invited me over to the barbecue area, and that’s where you get to meet everybody. Everybody’s done at 8:30, 9 o’clock at night. The buses aren’t leaving until 11 o’clock or 11:30, so everybody’s hungry, come back there. And every day is a little bit different.

Pennywise’s Fletcher Dragge

I never went to summer camp, but it was the best summer camp on the planet. So why wouldn’t you go do what you love to do: play music and hang out with the coolest people and do the coolest sh–? Kevin and these guys would always arrange off days, like river trips or wherever you were, and everyone would come, like, all crew, all bands. It was just completely, undeniably some of the best times of my life. So it was like a no-brainer. “You want to come?” Yes. Ten years later: “Now you want to come?” Yes.

Honey Revenge’s Devin Papadol

I went to my first Warped Tour in 2013 and it was kind of the first opportunity for me to be around so many people that liked the same music as me. … Going to Warped opened up this incredible community that I didn’t know was real locally to me; it kind of felt far away until I went. And I went every year until it stopped. … It was how I found all of the music I ended up listening to, and all the music that ended up influencing Honey Revenge.