Q&A with Brandon Whalen of My Body Sings Electric

While the Warped Tour has grown up and is now it's fifteenth summer, most of the bands and fans are as young as ever. Unlike most of the poorly selling dinosaur exhibits posing as rock concerts traipsing across the country these days, the Warped Tour year after year gets more and more popular. Combining a well thought out blend of old favorites, like this year's headliners Bouncing Souls, Bad Religion, and NOFX, combined with up-and-comers like Innerpartysystem and Breathe Carolina, the Warped Tour shows no signs of slowing down. One of the edgier and unique local punk bands selected to perform on the local band stage this Sunday is My Body Sings Electric. We sat down with the act's frontman, Brandon Whalen, and asked how his band feels about having earned the chance to play at Warped this Sunday. See what he had to say after the jump.

Westword (Dutch Seyfarth): First of all, congrats! Was your band handpicked or did you win a fan vote contest?

Brandon Whalen: We are confirmed to play, though we won't know what time until that morning. We won a spot on the Denver date through a fan vote in Ernie Ball's Battle of the Bands. I am not sure how many votes we received but there are 8,000+ plays on the video we uploaded.

WW: Why did your band want to play Warped Tour?

BW: To us, one day being on the full tour is kind of a measure of whether we have made it or not. This is a step in that direction. Every band in our music scene wants to play Warped Tour. If you ask just about anyone in a local band they will tell you that, when we were growing up, Warped Tour was where all of our favorite bands were playing every year.

WW: What does your band hope to gain from playing the Warped Tour?

BW: Of course we want to play in front of more people and connect with more fans, but playing at the Warped Tour earns us some recognition for busting ass in the local scene. To a lot of people, just seeing our name associated with a big tour like Warped Tour sort of legitimizes what we are doing.

WW: Can you describe how you and your band feels to have earned the chance to perform at Warped Tour?

BW: We feel lucky, but we feel like we have so much work to do. We are lucky that people actually spent their time voting for us, but we have to take advantage of the opportunity. We are in "go" mode because we want to hand out as many CDs and stickers as possible, we want to sound great, and we want to make at least five hundred new friends this Sunday.

My Body Sings Electric performs this Sunday, August 9 at Invesco Field as part of the Warped Tour.