Cassadee Pope to Play 2018 Warped Tour

Years before rebranding herself as a country-pop powerhouse, Cassadee Pope earned her first fans as the leader of Hey Monday. She was a teenage punk-rocker, fronting a band of mop-topped misfits whose fans included Glee co-founder Ryan Murphy – who handpicked the band’s power ballad “Candles” for a key scene in the show’s second season – and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz, who helped the band sign a record deal.

The band had taken an indefinite break by the time Pope auditioned for the third season of The Voice, a season she would eventually win on December 18th, 2012. Not long before their hiatus, though, Hey Monday crisscrossed the country on the 2010 Warped Tour, sharing the bill with acts All-American Rejects and Sum 41. Those gigs were some of the biggest of Hey Monday’s career. Nearly a decade later, Pope is making a return to the Warped stage, this time serving as the only country artist on an otherwise punk-heavy bill. The 2018 edition of the festival will also serve as its last.

“Growing up, the thought of playing Warped Tour was a dream,” she said in a statement. “Now, not only do I get to say, ‘I played Warped Tour twice,’ I get to perform songs that I poured my heart and soul into over the last few years. It almost feels like a graduation of sorts for me, and I can’t wait to get on that stage and get all nostalgic!”

Pope will join the Warped Tour circuit for just two gigs, performing at the festival’s July 30th stopover in Charlotte as well as the Atlanta event on July 31st. In addition to a long list of punk, emo, and alt-rock acts, both shows will feature performances by Reel Big Fish and 3OH!3, two acts who shared the Warped bill with Hey Monday back in 2010. Don’t bank on an overly nostalgic set from Pope, though, whose current single “Take You Home” – a countrified love song about moving forward – paves the way for her full-length follow-up to 2013’s Frame by Frame.