How Taking Back Sunday makes their Warped Tour setlist

We've given you a live look right now, Camping World Stadium in Orlando, the site of Vans Warped Tour Orlando, just a few short weeks away. And today we have another stop on the road to Warped as we talk to a number of the artists who you will be able to see on stage in just a few weeks. And we are really excited today to be joined by Sean Cooper, who's a bassist with Taking Back Sunday, joining us live now via Zoom. Sean, thanks so much for joining us here on Fox Orlando Live. Thanks so much. Great to talk to you guys. I'm curious what it's like as bands playing something like Warped Tour, a music festival like that. What is it like? And is it different in any ways from maybe a normal show? Well, it's incredible. Warped Tour was one of the first music festivals I attended back in 1995 here on Long Island. So that's something I went to with my friends. I remember seeing the bands that I would go and check out. And I can't believe we're one of those bands that people have been coming to see for the past 20-something years at the Warped Tour. So that's why the Warped Tour is really special to us. Kevin Lyman has built this whole entire community, and we've been on it since 2004. So we're so grateful to still be a part of it. You talk about the community, and this is kind of the story we hear from a lot of artists, like how much Warped Tour meant to them as they were kind of growing up or getting into music, whatever the case might be isn't that cool that so many of you you know have these these backstories this experience with Warped Tour and attending it kind of goes to show kind of the cultural impact that something like this that has has had for so many over the years oh yeah I mean that's the thing like I was talking about before when we we would go to the Warped Tour and then we'd see the bands play and it was a dream to be one of those bands and and we saw bands like Sublime or punk rock bands, like No Use for a Name, and saw how big they got and how popular. And then Sublime is still sustaining and doing amazing things. So to be a part of that, it's more than the dream come true. I thought we put out our first record, Tell All Your Friends in 2002. We put that out in March. And I thought we'd put out that record, and then come the fall, I'd go back to school. And here, I'm still waiting to go back to school. I love that. Can you talk a little bit about how you got into music and what kind of got you so interested and excited about it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember being a little kid, being like three or four years old and hearing the Beatles in my dad's car and just being like, oh, this is what American rock and roll is. And he's like, actually, they're British. So you got to recalibrate a little bit. So that was my gateway drug into music. Guns N' Roses took over and they were aliens. And that's when I was like, that's exactly what I want to do. I want to be those guys because they seem insane and that looks amazing and then i couldn't really play guitar or bass or drums or sing like that and then nirvana made it all accessible i could play along to smells like teen spirit when my first day i picked up a bass so that was kind of my my trajectory and then getting into bands like bands that have played the warp tour like green day like blink 182 and and then we just started playing in basements playing in garages and putting ourselves up on tour and then getting asked to play the Warped Tour later on um so really full circle that's really cool you've played just about every instrument why what was it about bass that that kind of stuck with you my friends were getting to be really good guitar players i could not hang with that so six strings were too much for me i said four strings this sounds about right no one else was playing it i started playing started taking lessons and it really connected with me still i play a little bit of everything but bass is my favorite thing to go to i love Paul McCartney's playing Duff McKagan from Guns and Roses like these guys really connected with me and i don't know the instrument speaks to me and it just felt right and i to this day you know i've been playing since i was 12 years old i'm 45 now so i keep growing i keep learning i keep evolving as a musician as a songwriter as a musician so it uh the the process is endless and i still love it what's the the the prep like the for for something like Warped Tour what what goes into to y'all's kind of decision making when it comes to maybe a set list or what you're going to do on stage for something like this? It's always really difficult. We have eight records we want to pull from. We know what it's like to go to shows and you see an artist, maybe they don't play the hits. Maybe they're doing something kind of artsy that night. We like doing some stuff from a little bit of everything. We have this generational fan base. We've had people that have met at our shows when they were much younger, got married, had kids, and now they're showing up to our shows in our meet and greets with those kids. It's really magical, and that was also a very unexpected part of our career. So we try to go through the set list. We think about it all the time. We see how much time we have to play, how much time will be allotted by the Warped Tour. They keep a really strict schedule because they want to get everyone on there playing as much as they can, which is awesome. So we know the songs that we can't not play. We're going to play Make Damn Sure every night. We're going to play Cue Without the E every night. We know we've got to include those the energy is so amazing for those songs and then we want to sprinkle in a little bit of everything we want to start strong we want to end strong and round it out in the middle of the set so it's it's a process we haven't even talked about the set list yet we'll talk to Kevin Lyman and see how much time we get in Orlando and uh and we'll get it together and we want everyone to go home after having a little bit of an escape for our set and uh enjoying themselves and feeling satisfied like they saw a great show and they heard the songs that they wanted to hear for For someone maybe who is seeing this right now, and they maybe aren't a fan yet, what would you tell them about what they can expect from Taking Back Sunday on the stage at Warped Tour? It's pure energy and pure excitement. We're so happy to be there. You're not gonna see happier guys being there. You're gonna see a lot of guys that are very, very thrilled to be up there, and we are up there at the top. We rank amongst them, because we're enjoying this point in our career, this time. We feel like we're on borrowed time, we're in our 40s. We feel like we're just starting to hit our stride and hit our prime, even after all these years and after all these records. So you're gonna see joy up there. You're gonna see six guys playing the hell out of their instruments and just having a wonderful time. Any favorite things about Orlando or about Florida? Gosh, I mean, the people are just great. Everyone has always been so welcoming since the early days. That was one of the first places. It was like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Orange County, California, and the Orlando area. The shows got really big, really, really fast. So it felt like a second home. We kept winding up there every tour in the early days we'd wind up there. So the people just accepted us right away. There was a similar scene to what was going on that we came up in Long Island in the Orlando area. So to get back there all these years later with the Vans Warped Tour, that always draws a massive crowd, no matter who's on the bill. It's a special place for us, for sure. Sean Cooper, bassist with Taking Back Sunday thanks so much for taking the time and chatting with us here we're excited to see y'all on the stage uh here in Orlando just uh just a few weeks away it's coming up quick Sean thanks so much man we can't wait to play awesome Sean uh thanks for your time fun conversation we are continuing yeah to countdown to uh to Warp Tour it will be here before you know it