Warped Tour announces 2018 will be final cross-country tour; no Las Cruces stop
LAS CRUCES - Warped Tour will be playing its final set in 2018, and Las Cruces won't be part of the set list.
The punk rock music and lifestyle summer festival — a longtime fixture in Las Cruces — will be touring cross-country for the last time next year, said Kevin Lyman, founder and operator of 4fini Inc., the live event production company responsible for the Vans Warped Tour.
"I sit here reflecting on the tour’s incredible history, what the final run means for our community, and look forward to what’s to come as we commemorate the tour’s historic 25th anniversary in 2019," Lyman said last week in a statement posted on the Warped Tour website.
The 2018 tour schedule was also released last week, and Las Cruces is not slated as one of the stops. The closest the tour will come is Phoenix on June 26.
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Warped Tour came to Las Cruces every year from 2004 to 2013. For three years, from 2014 to 2016, it skipped the Mesilla Valley, but returned in 2017.
More than 2,000 attended Warped Tour in Las Cruces on Aug. 1. It was a vibrant crowd, yet far smaller than the 10,000-plus who would cram onto the New Mexico State Intramural fields — braving 100 degree weather to see established and fledgling pop, punk, rock, hard core, hip hop and indie bands on outdoor stages — during its heyday in the late 2000s.
Bobbie Welch was the booking and marketing coordinator for NMSU when Warped Tour made its first stop in Las Cruces.
She had organized Warped Tours in El Paso and the connections she had made helped in bringing the event to Las Cruces.
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“It didn’t work quite right in El Paso, but in New Mexico we could draw from a wider geographical range," she said. "People would come from Albuquerque and other places in northern New Mexico, in addition to El Paso and Juárez.”
Welch noted that most years for the tour in Las Cruces were a financial success with a few exceptions when the tour was closer to breaking even.
“One thing we did know is that even in the bad years, business around Las Cruces in the way of hotels, restaurants, and things like that increased. Market analysis showed that," she said.
Welch said the tour was organized each year almost completely by students within the Associated Students of NMSU student government.
“It employed students, which helped them financially, but it also brought them some the best job training in the industry," she said. "The tour also brought many visitors to NMSU campus, opening the eyes of some people who considered attending. It sort of upped the cool factor of NMSU.”
Las Cruces native Billy King said he's attended Warped Tour since it started coming to Las Cruces, starting in 2004 when he and a friend camped all night in the front of the line to get backstage passes. Later, King's band would play on the Local Stage.
“Warped Tour was like traveling to Mecca every year for a punk rocker like me,” King said. “It created this underground battle of the bands type feel every summer.”
Ashley Rose Turner, as a teenager, would travel from Albuquerque to see Warped Tour in Las Cruces. The tour would inspire her profession.
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“I’d watch the professional photographers shoot my favorite bands in front of the barricade, with their cool press passes and fancy, mouth-watering gear, and I’d long for that to someday be me,” Turner writes in a detailed Instagram post saluting the tour’s run. “I was offered the chance to work and photograph for a clothing company that sponsored the Tour. It definitely solidified my decision to make photography my career. I wore these seven year old Vans today because the news that the 2018 Vans Warped Tour will be its final run broke my heart.”
In Lyman’s announcement he thanked several bands, shedding light on the tours indelible impact on the music scene around the world. Rock legends No Doubt, Sublime, Green Day and Blink-182 were all a part of the first Warped Tours.
The tour contributed heavily to the mainstream revival of punk music with bands like The Offspring, Bad Religion and Sum 41. And it's arguably the foundation that Emo music featuring bands like My Chemical Romance, Fallout Boy and Taking Back Sunday. Avenged Sevenfold was one of the heavy metal bands discovered on tour. Also, the tour brought unique sounds to the scene, like the heavy hitting Irish rock of Flogging Molly.
“Everything has its moment in the sun. People’s tastes change. A lot of other tours that Kevin put together disbanded after shorter runs," Welch said. "Warped Tour was a really really long running tour. It’s just the cycle of music. It happens with all popular tours."
Spencer Taylor is a freelance writer and covered Warped Tour for the Sun-News this summer. He can be reached at sirspence7@yahoo.com.
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