In an era where concert tickets often rival the cost of a mortgage payment, Kevin Lyman stands as a defiant anomaly. Thirty-one years after founding the Vans Warped Tour, the pop-punk patriarch is looking at the modern music industry with a mixture of confusion and frustration. And he’s excited that his Warped Tour, on the comeback trail for a second straight year, is staying true to its values.
“Ticket prices have gotten so out of hand,” Lyman told Fortune over a Zoom call, luxuriating in the California Sun over Zoom as New York shivered under a brutal winter. A lot has changed since he first sunset Warped Tour before bringing it back over the last two years, said Lyman, who has been teaching a music industry program at the University of Southern California for eight years.
