The Vans Warped Tour is a summer punk tradition that’s been going strong for more than two decades, but it’s recently been in the news for its embarrassments rather than its bright spots. Earlier this month, there was an uproar over Front Porch Step being allowed to play despite several reports of singer Jake McElfresh soliciting and harassing underage girls. Several bands also on Warped Tour disagreed with the set, and some, like The Wonder Years, even refused to play.
After Kevin Lyman, longtime producer of Warped Tour, addressed the controversy, and Front Porch Step hasn’t performed since, it seemed that things were more or less back to normal. But now there’s a new band who’s accused of sexual misconduct. Slaves, the new side project of Dance Gavin Dance, has been removed from the tour following a vote, according to Lambgoat.
The site claims that Jonny Craig harassed and assaulted a woman working the merch table. Following the band’s banishment, Craig denied the allegations on social media:
I’m going to keep this as short as i can, first i’m going to address the rumors that are NOT true.
There were NOT drugs involved nor was anyone in our band looking to buy, or sell drugs.
There was NO RAPE or any forceful sexual harassment, no woman was ever touched or even spoken to, just felt uncomfortable by our behavior.
We NEVER agreed to Warped Tour, Or to Colleen that we would not drink on this tour.
We did NOT empty our non existent sewage tank from our bus all over
Let me make it %100 clear that we are not continuing Warped Tour because we were voted off because the opinions of certain people who believe that since Jonny drank, despite his success getting clean, will lead to his relapse.
This band has been under a microscope for everything we have done, we have had to bite our tongue for every completely twisted story that hits the internet, and are now being called rapists for something the internet doesn’t know about, all of this is because of what people have read about Jonny’s past instead of what people KNOW about who Jonny is.
We aren’t the people you have read about, if you would take the chance to get to know us you would see that every situation isn’t what you read of it online.
Our first merch person was a very attractive girl whom remains to be our very good friend. You can read her statement here.
We stood by jonnys side the last year, we stood by his side last night and we will stand by his side this morning. because we KNOW the truth.
This is all we are going to say about this situation.
Not sure that mentioning your friend is attractive is helpful to your denial case, but there it is. He also admitted there was some sort of wrong-doing going on, but still claims there was no assault:
I got drunk and treated our Merch girl like she was one of the dudes and I understand this was not respectful behavior and I’m sorry very sorry to Colleen but this isn’t worth all this? I don’t think the word rape is funny and I don’t think anyone should just toss that around. I would never hurt anyone of the opposite sex.
Either way, what’s happening on Vans Warped Tour is something that needs to be reined in. As someone who attended for several years, it not only needs to be a space for women to feel safe and express themselves, it used to aspire to being a leader in that way. They need to get back this instead of apologizing for mistakes after the fact.
