kellyyisstrange-blog - Tumblr blog

kellyyisstrange-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Warped Tour/Roadie For A Day Blog: July 13, 2018

Okay, wow! I have A LOT to talk about today. This blog might be all over the place because I am terrible at this, but I really want to share my experience with everyone!

So, Doll Skin. If you haven’t heard of them before, let me educate! Doll Skin is a punk/rock band from Phoenix, AZ. In my opinion, they are beyond wonderful and extremely underrated and I try to bring their music to everyone’s attention as much as I possibly can. The members are as follows:

Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar: Sydney Dolezal | Lead Guitar: Alex Snowden | Bass: Nicole Rich | Drums/Vocals: Meghan Herring

Doll Skin played at Warped Tour 2017 and are currently playing at Warped Tour 2018 on the Owly stage! SO. A few months ago, I had learned about this contest sponsored by an organization called “Girls Behind the Rock Scene.” Basically, this organization helps bring more females into the music industry and showing women what it’s like in the backstage/roadie scenes of band life. I support this 100% because well, being a female myself, I love getting any opportunity that comes my way in a “male-dominated” world. Women are truly making breakthroughs all over the world and I could not be more proud to be a woman in this day and age. Well GBTRS partnered with Doll Skin for Warped Tour 2018 to have a contest, where for each tour date, someone would be selected to shadow/be their roadie for that day. I really wanted to apply, so I did, but at first I had no confidence that I was going to win. I was blessed with that email saying I was going to be Doll Skin’s roadie in Camden, NJ’s Warped Tour show. I had no idea how to prepare or even if I needed to prepare. So I just read up a little bit on what roadies do and took it from there!

Showtime!

So, I rode to Warped with my best friend, Kait. Unfortunately, my car decided to give me problems just 2 days prior. My luck in a nutshell. So, I arrived and had to meet with the girls’ tour manager, Nicole (since there are 2 Nicole’s, one being the manager and one being the bass player of the band I’m going to do this: when I’m talking about the tour manager, I’m going to say ‘Nicole (TM)’ and when I’m talking about the bass player I’m going to say ‘Nicole (DS)’.) So, I met up with Nicole (TM) and she was the absolute sweetest. She did everything in her power to make sure I could soak in as much information as possible, while also staying properly hydrated and having a fun time. It was very hot out that day. She probably gave me a total of 6-7 water cans throughout the day.

Anyway, Doll Skin was scheduled to perform at 4:30, therefore they did not really need me until 3:45. But, Nicole (TM) asked me if I wanted to go with her and Meghan to see Don Broco at 11:30 (I believe) and I said sure! They took me SIDE STAGE and I was completely blown away. I have never seen any bands side stage before so this was an amazing new thing for me. I was trying to keep my cool because so many band members were just walking right past me. I got to give Meghan her gift, which was a red treble clef necklace and she loved it! She wore it during their set! So, after seeing Don Broco, I was taken to the band’s merch tent and I met Cameron. He was giving me pointers about how to sell merchandise to fans and he is just a natural! He convinced so many people who have not heard of the band to go check them out. He had stickers with the band’s name, set time and stage and handed them out to everyone. My favorite thing about sitting at the tent was when people would come up to us and say, “Doll Skin? I’ve never heard of them” and Cameron would say, “Oh but they are only the BEST band on Warped Tour this year!” with SUCH confidence and I could tell it made everyone interested in learning about them. Though, one lady approached us and asked if they were the “Powerpuff Girl band” which made me laugh because the girls told me they get that all the time.

After that, I was pretty much free to watch some bands and do whatever I wanted until 3:45. The first thing I did was look for the Christina Grimmie Foundation tent. Since Christina was tragically murdered at her concert in June of 2016, her family decided to start a foundation in her honor and any donations are shared to families/victims of gun violence as well as breast cancer. Christina is one of my idols, and I’m friends with her brother Marcus who was running the tent, so I visited them and hung out for a while. Mark gave me a bracelet and we were laughing and joking around. It’s good to see him happy again.

I decided to walk around for a while, just to check out all the tents and see what was going on when all of a sudden I notice a sign that said, “Simple Plan free signing 1:00″ It was 12:00 and I IMMEDIATELY went in line!! Simple Plan has been a favorite of mine since I was about 13 years old. I was able to get a selfie with them and my inner child was screaming for joy! Finally, after walking backstage and just looking at all these bands walking past me, I actually MET one! They were signing right next to the stage where Tonight Alive were performing, which made me happy because I really wanted to see them. So yes, another dream of meeting Simple Plan has finally come true! Then I went with Kait to see We The Kings and we got MURDERED in the pit pretty much! Haha, they said they were filming us for a video and around 8-10 fans all decided to crowd surf all at once and they were all coming towards us and we pretty much got squashed. One girl almost fell head first into the concrete! Thank goodness we saved her! Seriously! Be safe when trying to crowd surf people! (Ok, ‘safe’ and ‘crowd surfing’ do not go together, I know. But still, be careful!)

After their set was done, I was escorted by Nicole (TM) to see Simple Plan side stage!!!! I repeat: SIMPLE PLAN...SIDE STAGE!!! It was an amazing experience. The crowd was fantastic and honestly, seeing everything from the opposite side, meaning from the stage as opposed to the crowd, was life changing for me. It really inspired me to maybe get myself onto a stage performing in front of crazy awesome fans one day! But oh my, were the fans crazy for Simple Plan! The band had huge water guns and were giving water to the fans and they were so loud and active and amazing! I got to see what really happens behind the scenes during a show. It is A LOT of hard work, guys! These shows don’t just have a magic button that you press to make it all happen. These crew members bust their asses for every single show and I don’t think we give them nearly enough credit! So shoutout to all of you wonderful crew members working Warped or working at all for any band! Keep it up!

NOW. It is 3:45 and I’m at Doll Skin’s tent backstage helping them prepare for their set! Now I just want to start this part off by saying that all of the members of this band are the nicest human beings I have ever met! So, I see Alex first, and she gave me a hug and was saying that their photographer, who is also named Kelly and also who I met earlier in the day, kept talking about me and how they were all so excited to finally meet me. I gave Alex her gifts, which were a Harley Quinn plush and Avenged Sevenfold All Excess DVD. Her jaw dropped and she gently put them down and gave me the biggest hug in the world, thanking me and saying I’m such a sweetheart for the gifts and that she is going to be watching that dvd for the rest of the tour and I just thought it was so cool that she loved them so much! Sydney shows up next and I hugged her and gave her the Doll Skin Photo Book I made and HER jaw dropped! She’s going, “Guys did you see this?!” and everyone is saying how awesome it was. I included a letter for them in the book which Sydney promised me they would read together. Nicole (DS) shows up next and it was so funny because Alex goes, “Woah! ...Omg from far away she looked naked!” And I started laughing. So I give Nicole (DS) her gifts, which were a pink wrist pouch, a MCR bracelet with Helena lyrics on it, and a bear keychain that was pink. She put the bracelet and keychain on instantly and thanked me and gave me a hug. I went to take a photo with Alex and Nicole (DS) and Nicole says, “OH WOW I DO LOOK NAKED! ...Oh well” Haha. Amazing. There was even a point when Kait asked me if I could bring her a water and Sydney ended up walking over to the gate and talking to her for a bit! Sydney is so amazing! I told her how much Kait loves her and she immediately wanted to meet her and they took goofy selfies together. It was amazing. Doll Skin really does love and care about their fans!

Their set was starting in a few minutes and basically what I learned was that the girls are pretty much their own roadies. We just helped them bring Meghan’s drums up to the stage and the girls took care of everything else. They are very independent and want to have control over how they set up their stage and I respect the hell out of that! We also put water on the stage for them in case they needed it. So, the set begins and I’m side stage of course. It’s like they have this internal switch, from normal people to ROCKSTARS and they definitely just flipped the switch to star! WOW! As soon as I heard Alex’s guitar and Sydney’s “WHAT’S UP, WARPED TOUR?!” I had so many emotions running through my head. These girls, these normal, average everyday but yet so amazing girls, are also in a band playing at Warped Tour. So, I have been wanting to get involved with music for the longest time. Whether it be doing photography for a band, being a roadie, a tour manager, or actually in the band myself, I’ve always wanted to be involved somehow. BUT, my little to no self-esteem, no confidence and anxiety have always been holding me back. But watching them perform like that just inspired me in so many ways. I don’t think I have ever actually felt THAT inspired before. They kicked ass and had a blast! I found myself in tears a few times during their set. I was so overjoyed! Here I am, just a random girl from Jersey, at the final Warped Tour show in Camden, working for Doll Skin and seeing all of these amazing bands up close and experiencing backstage life. It’s incredible!

Doll Skin’s Set List: Family of Strangers, Daughter, Shut Up (You Miss Me), Lets Be Honest, Uninvited, Persephone and Puncha Nazi. (They also said they were going to play Africa by Toto, then proceeded to play the first 10 seconds, stop and say, ‘That’s all we’ve learned!’ which was hilarious! I could tell they were having fun up there!)

When Puncha Nazi started, Nicole (TM) and I ran off stage to get their cases opened and everything ready to be put away and back on to the tour bus. They ended with Sydney grabbing the large Doll Skin flag and saying, “If you guys wanna hang out with us at our merch tent follow me!” And she took the fans, while Alex, Max, Nicole (both), Meghan and I were putting all of the guitars, bass guitars and drums back on to the truck. I can’t imagine doing that on a daily basis, but I would love to! It is A LOT more work than everyone makes it out to be, but it felt so rewarding to hear all of the ‘thank you’ comments from the entire band and we were just cracking jokes while putting things away. We had to be quick too and according to Nicole (DS) I was very quick and very helpful! It was adorable because there was one thing that was WAY too heavy for Meghan to put onto the truck so I did it for her. Nicole (DS) gave me her water and her chips which was great because I was starving.

Ok, so on to the meet and greet and dinner. I waited until the girls were done meeting everyone. They were having so much fun meeting their fans! Then Kait and I hung with them a bit and took some more photos together. Then, I went to catering with Nicole (TM) and Meghan. WOW! I was literally surrounded by the majority of the bands! The singers from Mayday Parade and We The Kings walked past me a few times and I was thinking to myself, “Keep calm! You cannot fangirl in front of them! Stay cool!” It was very difficult. But overall the food was great and I was able to chill and eat dinner with the band again. Then Cameron and Sydney came with me to see 3OH!3 side stage. Again, amazing! I cannot put into words what an amazing day it was. After that, I talked to Sydney for a bit at the RV, she gave me a written set list, I thanked her, she thanked me, I saw Motionless in White with Kait and then we went home.

So, I knew this was going to be a long post but DAMN! Haha, I HAD to share my experience! It was definitely, seemingly like a once in a lifetime opportunity and I just feel so blessed to have learned SO much in just one day about tour life backstage! This definitely inspired me to work harder with my music and hopefully I’ll be performing one day too! HUGE thank you to Doll Skin, Nicole, Cameron, Simple Plan, everyone I encountered at this show! I could not have asked for a better Warped Tour experience and I hope to see Doll Skin again very soon! Thank you to GBTRS for even putting this contest together. Women can do anything!!! Always remember that!

And with that, LATER EVERYONE! :D

-KellyKatt

#dollskin #warped tour #doll skin #roadie #tour #music #bands #warped 2018

26 notes · View notes