If you've seen No Room for Rock Stars, a recently-released documentary on the Warped Tour, it might be hard to imagine someone like Evan Weiss fitting in. Weiss, the mastermind behind Into It. Over It, isn't a tatted-up singer in a metalcore band who's missing his daughter back home. He isn't driving around to every date of the tour in hopes of playing someday. And he doesn't play fey acoustic tunes to giddy females holding up their smartphones.
Instead, Weiss plays music for those who care about music beyond what Hot Topic panders to. Performing as Into It. Over It, he draws influences from post-hardcore/emo legends like Sunny Day Real Estate and The Get Up Kids, yet eschews an attempt to capture teenage girls' hearts and babysitting money. He isn't the only one who's taken this route in the past few years.
"The part of the scene that I'm involved in was just a giant revival of people that wanted to make honest music again," Weiss says via phone, a few hours before soundcheck. "I think we were fans of that stuff already. I've been playing in bands since I was 15 years old and I've always been writing the same music. My old band, The Progress, sounded almost exactly like Into It. Over It, except you had two singers. Now it's just me. I think it was a lot of people getting tired of seeing bands that weren't authentic bands playing songs that really mattered to them. They were tired of being sold a product and just wanted to see a band get up there and be a band. You can only be fed bullshit for so long before you lose patience."