Getting Out! by the Standard-Examiner – GO! is a weekly publication serving the Top of Utah.

Miss May I, a hard-core screamo band from Troy, Ohio, made its Vans Warped Tour debut last year.

This year, when the tour launches in Salt Lake City on June 16, Miss May I will be playing the main stage -- and remain for the entire tour.

"It is one of my favorite tours," said singer Levi Benton, calling from his girlfriend's house in Kentucky. "No matter what time of the day, it is always a good show."

Not only does Benton enjoy the performances, he also gets a kick out of fraternizing and networking with the other bands.

"It is a like a band summer camp," said Benton. "We all get to hang out and do cookouts -- and you get to meet pop bands and rappers, all these people you probably would not meet if you were not on Warped Tour."

The band releases an album -- its third -- just before the tour commences.

"This is the longest I ever worked on an album, with pre-production and all of it," Benton said. "Definitely the best we've done, the most thought-out. We had a whole new team to work on this album -- a fresh set of ears."

Band members went into the studio with producer Joey Sturgis, who has made his mark in the hard-core scene.

"He wanted us to feel what we put on the record. It sounded real old school -- sounded like the DVDs we watched when we were growing up. We would sit in a circle around a mic, just jamming, trying lyrics. When it wasn't happening, he (Sturgis) would say, 'No, you've got to feel it. Do another take, another take.' And he made us better musicians for it."

Miss May I will be previewing three new songs in this year's Warped set.

The band got its start when Benton, Justin Aufdemkampe, BJ Stead, Ryan Neff (who left in late 2007 to join Rose Funeral; he was later replaced by Josh Gillespie) and Jerod Boyd were high school buddies.

"We skateboarded all the time, and were never really in bands -- this was our first band," Benton said.

As schoolboys, he says, they were playing for the sheer fun of it, doing cover songs in their basements.

"We really didn't play in front of people. It was something to do to kill time," Benton said. "Then we started to get into heavier music and play our own songs. We played our first show in November 2007."

While the band members enjoyed it, and scored some good local gigs, they didn't expect it to go further.

That's when Chris Ruby from The Devil Wears Prada stumbled upon the group.

"Then we stole Ryan from another local band, and by the time senior year came, we had a record deal," said Benton. "It was crazy."

Ruby also helped the band by convincing them to do a cover version of the Savage rap song "Swing."

"That was right before the cover thing got real big, and everyone started doing strange stuff," Benton said. "And it was right after we started talking to record labels. We had a bunch of contracts literally out on the table. And Chris said to us, 'Hey, you guys need to do something. We should get you out there doing something really different. A publicity stunt of some kind, almost.' "

At that moment, they heard "Swing" on the radio.

"Now, it really wasn't getting played on the radio -- it wasn't that big," he said. "We heard it, and it sounded like a (heavy metal) breakdown."

The band wrote the arrangements in a day, then recorded it the next.

"It exploded," Benton said. "We went from 2,000 plays a day, to the next day there being over 2 million plays. We went from being the big band from Ohio to the big national band overnight.

"Not that we're complaining. It has been a great ride."

WARPED TOUR ACTS

This year’s Vans Warped Tour starts in Salt Lake City. Performances are scheduled to hit the stages beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 16, at the Utah State Fairpark. Bands are subject to change; for more information, visit vanswarpedtour.com.

KIA SOUL STAGE

• All Time Low
• Anti-Flag
• Breathe Carolina
• Four Year Strong
• Taking Back Sunday
• We the Kings
• Yellowcard
• Miss May I
• Of Mice and Men
• Pierce the Veil
• Streetlight Manifesto
• New Found Glory
• The Used

MONSTER ENERGY STAGE

• blessthefall
• Chelsea Grin
• Every Time I Die
• For Today
• Mayday Parade
• Memphis May Fire
• Motionless in White
• Rise to Remain
• Sleeping With Sirens
• The Ghost Inside
• Title Fight
• Vampires Everywhere!
• You Me at Six

TILLY’S STAGE

• A Loss for Words
• Bayside
• Funeral Party
• Hyro Da Hero
• I Am the Avalanche
• I Fight Dragons
• Man Overboard
• Polar Bear Club
• Senses Fail
• Vanna
• Wax
• We Are the In Crowd

HOUSE OF MARLEY STAGE

• Ballyhoo!
• Champagne Champagne
• Echo Movement
• G-Eazy
• Mod Sun
• Neo Geo
• Stepdad
• T. Mills
• The Constellations
• The Green
• Tomorrows Bad Seeds

ERNIE BALL STAGE

• Born Of Osiris
• Chunk! No Captain Chunk!
• Cold Forty Three
• Fireworks
• iwrestledabearonce
• Transit

KEVIN SAYS STAGE

• After The Burial
• Dead Sara
• Divided By Friday
• Impending Doom
• It Boys!
• Living With Lions
• Make Do and Mend
• Matt Toka
• Skip the Foreplay
• Ten Second Epic
• The Jukebox Romantics
• The Silver Comet
• Tonight Alive
• We Are the Ocean

ACOUSTIC BASEMENT

• A Loss for Words
• Anthony Ranieri
• Brian Marquis
• Bright & Early
• Into It. Over It.
• Joey Briggs
• Koji
• Kristopher Roe
• Transit
• Vinnie Caruana

SILENT DISCO

• Tony D’Angelo
• Wick-It the Instigator
• Young London