Credit: Josh ShultzAfter last month’s bash in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Warped Tour will celebrate its 25th anniversary this weekend in Mountain View, California. Black Veil Brides frontman Andy Biersack will play the festival with his solo project Andy Black, and feels “honored” to be paying tribute an institution that’s meant so much to his life.
Speaking to ABC Radio, Biersack remembers going to Warped Tour growing up and seeing bands like AFI, Dropkick Murphys and Rancid, and just wanting to be “part of that world.”
“One of my genuine career goals in my whole life was just to be on the other side of the fence at Warped Tour,” Biersack tells ABC Radio. “I went every single year, and I would see the guys by their buses and the artists riding their bikes…on that other side of the fence.”
Biersack got to cross that fence and more, playing Warped several times, either with Black Veil or Andy Black. The Warped Tour has also affected his life in more unexpected ways.
“I met my wife [Juliet Simms] on Warped Tour,” he says. “We were both artists on the tour, and we’ve done it together now three, four times.”
Biersack and Black Veil Brides played the very last cross-country Warped Tour last summer, which was an important moment for him personally.
“Just to be able to spend the summer with these people [that run Warped tour] and knowing that was the last time I’d be able to do it that way was really emotional for me,” he says. “So it’s an honor to be back.”
This weekend’s lineup also includes The Offspring, The All-American Rejects, Atreyu, Sleeping with Sirens, Yungblud, Bad Religion, Simple Plan and Sum 41, among others.
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