Warped Tour inspired Sad Summer Fest. It’s coming back to Clearwater.

For 25 years, Warped Tour was a beloved summer tradition for musical misfits. Emo kids and pop-punk stans in melted eyeliner and skinny jeans moshed alongside hip-hop heads and metal lovers. But all good things — even the largest and longest running traveling music tour in America — must end.

As the final Warped Tour shows concluded in 2019, some veteran bands refused to let the community die.

“We all win in the scene when we support each other,” said Brooks Betts, guitarist for Mayday Parade.

Betts and his band teamed up with The Maine, another Warped Tour staple, to create Sad Summer Fest in 2019. Both bands will take the stage when the summer tour returns to the BayCare Sound Saturday.

The packed lineup features emo and pop-punk icons, including The Wonder Years, We the Kings, Real Friends and Knuckle Puck. Rising stars include Daisy Grenade, Hot Milk and Diva Bleach.

The Tampa Bay Times chatted with Betts over the phone to talk about the festival, emo nostalgia and Mayday Parade’s Florida roots. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Sad Summer Fest is celebrating five years. What’s the ethos behind the event?

There was a sudden lack of summer touring festivals that would work for the genre. Warped Tour had carried the flag for so long. [Mayday Parade and] The Maine decided to try to put together something that would help fill our schedule and hopefully others through the summer, because we came to just depend on it. Even our record cycles depended on the summer touring schedule, and that’s how big of a part of our business that is. It’s not even necessarily that we want to be the best at it, but we wanted to make sure that the scene is still represented in a way. We also hope that other bands and other festivals try to do the same thing.

With the rise in popularity of Emo Night events and the When We Were Young festival, do you get the sense that your audience is mainly the crowd seeking emo nostalgia? Or is it more new fans?

I think we’re always trying to expand. I do think that it’s also very important to stay rooted in in the foundation of what emo and punk rock is, so we try to have a good balance of those two things. Because the emo nostalgia has come back in a big way, it’s interesting. At one point in time, it felt a little bit almost awkward or lame to be labeled as an emo band, as opposed to pop-punk or pop-rock or just a rock band. And that’s kind of come back around, like most things do, 20 years later. It was certainly a movement. It’s a significant genre that is unlike anything else, and I’m glad to see it survive.

What’s the vibe of the festival?

I think that it feels like a smaller Warped Tour. There’s a lot more focus on the bands that are put on. It ties in the vibes of a summer tour, while also having not as exhausting of an effect. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s a little bit more concise. You know what to expect. The set times are out there. You know the order. You know you don’t have to show up first thing in the morning if it’s a crazy day in the sun for you. Or you can be there to check out every band, which we always hope that people do, because there’s a lot of bands that we put on to basically lift them up. We try to provide an experience and an atmosphere. It’s nothing close to the large festivals like the Lollapalooza or something like that, but you take nods from that, and you see how they try to make that festival feel immersive and as if you’re within a certain world. The Maine especially does a really good job of creating set pieces and items that keep you immersed in that world, photo opportunities and stuff that. You just want to create a fun day for everybody.

How do you pick the bands for Sad Summer Fest?

We try to put bands on the bill that people are going to be excited to see because they’re already fans. The big focus is trying to hopefully elevate the young bands, but maybe even a larger focus is to make sure that the top of the lineup is very strong. There’s been other years where you’ve had big headliners, like Taking Back Sunday and All Time Low, which have, you know, really beefed up the ticket sales or the view of the tour in general. Mike Marquis, our booking agent, and our manager Josh Terry, they both put a lot of effort into finding the bands that are going to make the most sense to grab the strongest attention for the tour.

So many of the bands playing are known for these nostalgic songs. How do you balance the setlist with old favorites and new material?

It is super difficult because you’re only playing a 45 minute set. Although we are headlining the show, it doesn’t give us any more time or leeway. We’ve put out seven albums and are starting to work on the eighth. It’s tough like, how can you balance all of that? You’re always going to play “Jamie All Over.” People love this song. There’s not a single Emo Night that doesn’t play that song every night. But then you have new material that you support. Obviously we’re going to push the new single a little bit really. It’s a really tough balance, but on every tour we also consider songs that haven’t been played in a long time. So you try and add in a track that kind of satisfies the diehard fanbase that comes out to every single show.

Tell me about your new single out this month, “Pretty Good to Feel Something.”

[Lead singer] Derek Sanders wrote the lyrics to that, so I’ll speak on his behalf. But he had recently gone through a divorce. He’s rather public about that. The song is really supposed to be a good time feeling song. I think the lyric in there even is, “We’ll try a fun song for once,” We’re so used to writing depressing emo music. This song feels centered around the turmoil that he’s had recently in his life, and this era he was in. I think the song better speaks to the good moments and how it’s good to at least feel something.

Mayday Parade was formed in Tallahassee. What’s your relationship with the state now?

Most of us have moved to different places because our wives lived in different places, and we didn’t want to drag them down to Florida for us to go leave them on tour. Now more than ever, Florida feels like home. It went from being a Tallahassee hometown feel to a statewide feeling. And certainly Tampa and Orlando areas [are some] of our best markets in all of the world. There is obviously a state pride that comes with that, and I think that’s shared between the band and the fans.

After Sad Summer Fest wraps up, what’s next for Mayday Parade?

So we’ve got seven tracks recorded for the new release. We want to go back and finish up a full length. We don’t know how many tracks that is, but we do want to round out a record that we want to slowly release with singles. And that kind of finishes out our year. But that’s going to set us up for a big touring year in 2025 and we’re going into bigger rooms that we’ve ever done before.