Two bands shared a cell after being arrested for playing separate guerrilla shows outside Warped Tour
Long Beach locals Idle Worship and Hemorage from San Francisco both have court dates next month for charges of disturbing the peace and holding an unpermitted event.
Two California bands turned cellmates this weekend after both groups were arrested for putting on two separate guerrilla shows outside the Vans Warped Tour in Downtown Long Beach.
San Francisco-based Hemorage and Idle Worship, a local Long Beach punk band, were picked up Saturday night after Long Beach police put on a massive show of force that saw more than a dozen law enforcement vehicles converging on the bands’ makeshift performances.
For decades, it has been a time-honored tradition for smaller acts to play outside of music festivals they otherwise would not be able to play. When Warped Tour was still a tour, bands would regularly follow it around the country, selling CDs to festival-goers in line and playing to people in the parking lot.
Hemorage, which is known for traveling the country and playing outside festivals and major concerts in the back of buses and trucks, was playing out of a U-Haul parked at G & M Food Mart, a gas station on the corner of Ocean Boulevard and Alamitos Avenue — a busy intersection, especially given the tens of thousands of music fans attending Warped.
According to Long Beach Police Department spokesperson Andrea Moran, the department increased its presence inside and outside the music festival and came across the “unpermitted” events while patrolling the area around 10:38 p.m.
“Unpermitted events can create public safety concerns and contribute to traffic congestion and other disruptions,” Moran said. The bands, for their part, noted that the large number of police vehicles did more to back up traffic than their performances did.
Two songs into its performance, Hemorage — a three piece thrash and punk band — was stopped and detained by LBPD officers, according to Jon Orc who fronts the band. Orc and his bandmates, guitarist Toby Pak and drummer Ron Roussell, were cuffed and placed in the back of squad cars as the crowd of dozens of people were dispersed as they booed police, video shows.
Run-ins with the police are not new for Hemorage. The band has been setting up outside of music festivals since the final full Warped Tour in 2018. That year, the band played outside the California dates in Pomona, Ventura and Mountain View. Since then, the trio has traversed the country playing outside festivals, including Louder Than Life in Louisville, Aftershock in Sacramento and the Gathering of the Juggalos in the midwest, among others.
This is, however, the first time the group has actually been arrested, Orc said.
“We usually just get a ticket or a slap on the wrist,” Orc told the Watchdog Monday, adding that about 30% of their guerrilla shows are stopped by law enforcement.
Video posted to social media by multiple accounts shows at least 13 police vehicles at the gas station to arrest the three band members.
“We’re were just like, ‘Oh shit,’” Orc said. “We weren’t scared, we just were surprised by how many [cops] were there.”
Each band member was booked for “public disturbance and operating without the required permits,” according to the LBPD.
Orc said the band’s equipment and U-Haul were impounded. He said the property was not released when the members were and they will have to travel back down from the Bay Area next week to retrieve their belongings.
The band has a court date scheduled for next month.
Minutes after Hemorage was arrested police found their way over to the former Solita restaurant space on the corner of Ocean Boulevard and Pine Avenue where another band had set up on the sidewalk: punk rockers and Long Beach locals Idle Worship.
In an interview with the Watchdog Tuesday, the band members said they made it about five songs into their set before being shut down by police. They joked that Hemorage kept the cops busy, allowing them to get through more songs.
While Hemorage has been a band for over a decade, forming when members were in high school, Idle Worship only got together at the beginning of this year. But the members — bassist Luca Carnevale, guitarist Marco Jimenez, frontman Will Murphy and drummer Carl Ward — have known each other for years, having met while attending college in San Luis Obispo.
Online the band half-jokingly said the cops must have just been mad that they were singing about police brutality. Murphy told the Watchdog that every member of the band is a “staunch anti-fascist,” noting that the group’s lyrics cover social issues such as ICE and policing to personal struggles with addiction.
“Pointing out injustices and unfair power structures in society, that’s the general theme throughout most of the stuff we write,” Ward said.
When the police rolled up on the band — Murphy wearing a “Fuck ICE” shirt and Jimenez in his "Chinga la migra" vest — there were about 40 people watching the performance, according to the band.
Like Hemorage, the quartet was booked for public disturbance and operating without a permit, according to the LBPD. Idle Worship also has a court date set next month.
The punk group said the local music scene is hard to settle into, and that at this point they will play anywhere they think people will gather — sidewalks included. Just before their illegal street show, the group jammed out at El Dorado Skatepark.
“I just feel like there's no way to concentrate all the freaks, the weirdos, the punks who just want to go out and have fun,” Jimenez said. “I feel like [the scene] is just so scattered and there's no centralized third place for those who need an outlet.”
The bandmates all agreed that the show of force by police seemed excessive. They said there was no discussion, police walked straight up to them and told them to put their hands behind their backs. The arresting officers told the band they normally wouldn’t be arrested but that their superiors wanted to “make an example” out of both bands to deter others, they said.
When asked about those remarks, the department did not respond directly, but rather said officers “took enforcement action as appropriate” based on the circumstances.
Jimenez said the arrest made him “angry that they were so hell bent on arresting two bands,” rather than actual criminals. “It was absurd. There were at least 11 police vehicles.”
“It’s never ideal to spend a night in jail,” Carnevale said, “however, as far as nights in jail go, it was pretty tame and mild. We were all together, which was fun.”
Carnevale said they played a game and talked a lot — both amongst themselves and with others in the cell. They did not get much sleep, however, because the lights were never turned off and the TV was blaring all night, they said.
“You can see how everything there is designed to torture and humiliate people,” Carnevale said. “It’s one thing to hear about it or read about it or watch a video, but the experience... it was a really interesting experience.”
The impacts of the arrests were worse for friends and family on the outside, Murphy said, because the band members were not able to tell them where they were. He likened the experience as the briefest taste of what family members and friends of people detained by ICE must go through not knowing where their loved ones have been disappeared to.
One of the strangest aspects for the band was to hear officers making jokes and chatting like it was just a normal day at a normal job, which, to them, it was.
“For everyone else there, it’s like the worst day of their life,” Murphy said.
The experience is sure to be channeled into the band’s music, Carnevale said, noting that it reaffirmed a lot of their opinions and filled in gaps and details.
“It gives you more to think about, more to talk about, more ways to describe things,” Carnevale said. “From an artistic standpoint, it gives you more colors, more brushes I can use to communicate my feelings.”
This weekend was not the first time LBPD has arrested a band outside of Warped Tour. Last year, Venice Beach-based Who Cares set up on top of a van on Pine Avenue and played to hundreds. They were arrested, spent a night in a jail and were rewarded with an official set inside the festival this year.
Idle Worship said they have their fingers crossed for a break like that next year. In the meantime, they already have one small silver lining: art for their forthcoming, yet-to-be-named EP.
“We just got the best album cover we could have ever wanted; put our mugshots on it,” Murphy said. “That would be cool.”
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