COUNTRY COPY OF WARPED TOUR MAY HAPPEN IN 2010

Successful musical promoter Kevin Lyman, although quite busy putting together The Warped Tour and The Mayhem Festival this Summer, is eyeing his next project for 2010 which will be a country version of his successful tours. With Warped Tour’s 15th Anniversary bringing Punk Rock to the masses and The Mayhem Festival crossing over to the Metal genre, it seems Lyman is ready to branch out to the country music genre. But it won’t be his first endeavor with Country music as he was the promoter for 2002’s Down From the Mountain Tour which featuring artists like producer T Bone Burnett, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless and Ralph Stanley who all had a hand in the wildly successful “O Brother” movie soundtrack.

Artisan News caught up with Kevin Lyman at the 15th Anniversary Warped Tour press conference to get his thoughts on opening a new Nashville office in hopes of putting the tour together in 2010.

“My real exciting project is we just opened an office in Nashville this week. I’ve been watching country music now for ten years. Nine years ago I did the “Down From the Mountain Oh Brother Where Art Thou” and I’m really kind of moving into that. I’m looking at the audience in country and realizing forty percent of those people could be at The Warped Tour now. Maybe with the success of Taylor Swift and the history and people wanting to know about the Willie Nelson’s. So I’m looking at a project next year for that.”

The Warped Tour will kick off their 15th Anniversary June 26th in Pomona, California and end August 23rd in Carson, California, wrapping around America bringing fans such acts as NOFX, Bad Religion, Chiodos, Fishbone, Less than Jake, Flogging Molly and Underoath to name just a small sampling. The Mayhem Festival will kick off July 10th in Sacramento, Ca. and extend until August 15th in Dallas, Tx, with a lineup featuring Slayer, Marilyn Manson, Killswitch Engage, Bullet for My Valentine and Trivium to name just a few. Lyman also serves as executive producer/co-writer of the upcoming movie “Endless Bummer” which is based on the real-life experiences of screenwriter John “J.D.” Drury and the early 1980s-era story follows a group of Ventura, Calif., beach buddies who are in search of a stolen surfboard. New music from Bad Religion, the Action Design, the Vandals, the Dollyrots and the Robbery U.S.A. (members of Rancid, Street Drum Corps, S.T.U.N. and Bathroom Murders) will also appear on the soundtrack.