The 20th-annual Vans Warped Tour is today at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, and as usual, mixed in with the national headliners and veteran favorites, there’s a strong showing of Massachusetts area bands on the bill. I spoke with a few of them, including Bad Rabbits, Ice Nine Kills, and Brian Marquis in the newspaper earlier this week.
Vanna is another Boston band who will appear today. Now on their second full Warped Tour, in June they released new LP Void off Pure Noise Records, a blend of blistering metal and melodic hooks. In advance of today’s showing down in Mansfield, I checked in with singer Davey Muise from the road.
Luke O’Neil: Is there something unique about this tour that makes it feel different from others you’ve been on?
Davey Muise: We released a new record first week of this tour and it’s really set a different tone for us. Playing new songs, walking the line and crowd selling CDs, doing signings, it’s all so much work, but we are so proud of it. Not to mention all the bands that have picked the record up and talk about it on stage and really support it, such an amazing feeling to have real friends out here.
What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened so far on the tour?
I feel like “weird things” to normal, non-touring people are our everyday life. Every day is weird. Last night I fell asleep on a hill of grass at 2 a.m. after playing corn hole and rolling dice all night on a bus that a French band rides in with strobe lights and a fog machine going all while blasting techno, while my bass player played “possum” [played dead] for two hours. Life’s weird man.
Is there a particular highlight from one of the dates that you can tell us about?
A mother wrote us on Facebook telling us how her son had a life altering surgery recently that’s left him unable to work, and his work is his passion and he’s slipped into a depression to the point he wasn’t leaving the house. On the way back from a hospital visit, she brought him to a record store where he bought our new record that came out that day.
The record and a song on the record called “Digging” hit him so hard it gave him the passion to start rehabilitating himself, get out of the house and basically have him a new lease on life. Well, he came to Warped Tour, and I got down in the crowd and was able to sing that song with him and see him having the time of his life.
Afterwards we got to hang out and talk and we both were in tears, him because he was happy again and wanted to be alive because of four minutes of music, and me because that fact that something my band created touched someone’s life in such an amazing way, makes everything worth it. That is what it’s all about. I believe in these kids, and they believe in us.
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Who’s a band on the tour you’ve been excited to see as much as possible?
So many amazing bands on this tour. We’ve had the pleasure to watch and share the stage with so many. One band that sticks out to us is a band from Ohio called Beartooth. They are about everything we are about, give their all every time they play, completely breaking themselves while getting every single person involved, and are the best dudes I’ve met in a long time. We’ve truly found brothers in that band, and you will see much more from the two of us.
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If you had to pick one song that readers unfamiliar with you should check out which one and why?
“Digging” off our record Void. If you’ve ever felt like giving up, like you’re alone, play that track.
Advice to kids coming to Warped Tour for the first time on how to do it right?
Come early, drink water all day, and lose your mind. No work, no school, no drama, just be free. Make new friends, see new bands, just be alive, Warped Tour rules.
Follow Luke O’Neil on Twitter @lukeoneil47
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