Warped Tour Day 3!

(as written on Thursday)
Day 3 of Warped, in Scranton, was our longest drive of the weekend. My roommate's fiance was kind enough to loan us his car for the 3-ish hour drive. Naomi and I left bright and early, along with our new friend and Inklings associate Shannon, at 8am and after getting sent in the wrong direction several times by the venue staff, finally found parking and were able to start looking for the press area.

Once we set up (also, this was my least favorite Warped venue so far-- it took almost 45 minutes to get from one end to the other because the walkways were so narrow and we had so much crap to carry) we pretty much didn't stop to eat, drink, breathe or take a bathroom break for the next 5 hours or so. We had back to back interviews with 21 bands. I would probably forget someone if I tried to list them all, so I'll talk about a few. There were only 3 on our crew Sunday, so the only picture I took all day was of Shannon and Naomi doing calisthenics in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot at 10am when we stopped for coffee.

The day started off with Alex from Cobra Starship, then John from Relient K, followed by a few others. We had a long chat with Forever the Sickest Kids, who were apparently very amused by the foam covers on our microphones. It started raining towards the end of the interview so we retreated into the tent.

We did a few interviews on the couch in there while the rain started to let up (or so we thought.) Around the time Jeremy from Mayday Parade showed up to talk to us, a monsoon started. We helped batten down the hatches in the press tent and made sure that nothing important was getting wet. Rivers of rain started pouring through the tent and soaked everyone's feet, but Jeremy was an incredibly good sport even though it was thundering and lightening through the entire interview.

Once the rain let up for good we went back outside and talked to Keith from Every Time I Die (a western new yorker, like me). The sun continued to dry the rain when Greg from The Bouncing Souls and his wife Shanti stopped by. Shanti joined the tour a week or two ago, and Greg has been playing drums for her set. She has some of the most creative promotional materials I've ever seen-- including a postcard with a great picture of her as a little girl with her mom. Greg cleared up the conflicting answers I was getting for one of my Warped Tour trivia questions that I'd been asking everyone (they also later fed trivia answers to Mike from Street Dogs...they were very sneaky!)

Among the last interviews we did that day were Settings, Alex from All Time Low, Juliet from Automatic Loveletter, and Adam from The Academy Is. I chatted with most of the guys in Settings about being from Buffalo, and Shannon and Naomi chatted with Donny about being from Georgia. I've been listening to the stuff on their myspace a lot lately, so I was glad we got the chance to cover them. Alex and Juliet showed up at the same time, so we interviewed them together. Adam from The Academy Is... talked about their upcoming new album and bringing his cat to Warped Tour. He was incredibly well-spoken and sincere.

After our last interview in the press area, we took a few minutes to breathe and finally grab some food, then headed out into the venue to find our pals in The Scenic. Once they took off to head to their video shoot, the three of us ran over to Mayday Parade's set. They're a great band live, and so much fun to shoot photos and video of. They played last, so once they were done we headed back to the car for the long drive back to NYC.

More to come, and lots of pictures from Warped Day 4...
-Carrie