August 22, 2026
Montreal Vans Warped Tour: A Nostalgic View
The Vans Warped Tour was once something special, that in my teenaged years, meant the world to me. Then it changed to the point that I lost interest in it and faded away into the sands of time. Not once did I ever think I would find myself at another Warped Tour three decades after my first experience with it. Alas, here we are.
I was in the tenth grade when the first Vans Warped Tour came around back in 1996. Practically everyone I knew bought tickets for it, and people I met later in life all seemed to have been there too. It was an iconic part of my teenage life and the first of eight straight Warped Tours that I attended. So many great bands, artists and athletes came from those years, and a whole of lot of fond memories too.
See Also: The Offspring at Mtelus, Montreal
While that first Warped Tour was a bit of a shitshow, due largely to where it took place – on a horse racing track named Blue Bonnets, that rapidly became a massive tornado of dust to the point that you couldn’t see the person next to you let alone the bands that were on stage. That caused the traveling punk rock festival to relocate to parc Jean-Drapeau, where this years edition also took place, as do the majority of the cities many outdoor music festivals.
Then there was the year that Eminem played, only he wasn’t the beloved hip hop star then that he came to be, and the punk rock crowd weren’t very receptive to a rapper playing their festival. As Eminem tried to introduce himself, rapping hi, my name is to a see of boos, the crowd began to rip up chunks of turf and lob them towards the stage. Soon, the skies were filled with mud that now rained down in all directions. The girl I had brought along with me ate a clump of grass directly in the face and was blinded by the mud. I spent the last part of Eminem’s set in a medical tent as medics flushed her eyes out. Thankfully, she was fine, and we returned to the show.
There was another year, where it rained like a bastard and the whole park became a mud pit that stole peoples shows and boots. Sucked them clean off people’s feet and refused to give them back. I wonder if, years from now, some very confused archeologists will find all that footwear and wonder what the hell had happened. Water and mud, when combined with a hill that overlooked the main stage at that time, lead to a makeshift waterpark, where security tried valiantly to prevent thousands of punk kids from sliding down it and failed miserably, of course.
There are so many tales like this that I could spin, before even mentioning the greats bands that played those early years. However, we are here to chat about the return of the Vans Warped Tour, not the glory days of yore.
On the first day of Warped Tour…
I arrived on site at noon, fresh off four hours spent over on the other side of the island, photographing and covering the Montreal leg of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour, eager to rekindle those cherished teenage memories, but as I soon found out, I am simply not that same sixteen year old kid I was back in 1996 anymore. Things changed. Got themselves real busy like.
Still, I was determined to eat as much poutine as I could and have a good time – and was successful on both accounts. In the back of my mind, I wondered if I would see some familiar faces from the olden days, and hoped some would be people I haven’t seen in a time. To an extent, that did happen. A whole lot of people I know where here, like in the early days, but mostly people I didn’t know. Still, it was fantastic to see these faces – for the most part. Through social media, I saw that I had missed a lot too. Warms the heart, really. Seriously.
It was the old guard of bands that I was most looking forward to seeing again – the likes of Madball, Agnostic Front, Good Riddance and Fair Warning. Some of the bands weren’t my cup of tea, but that’s fine. Unless you curate the roster yourself, that is bound to happen. I found myself wondering if there were always this many stages, this far apart? I can recall there being multiple stages, always, but I was young then and it didn’t bother me. If nothing else, the 2026 edition of the Vans Warped Tour was about to show me that while my brain and my heart and still the same, my body is rusted.
The four bands I mentioned above really made the day from my point of view. Each is a band that I have enjoyed for many years, have seen multiple times – although Fair Warning seldom play much any more, and that made seeing them on the Paget stage that much better. Also, its worth mentioning that whoever decided to name a stage after Page, you are a legend! Page is basically the reason there is a Montreal punk scene and to see him get a stage named in his honor was a thing of beauty.
I had forgotten that Me First And The Gimme Gimmes had become Spike And The Gimme Gimmes – and was stoked to see that CJ Ramone was playing with them today. They played cover song after cover song, and as they always are, no matter who is playing with them at the time, were a good time and a lot of fun. During their set, I had found a poorly placed bandstand sort of thing that faced the stage, albeit with an obstructed view blocked by trees. This wasn’t very well thought out at all, but hell, I was sitting down for a short time and that was good enough for me.
The crowd that had gathered to see Pennywise was too daunting for me to want to participate in. I hate crowds. I love Pennywise though, but on this occasion, I chose to seek out artists on the smaller stages instead. Montreal and its surrounding areas are lucky in the sense that we get to see Pennywise seemingly every year, so while it sucked not to see them this time, I know I will see them again and soon.
I also unfortunately missed Thrice. Unlike Pokemon – at Vans Warped Tour, you can’t catch ’em all.
While the Vans Warped Tour has changed considerably over time, it really was great to see it return and moreso that Montreal was among the few cities that had a chance to host it. A lot of the musicians on stage waxed poetically about growing up and attending this festival, not unlike how I currently am as I write this, and that too was fun to hear. The festival was much bigger in its heyday, sure, but I see this as a reintroduction and a testing of the waters, so to speak, that hopefully leads to great things down the line. At this time, it is unknown as to what the future holds for the Vans Warped tour, but given how great the turnout was this weekend, I can’t imagine us not seeing this again in the future.
On the second day of warped tour…
I quite literally limped into the second day of the Warped Tour, again having spent my morning at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour, to a sea of artists that I wasn’t as familiar with as I had been on the first day. This though, was how it used to be for me, and how I came to discover new bands. I was looking forward to hearing artists I hadn’t before with the hopes that some of them might show this old dog some new tricks.
Somehow, I had missed the Mad Caddies set – because the Vans Warped tour has this really feckin’ annoying thing where they don’t announce the schedule for the day ahead of time. I hate that. I will always hate that. Alas it is what it is.
Of the artists I didn’t know, none of them really stirred anything in me. Maybe it was the sun or the pain in my foot that made me grumpy. Or that whole being old thing, stuck in a crowd of people bit. I don’t know for certain. With the exception of one, that is. Angel Du$t might not be considered a new band anymore, having formed in 2013 – but they are new to me. Somehow, I have missed the boat on these guys, and was pleasantly surprised by how great they were. A definite highlight of the whole weekend, actually. Them and locals Béton Armé who I am very familiar with.
The closest I came to feeling the way I had way back when, was watching Steve Caballero on the vert ramp. Now 61 years young and still giving it his all. It was an inspiring thing to see and I’m glad to have seen him at it again. I’ve met Caballero a few times over the years, and while it was great watching him – it sort of hammered home that the Vans Warped Tour is for the youth now. Us oldies, well we had our time and we’re all later in life now. Yeah, this whole thing was still fun – but it was aimed at the current generation now, and the bands reflected that.
By the time night fell, there was a choice to be made; venture into the massive crowd of people that had swarmed the main stage to see Simple Plan or swim against the current and go see an old favorite in Strung Out. It was a simple choice in the end. For one, I don’t like crowds and two, to be blunt, I don’t like Simple Plan. I do like Strung Out though, and have for decades, so even though I have seen them more times that I care to recall, they got my vote.
Almost as if they knew that the old fuckers in the crowd would all gather before them, Strung Out played a set filled with their early works. I was as pleased as punch to find that out. Jason Cruz announced that he may or may not have ingested some magic mushrooms that may or may not soon be setting in, and a few songs in, those mushrooms may or may not have begin to show. I have always thought that Strung Out are hit or miss on the live stage, but tonight was a pretty solid show and one I was glad to have witnessed.
With Strung Out now finished, the choice was now escape the island and beat the crazy crowds that would all be headed to the metro station to leads back to Montreal, or stay and watch the last half-hour of Simple Plan. Easy choice again. I waddled, limped and generally hobbled my dusty ass self to the train and ensconced below the Saint-Lawrence river before everyone else arrived.
The night was still young, although we weren’t anymore. And that meant we had to time to hit the depanneur before curfew (which is a sentence of people from this part of the world would understand, and I’m going to leave it that way too) and that is what we did. As media, we weren’t allowed to drink during the festival, which is a fucked up rule which we begrudgingly kept to, more because we didn’t want to drop fifteen bucks for a can of Modelo than anything else. Rules!? at a punk rock festival!? Are you serious!
Some of us never fully grew up – we knew that was a trap. So many did though, and that was why the faces in the crowd weren’t as familiar as I had hoped. Those old faces, they have kids now, and those kids were probably here retreading our steps. But the diehards amongst us, we were still here, not so much gatekeeping but looking at what we had laid the grounds for, this is our legacy as much as it the legacy of the festival. And that is something to cherish in its own right. I didn’t find my youth, but I did find a new appreciation for this whole punk rock thing, this skateboarding thing. It still lives on and that, is pretty fucking awesome!
Read More:
>> Social Distortion at Mtelus, Montreal
>> Coheed And Cambria at Hard Rock Live, Ottawa
>> The Montreal International Jazz Festival celebrates in forty-sixth edition
I realized that in the weeks leading up to this edition of the Vans Warped Tour, that I romanticized those old days far too much. Those early festivals were something special. A time piece that can’t be recreated. I was looking for that nostalgia in a way that simple doesn’t exist.
Maybe I have outgrown this stuff and haven’t yet come to turns with it – or maybe it was as disappointing as I feel it was. I can’t decide. Maybe the truth is that things changed and I got left behind in the seas of time.
