We live in an era of huge music and arts festivals, known brands that bring together genre-crossing superstars and eager fans to be parts of mammoth crowds at deserts, farms and beaches across the globe. The founders of the idobi Radio Summer School Tour, which hits Houston’s House of Blues July 30, are more interested in taking a chance on developing artists, young crews and especially fans looking to find their places in welcoming communities.
This year’s sophomore tour run features a lineup of rising independent artists and bands, including Taylor Acorn, Charlotte Sands, Rain City Drive, If Not For Me, Beauty School Dropout, Arrows in Action and Huddy. The tour is sponsored by idobi radio and Hot Topic. If that latter sponsor gives Vans Warped Tour vibes, it’s no mistake. The upstart traveling tour was founded by industry veterans Eric Tobin (Hopeless Records), KMGMT’s Michael Kaminsky and Kevin Lyman, who founded Warped Tour.
Tobin, who is Executive VP of A&R and Business Development at Hopeless Records, one of the largest independent records labels in the world, said he and Kaminsky have been friends nearly 20 years and a couple of years ago conceived the idea for the tour. They wanted to do something similar to Warped Tour.
“This was such an amazing space to develop artists,” Tobin said of Warped. “Kevin had created something really amazing in that space and all of the labels, the agents, the managers (said), ‘Hey, I’ve got a new band, we’ve got to get them on Warped Tour, they’ve got to go out there for the entire summer, make friends, grow their opportunity, learn how to be on stage from others, learn how to self-promote, learn how to walk around. It’s such a big piece of how you sort of set things up in this niche indie-punk-alternative community.”
They saw lots happening in the festival world with big headliners and nostalgia tours, but nothing that focused on new acts and the thrill of discovering them the way Warped once did. So, they went right to the source and asked Lyman to join. Kaminsky considered Lyman a mentor and Tobin had known him a long time. The union made sense.
“We went and sat with Kevin and Kevin’s response was, ‘There’s a lot of promoters, sponsors looking for this, there are agents, labels and managers. We should give this a shot.’ The three of us put an idea together, sat down and said, ‘Let’s go find a sponsor.’ We sat down with idobi, who really is at the core of this, are in the same space. They’re developing their own brand, they’re developing these young artists, they’re very tied to this community.”
“In our opinion, it was very successful,” Tobin said of last year’s inaugural run. “We saw the bands really dramatically grow, coming out of it getting bigger support tours, bigger looks on socials. That was the whole point of this, to say, ‘Hey, I’m not looking for that headliner who can do 2,000 tickets a night, we’re looking for three, four, five, six artists who are on the rise that we figure are going to be future stars for that next generation and this is going to be that nostalgia. Like, ‘That time I did Summer School, I saw that band at Summer School years ago.
“A big piece of this was that you’re looking at ticket pricing for some of these combo festivals, it’s expensive,” Tobin said. He knows music fans will pay big money to travel to see big artists, “but how do I go discover new artists in my gen who wanna keep that ticket price low?”
Their combined industry experience and connections are helping bands get into bigger capacity spaces, working with trusted, independent promoters, packaged together at affordable ticket prices. It’s critical to artist development.
“The big benefit is you’re getting in a bigger room, more space, this is the first time on a big stage, you’re playing out in front of 1,500 or 1,600 people who may have come for a different band and ended up loving your band. The other benefit is those bands got to go on a summer camp, and they may have known each other from, ‘Oh, I supported you on that festival but now we’re all hanging out together.’ Within a couple of days of the tour there were artists singing on stage with the other artists, there were social media collaborations.
“It goes from, ‘Hey, I’m trying to grow my band,’ to ‘Hey, I’m in a community and we’re growing together.”
While the tour isn’t seeing a profit on its investment dollars-wise yet, they are seeing gains. Getting Summer School going prompted Lyman to bring back Warped Tour, Tobin said. From the label and management perspectives, seeing bands at this stage and helping them bloom is invaluable, particularly since more acts with lots of upside will want to perform at Summer School, the way your favorite bands once sought Warped slots.
“As always, I hope this will become a great business, in that we can make some money, but right now, the mission here is to enhance the community and these young bands.”
It’s not only the community of musicians who Summer School focuses on, but the community of music fans, eager, adventurous listeners who want to be the ones who find new, talented acts and introduce them to others. Summer School is a place for that growth, too, Tobin said.
Last year’s bands included Scene Queen, The Home Team and Magnolia Park, among others, and Tobin said it was gratifying to see them create a shared audience. Rotating headliners every night of the tour helps fans discover acts they may not have known.
“You might have your favorite band go on first and a new band go on last. If your favorite band goes on last, you’re discovering new things,” Tobin said. Seeing these acts live for the first time isn’t like hearing a song on the radio and “dropping it on my playlist, it’ll be on my summer barbecue playlist. This is, ‘I discovered this, I have the T-shirt, I have the ticket stub, I’ve got the poster, I know about them, I read about them, the lyrics are meaningful to me in an emotional way that changes my life.’”
Because we had Tobin for a minute, we had to ask about recent news involving Hopeless Records and longtime punk label Fat Wreck Chords. Earlier this month, the companies co-announced that Hopeless had acquired Fat Wreck Chords’ catalog. Part of the deal allowed for absolving artist debt for Fat’s roster. It’s the sort of move that suggests the artist-first mentality of an endeavor like Summer School.
“You know, Fat’s been around for 35 years and they’ve been a pillar,” Tobin said of the label founded by NOFX’s Fat Mike and Erin Kelly-Burkett. “Fat really kicked off an entire generation of these labels, these artists, these bands. And they are in that sort of music history.
“Fat really created a sort of world that everyone got to exist in,” Tobin continued. “For us, on the Hopeless side, I’ll give all the credit in a lot of ways to (label founder) Louis (Posen), for putting this together. The idea was this was the legacy we started out in, this punk community.
“The way that we want to treat our artists is with fairness, we want to always be on time with royalties, always be clear with our paperwork, run a great business so that the artists can be taken care of so they can focus on their careers and I think that in that sort of combining with Fat, paying off all the debt and sort of saying how can we go to this great legacy, treat it with respect, go look at the records we want to re-press, get back onto the market around the world.
“There’s an opportunity here to respect that legacy and partner with Mike and Erin to make sure that we’re always treating it in a way that they would want.”
Tobin concluded not by giving us music industry speak for why a tour like Summer School is important. He spoke from his own personal experience.
“For someone like myself who grew up, young guy in a small town who was disabled, once I started liking the music, I instantly got friends. We debated. ‘You didn’t go to that show before I did?’ Somewhere between FOMO and sort of cultural intelligence, knowing the lyrics and singing along was about becoming part of a group that sort of defined the pathway of my existence. I think that this tour, these artists, they still live and breathe that.
“I think it’s the artists, the labels, the agents – it’s all of our responsibility to foster that place where that alternative kid can go,” he said. “That community is tight, it’s where you get to express yourself in a way that makes you feel whole without judgment.”
idobi Radio Summer School Tour, featuring including Taylor Acorn, Charlotte Sands, Rain City Drive and more, Wednesday, July 30, 2025 at House of Blues, 1204 Caroline. Doors at 4 p.m. Tickets are $22.65 and up for this all-ages show.
