This year marks the 30-year return of Warped Tour — a festival that didn’t just tour, but built a movement. With its long-awaited comeback and return to Montreal this summer, Warped reclaims its place as one of the most influential platforms in alternative music history.
In this live conversation, Warped founder Kevin Lyman joins Andrew Neufeld of Comeback Kid, one of the bands shaped by that ecosystem, to reflect on what Warped meant for artists grinding in vans, selling merch from folding tables, and building global audiences from the underground up.
Together, they’ll explore how Warped Tour scaled from parking lots to international phenomenon without abandoning its DIY roots — and what that blueprint means today. In an era of consolidation, sponsorship saturation, and algorithm-driven discovery, can true counter culture still exist? What does authenticity look like when festivals return bigger than ever? And how do bands grow without losing the edge that made them matter?
From hardcore basements to international stages, this is a candid conversation about scene-building, sustainability, and the tension between scale and integrity — past, present, and future.
