Vans Warped Tour, Thurs., July 14, 11 a.m., Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain (1000 Montage Mountain Road, Scranton). $43.50, via box office, Ticketmaster. Info: vanswarpedtour.com
The day-long festival known as the Vans Warped Tour is notorious for having a deluge of musical acts and providing sweaty, exhausting, raucous fun, all for the price of one little admission ticket. For Matt Thiessen, the lead singer of Relient K, all of that is what makes this, the band’s third year touring with Warped, worth the effort.
“It’s just always fun to see where you fit in with the roster,” he explained when he checked in with the Weekender recently from the tour’s stop in Pomona, Calif. “And then there’s just the hippie, camping element of being dirty and sweaty and rock ’n’ roll, kind of communing with the kids that are there, too.”
The melting pot aspect of Warped Tour, which hits the Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain Thursday, July 14, appeals to Thiessen, and though Relient K fits into the general punk genre one associates with the tour, the band has also experienced success within the Christian rock community.
But for Thiessen, labels don’t matter.
“We’re just glad that we get to be ourselves and people don’t hate us,” he said, laughing. “We’ve never really cared about what box people put us in.”
Perhaps that approach is what has made the band, which Thiessen founded with guitarist Matt Hoopes in 1998 and features John Warne on bass, Ethan Luck on drums and Jon Schneck on guitars, such a success. The decidedly earnest music is another factor that keeps fans coming back for more.
“I tend to write a lot about personal experience,” Thiessen explained. “And I wear my heart on my sleeve a little bit, sometimes too much.”
He added that the band is hoping to get back into the studio in November to start recording some new songs, including some that are less about real-life and more about telling a fictional story.
Until then, fans have “K is for Karaoke” to pore over, which features covers of songs by everyone from Cyndi Lauper to Justin Bieber, and a follow-up cover album featuring Thiessen’s personal favorite, “Motorcycle Drive By” by Third Eye Blind, will likely be released in the fall.
The band has always had the idea of doing a compilation of covers on the back burner, especially after seeing some of its biggest influences, like MxPx and New Found Glory, do the same.
“We’ve been playing cover songs for 11 years, changing them up every tour, (but) we never actually tracked any of them, so this was a good opportunity for us to do that,” Thiessen said.
He also explained that over the course of those 11 years, the band’s sound has been influenced by the process of growing up and maturing more than anything else.
“Every year that goes by, you educate yourself a little more,” he said. “You get into new artists or even classic artists. I’m more in tune with Paul Simon than I’ve ever been in my life, and I feel like that can’t be a bad thing for my songwriting. And stuff like that happens as you just grow older and, hopefully, more intelligent.”
| Tweet | Follow @wkdr |
|
|
