Interview and Words by Bridjet Mendyuk
The future is now, and it loves pop punk.
The time has finally come to recognize the golden age of music for millennials, and Richie Gordon, creator of the interactive pop punk TV show Headliners, knows the heart of all 20-somethings holds a soft spot for the music we all screamed along to in our formative years. Mixing vintage pop punk (yeah, we can say that now) and new age technology, Gordon hopes to make Headliners a fully interactive platform-based online TV show complete with social media backstories, original music from your favorite bands (Yellowcard, Forever The Sickest Kids, The Rocket Summer) and digital shorts. At just 27 years old, Gordon has given his all to Headliners and is shaking up the way we consume television.
“Everyone always talks about the great music of the 70s and 80s and, I’m not saying it’s bad, I just feel like people in the [music]industry always [talk down to]music from the 90s and on,” Gordon said. “What about the soundtracks to my childhood? It just got us interested in the show potential here. It would allow me to pay homage to the music I grew up with in my life.”
Starting off in San Francisco, Gordon teamed up with behind-the-scenes crew members from Emmy-nominated shows and Oscar-nominated films to create a coming-of-age show encompassing all things pop punk. What started out as an idea for a documentary about Anberlin snowballed into a full-fledged Kickstarter campaign with help from Yellowcard, the Word Alive, State Champs and others as not just musicians, but as stakeholders in the show. Gordon said this was a way for bands to create original content and get a view into the lives of the bands that millennials listen to and love. In winter 2014, Kim Fortson and Gordon started to bring the show to life.
“Kim, the screenwriter, wrote the script for six months on nights and weekends so I could pitch the idea [to potential backers],” Gordon explained. “Draft after draft after draft, I started sending it out to bands. There was so much positive feedback from the get-go. We were very careful to make the story accurate towards the bands, but still relatable. To make really good content, you need money. We don’t want this to be a YouTube show. We want this to be [a show]that looks and feels like it could be out of HBO.”
Gordon is passionate, and his vision for Headliners is to break the mold of old media. Shows like Vinyl and movies like Almost Famous showcase “male anti-heroes” and the bands are worn out. Headliners will feature a strong, female lead and is “a coming of age story” about not just the listeners, but the bands as well. Gordon explained that the show will feature the coming-of-age story of digital media (YouTube, Napster, Facebook) and how it affected music indefinitely. The way millenials consume media has yet to be told in the same fashion as shows in the past.
“We want to show bands what they actually had to deal with [during the early 2000s],” Gordon said. “The worst thing to do would be to get a show about punk rock and it’s a shitty, half-assed product that I made in my spare time.”
The Headliners app is interactive and lets the user pick from different backstory videos along with the 10 episodes from the first season, original content like exclusive concerts and original music by the bands involved. With new content posted all the time about different bands, characters and storylines, Headliners is truly set out to be the first of its kind.
“With any crazy dream, people question it,” Gordon explained. “I reached out to a lot of bands, but the reality is most people aren’t risk takers. Most people don’t want to get on a train of uncertainty. They’re not the first people to show up at a party; they get to the party when it’s already started. We need people to give us $10-$15 and allow us to bring this show to life. Tell your friends— I guarantee this will be your favorite show. All the people attached to this show are obsessed with making this the best show ever.”
With 59 days to go on the Kickstarter, Headliners’ future is on the line. Gordon said the show is targeted towards anyone between the ages of 13 and 35. With Warped Tour attendance up and the median age of attendees at 19, Headliners is out to bring the youthful element of pop punk to life. The show hasn’t been without its struggles though.To this day, Gordon hasn’t taken a salary and depends on the trust of his partners to know it will all be worth it once they get to their goal of launching Headliners. To top it all off, Gordon has private concerts from State Champs and the Word Alive as perks on the Kickstarter campaign. Crazy risks and crazier rewards are just some of the lengths the team have gone to and aren’t willing to give it all up just yet.
“I’m really stubborn; I’m not one to walk away from something,” Gordon said. “I have a bad habit of not letting something die when it needs to, but it’s going to be one of those things where [if we don’t reach the goal on Kickstarter]it’s going to be a lot harder to get Headliners rolling. I’m not going to surrender that easily.”
