The Vans Warped Tour is by far one of the biggest and most anticipated tours of the year. It features as many as 100 bands from many different genres on a tour across the country throughout the summer. Vans Shoes, along with many others, has been sponsoring the tour since 1995. The tour originally began as a showcase of punk rock music, but the most recent line-ups have featured a diversity of genres.

Some of the bands for this year’s line up are A Skylit Drive, Abandon All Ships, Dance Gavin Dance, Enter Shikari, Family Force Five, Hellogoodbye, I Set My Friends On Fire, Miss May I, Of Mice & Men, Relient K, Set Your Goals, Simple Plan, Stephen Jerzak, The Ready Set, The Word Alive, We Came As Romans, Winds Of Plague and Woe Is Me.

This year, unsigned bands will also have the opportunity to play at the Warped Tour.

Ernie Ball, the very popular guitar accessory company, began something called The Battle of the Bands which allows unsigned bands to earn a spot on the tour through a voting process. Any band can join by creating a profile and uploading music on www.battleofthebands.com. Fans then create a profile of their own and vote for what band they want to see play.

When a band signs up for the contest, they must choose one of the many tour stops of the summer to play on. The top three bands from each stop will play on the Ernie Ball stage at their chosen city. Additionally, the top voted band in the country will win a two-week time slot on the tour, a $15,000 shopping spree at Guitar Center and a chance to record a three-song EP at a professional studio.

The reason I am explaining all of this is because this year a band from south Louisiana is participating in the contest. For those of you who may not know, I am the synth player in Awaken The City, a metalcore band from Pierre Part. We have been together for over two years now, and released our first EP called “Hooray! For Trial & Error” in September. Our six-song CD is available to download on iTunes for $5.94 and by hard copy for $5.00.

Awaken The City uses inspirations from bands such as The Devil Wears Prada, Attack Attack!, A Day To Remember, Miss May I and Enter Shikari. We have played many shows across south Louisiana over the past two years with touring bands such as From Ashes to Empires, Tragic Hero Records’ Miracle At St. Anna and Rise Records’ Emarosa. We will be entering the contest this year, and we need your help to get us to Warped Tour!

We signed up to play at the stop in Houston, Texas on June 25, 2011. You can find us at www.battleofthebands.com. Creating a fan profile is simple, and you can find us by searching “Awaken the City” in the search bar on the Web site.

Every vote that we get will help us to achieve our goal of playing at Warped Tour. I, along with the rest of ATC, would really appreciate you voting for us even if it is only once. You may join a Facebook group that some friends of ours made called “Bring ATC To Warped Tour 2011!!” for more information.

We will be releasing a new single very soon that will be uploaded to our band profile on the Battle of the Bands Web site. Until then, you can listen to our EP, “Hooray! For Trial & Error,” on our MySpace, Facebook page and iTunes.