waterparks: a detailed history and timeline
waterparks is a pop rock band from houston texas consisting of awsten knight (vocals, guitar), geoff wigington (guitar), and otto wood (drums). formed in 2011, their first ep release and members solidified in 2012, most of the history of waterparks has been lost to time and funny lies that warped into lore.
disclaimer: do not contact/harass anyone mentioned in this post. their names are only being mentioned for historical reason and many mentioned are not in contact with the band anymore.
the origins of waterparks lie in a band before it. jawn rocha and awsten knight had befriended each other through the houston music scene when they were in middle school. the blue poptarts (later renamed over 9000! following the addition of a new drummer) was jawn and awsten’s high school band. the aforementioned drummer as the band rebranded was otto wood, who had auditioned after contacting them on myspace.
in july 2010, over 9000 flew to detroit for an opportunity to record an album, but unfortunately this turned out to be a scam and caused otto to start drifting apart from them. on december 10, 2010, over 9000 had their last show, otto driving off in silence afterwards and not talking to them anytime, ending the band and their friendship with otto.
a more detailed and informal primer of this era can be found here.
with the demise of over 9000, awsten created the twitter account for waterparks in february 2011. he did not actually have a new band or a band name at this point and only came up with the name in july (sources: 1 and 2).
the band was originally a five piece (the first “official” lineup they had by july 2011 shown below):
the original members were (named from left to right):
awsten knight - lead vocals, guitar
gage matthieu - unclean vocals, bass
tyler could not actually play keyboard even though he moved all the way from west virginia to play for the band, so he was quickly dropped from the band.
he was also the reason the band got its name as before band practices, one of the members would tell him they were going to a waterpark so he’d get in his swimsuit and then that member would take tyler to rehearsal because he was gullible and the rest of the band thought it was funny.
the band’s first ever single “i was hiding under your porch because i love you” was released on july 27.
on september 15, they released their second single, “silver”. on the 23rd, awsten featured on “pray for dean” by rap group dwhb (dem waffle houze boiz) consisting of travis riddle, andrew atwood, and dean thomasson.
found here is presumably the only interview from the band’s first year.
with the band awsten had left, airplane conversations was released on april 3, 2012 and recorded with the remnants of the original lineup (gage, awsten, and owen) as tommy was dropped from the band sometime before for unknown reasons.
on june 13, “i was hiding under your porch because i love you” became the first ever waterparks music video and the only one with this lineup.
sometime after this, owen was arrested for theft and attempted to get awsten to lie to the police for him so he had to make the decision to cut owen out of his life. following this, gage introduced geoff wigington to awsten as a candidate for a new guitarist and joined soon after.
with an almost complete band, awsten went on a search for a new drummer until he was left with no other option except to ask otto, who had already liked/listened to the ep because awsten had sent it to him (source). shortly after, gage was dropped from the band due to creative differences and his inability to play the songs.
waterparks had their first show on august 17th of that year with the lineup we know today (also they had a box of pizza open for them).
they had a couple other shows that year (not counting the show for the fake dubstep project made to headline over design the skyline): opening for chiodos and learning gangnam style from craig owens on october 14, opening for driver friendly on november 17, and playing the houston house of creeps on november 23.
linked here is one of the first interviews had with the official lineup.
on january 9, waterparks started off the year with the release of the “silver” music video, marking the first video with the official lineup and the second video for airplane conversations. the teaser video for that can be found here.
on april 1, the jf sessions video was posted, which was an interview documenting the band at that point. on the 16th, dwhb released their album, dog park, which included a track awsten featured on called “light it up”.
on may 11, they opened for aaron carter on the houston date of his after party tour. they only got to play this show because awsten lied to the promoter that they were bigger than they actually were.
on july 23, “new wave” was released as the first single with the new lineup and post-airplane conversations. the music video was filmed and their next ep began production that year as well.
in august, they played the houston date of the vans warped tour.
on september 28, they opened the houston date of the north american tour of you me at six.
on april 3, 2014, waterparks posted an announcement video for their second ep, black light. in that same month, the music video for “new wave” was released.
“night maps” was the second single off the ep, released june 2. on the 5th of that month, the ep was released.
it was during this year that awsten began bleaching/dying his hair: pink in july, blonde by september, and blue in december.
on march 24, 2015, waterparks released the music video for “i’m a natural blue”, an acoustic version being posted to soundcloud on april 10.
in may, awsten posted three tracks on soundcloud under side joke rap moniker lil kidz bop, featuring the band and their friends. a track featuring otto was already posted from november 2014.
in the summer of that year, they began travelling to and from california to begin production on a new ep as well as beginning their partnership with benji and joel madden, parx being managed under their new company, mddn.
on november 6, they announced their signing to equal vision records and released their first song on the label, “crave”. on the 9th of that month, the music video for “crave” was released. on the 18th, they announced they’d be opening for never shout never on the black cat tour the following year and on the 19th, parx opened for good charlotte at the troubadour for their comeback show.
on january 15, the band’s third ep, cluster was released. in that same month, they set off for the black cat tour.
in june, they began the recording process for the first waterparks album before heading off for their first cross country warped tour. this was also the tour when geoff broke his hand in its duration. on the 7th of that month, a “no capes” black cat tour recap video was released.
in august, waterparks played reading and leeds, mikey way playing bass as he did for the recording of cluster. the first single off their album was “stupid for you”, released the last day of that month along with the announcement of double dare.
the second single, “hawaii (stay awake)”, was premiered on september 30 on pete wentz’s sirius xm hits1 radio show and released on october 4. the single, “royal” was released october 24.
on november 4, double dare was released. on the 7th of that month, the “stupid for you” music video premiered. from early november to early december, waterparks opened for sleeping with sirens on the end the madness tour.
on january 25, the music video for “royal” was released.
from february to early march, waterparks co-headlined a north american tour with too close to touch. shortly following that, they also opened for all time low on a uk tour that same march.
on may 15, a “plum island” recap video of the uk tour was released. they headlined a show in japan before doing three other stops there to open for all time low.
from late june to early august, waterparks opened for all time low once again on the young renegades north american tour. in between that, the “gloom boys” music video was posted on july 13 and attended the apmas and won best breakthrough artist on the 17th.
following the tour that month, the music video for “21 questions” was released.
from october 2 to 4, waterparks opened for mayday parade for a lesson in romantics’ 10th anniversary europe tour alongside with confidence. on the 20th, the first single post-double dare, “blonde” was released. the “blonde” music video was released on november 2, along with the reveal of awsten’s purple hair and the second parx album.
from november to early december, the band headlined the made in america tour.
on november 22, awsten posted the first version of “worst” on his youtube channel following a tumultuous breakup with actress ciara hanna.
on december 1, they won a rock sound award for best international breakthrough artist.
on december 3, awsten released money mountain vol. ii under felony steve, another parody rap alter ego. there were two music videos made for this, the latter only found in reuploads: girl u broke my heart and velcro. the mixtape was quickly taken down due to issues with equal vision, though in recent years it was made public again on soundcloud.
on december 14, “lucky people” was released along with the music video for it.
on january 15th, awsten + travis’ slumber party, a fanfic podcast with longtime friend and author travis riddle, premiered on idobi radio, andrew atwood handling sound and composing jingles for it. on the 16th, “not warriors” premiered on sirius xm’s the emo project, the song being released on streaming platforms the following day. on the 26th of that month, entertainment was released.
from january 30 to february 4, parx opened for the maine on their austrailian tour.
on february 13, the music video for “not warriors/crybaby” was released.
on march 1-20, waterparks went on the uk/eu entertainment tour.
from late june to early august, they embarked on the final cross country vans warped tour. between that, on july 9, the music video for “we need to talk” was posted.
on august 21, a “peach lobotomy” warped tour recap video was released. starting that same day to september 1, waterparks went on a uk/eu fall tour, opening for sum 41 at select dates.
from november to early december, they went on the north american entertainment tour. on december 5 and 6, they headlined two shows in australia before performing at good things festival for the next three days.
from late november to the january of the following year, the slumber party podcast premiered its second season. in mid december, awsten and travis went on a three day tour for the podcast live show.
from mid february to late march, waterparks opened for one ok rock on the north american eye of the storm tour.
on february 21, parx posted a picture of them wearing primary color windbreakers. this would be one of the earliest appearances of this color palette.
on march 8, awsten featured on “rainy days in la” by adam&steve, a project by youtuber elijah daniel and producer sam f. on the 15th, they released a jazzy cover of head automatica’s “beating heart baby”.
on march 24, awsten revealed his red hair on the eye of the storm tour and on the 27th revealed he had deleted the files to friendly reminder, what was supposed to be parx’s third album and had been hinted at since the entertainment era, specifically in the not warriors/crybaby video.
on april 3, awsten revealed he had dyed his hair a cotton candy hue temporarily.
on may 23, waterparks released “turbulent”, the first official single post-entertainment. they also revealed they had signed to hopeless records and awsten’s green hair for the era. slam dunk festival was their first performance for this era in late may.
on june 10, awsten published his memoir, you’d be paranoid too (if everyone was out to get you). on the 21st, the felony steve moniker got revived to feature on a track of lil phag, another elijah daniel project, “ihatemetoo”.
in july, awsten began the fandomorange account on instagram to promote and chronicle the making of the new album.
on august 12, “watch what happens next” was released as the next single along with its music video. that same day they announced their third album fandom. on the 16th, the single “dream boy” was released, premiering the day before on sirius xm hits 1. its music video was released on the 23rd.
on september 12, the single “[reboot]” was released. on the 25th, the single “high definition” was released along with its music video.
on october 12, fandom was released, one of the tracks being a reworked version of “worst”. on the 17th, “easy to hate” was released as a single along with its music video.
on november 3, they released “entertainment 2019″, a medley of entertainment songs. on the 23rd, they released “double dare 2019″, a medley of double dare songs. these releases were meant to be ways for the band to have ownership and be compensated for the music released on their previous label, but were soon taken down from streaming platforms due to legal complications. the tracks would later be reuploaded years later with some minor differences as awsten would upload different mixes on their youtube channel, dd2019 on november 4, 2024 and ent2019 on its 7th birthday, january 26, 2025.
on december 19, they won a rock sound award for song of the year, “turbulent”.
from november to december, they embarked on the north american fandom tour.
from late january to early february, waterparks went on the uk fandom tour, recording the birmingham date for a live concert film. on january 22, they released 1 (a collection of unreleased home demos, this is not g, or even an album, shut up enjoy) on soundcloud as a tweet awsten posted requesting 20k retweets for him to drop a new waterparks album that day reached that number.
from march to june, the third season of the slumber party podcast premiered.
on april 17, awsten was featured on “wobble” by patent pending. that same month, he began his social media hiatus and began production on the next waterparks album during this time.
on september 17, awsten returned to social media and had an acoustic instagram live where he leaked post-fandom single “lowkey as hell” while he cut his green hair off, leaving his natural hair. the single was officially released on the 25th along with the announcement of their signing to 300 entertainment. its music video and reveal of awsten’s primary colored hair was posted on november 18.
on november 27, waterparks’ live concert film, fandom: live in the uk was released.
on the first day of the year, awsten announced via twitter that there is a new waterparks album.
on february 26, the second single from the album, “snow globe” was released along with its music video and the announcement of their fourth album greatest hits.
on march 18, awsten was featured on “perfume” by de’wayne. on the 27th, they streamed the virtual anti tour performance. on the 29th, “numb” was released as a single, the music video being posted on the 31st.
during a twitch livestream in april, awsten revealed he had a secret youtube channel limousine aux that posted old demos. on the 28th, they released the next single, “you’d be paranoid too (if everyone was out to get you)”, the name sharing the title of awsten’s memoir. the music video for this single was posted on the 30th.
on may 12th, they released the single “just kidding” along with its music video. the final single, “violet!” was released on the 18th after premiering on an acoustic livestream/interview. greatest hits was released on the 21st. the “violet!” music video was released on the 26th.
on june 4th, they released a performance of greatest hits in its entirety as part of the wiltern livestream series.
on july 14, they released the “fruit roll ups” music video.
on august 18, the music video for “the secret life of me” was released.
from august 28 to september 4, waterparks played their first in person shows for the promotion of greatest hits on a uk tour.
from october 25 to december 6, they embarked on a night out on earth us tour.
in early 2022, awsten began teasing parx5 along with announcing a variety of tours they would take on in the summer.
on april 22, “telephone” from fandom was featured in the netflix series, heartstopper.
the first single announced from parx5 was “funeral grey”, its presave link being active and teased throughout their last tour. they shared a snippet of backing vocals on april 18, shared a longer clip on may 4, and announced its release date of may 13, using the site funeralgrey.com to tease more clips and images from its music video.
on may 10, parx announced they signed to fueled by ramen. along with the single, the “funeral grey” music video was released.
from june 9 to july 1, waterparks embarked on the much delayed european see you in the future tour and played the unreleased song, “brainwashed”.
on july 7, they released the single, “self sabotage”.
from july 8 to august 5, they toured the us for the sad summer festival.
on august 8, they released the “self sabotage” music video, a compilation from the london date of the syitf tour.
from august 30 to september 5, waterparks opened for my chemical romance on small leg of their returning us tour and debuted the unreleased song, “real super dark” live. this marked parx’s first times playing in arenas. on october 17th, they opened for mcr for their final date of the tour along with midtown.
from september 16 to september 29, waterparks opened for blackbear on his nothing matters tour along with heart attack man. during this tour they live debuted and announced their collaboration with blackbear, the song “fuck about it”. the song was officially released on october 14.
on november 15, they announced the album was finished and on the 18th, they announced the tracklist. on the 22nd, they announced the title of their 5th album, intellectual property, notably breaking the alphabetical order of their discography and slated for a spring 2023 release.
on december 1, the music video for “fuck about it” was released.
on january 26, waterparks officially released the song, “real super dark” along with its visualizer. along with this, they announced the album release date.
from february 1-11, waterparks opened for you me at six for the first time in ten years on their truth decay tour. they also performed acoustic outstores between days they weren’t performing as openers.
on march 9, they officially released the single, “brainwashed” along with an accompanying visual.
on april 14, intellectual property was released and the fuck about it museum event was held the same day in los angeles. from april 15-21, waterparks did acoustic instores for the promotion of the album.
from april 28 to june 14, waterparks embarked on the north american property tour, recording a live dvd on the tour’s boston date.
after months of silence, in september, waterparks wiped their instagram of most posts except for the ones pertaining to the release of intellectual property. the band account would then cryptically post weekly writings on a green background. after much confusion, they would begin teasing the single, “sneaking out of heaven” by mailing reversed snippets of the song on usbs for their fans and peers to decipher online. on september 20, the snippets were made available online by interacting with the dotted background of the song’s presave page redirected from the band website.
from october 3-6, waterparks went on the property tour australia, their second australian tour since entertainment era. during this tour, the band played a live debut of “sneaking out of heaven”, which now had an official release date. on october 11, which also doubles as the 4th anniversary of fandom’s release, the single was officially released. the song’s music video was released the following day. from october 22 to 23, waterparks played at when we were young festival.
from october 31 to november 24, waterparks went on the property tour europe/uk, the last installment of property tours.
on december 3, they performed a special acoustic set for the closure of the original warehouse live location in eado though otto wood was not present for this performance. this would be the last set ever at the venue.
on february 21, awsten revealed he had dyed his hair black. on the 25th, he revealed the front parts of his hair were still red.
from february 26 to april 6, waterparks embarked on the sneaking out of heaven tour.
on may 25-26, they performed at slam dunk festival, where they would announce intellectual property 2: lost in the property via merch with the tracklist and an online store. on the 26th, “soulsucker” was released. this would mark their announcement to depart from fueled by ramen to go fully independent for the first time in ten years. on the 28th, the song’s music video was released.
on june 28, “fai2″, a reworked version of “fuck about it” featuring zeph, was released. on the 29th, its music video was released.
on july 30, awsten revealed he had dyed his hair blue, purple, and magenta.
on august 2, awsten had revealed via a short video clip that he had scrapped intellectual property 2 due to numerous problems and mental health tolls in the buildup to its release. the next day, waterparks had an “aftershow” performance the night before their lollapalooza set. they released a final track from the album called “guilt (interlude)” along with a music video on august 4th, which was an album version of an intermission sequence during the sooh tour and released on the day of their lollapalooza 2024 performance. on august 16, they released “gh2024″, a medley of select songs off their 2021 album and also performed during the sooh tour. on the 24th, awsten performed a solo acoustic set at the rock and roll hall of fame for waterparks’ inclusion in hopeless records’ exhibit in the museum.
on october 18, waterparks released 2 (a collection of unreleased demos, this is not j, or even an album, shut up enjoy) on streaming services with accompanying visuals of the demos: “call me, beep me” a song cut from the original greatest hits tracklist, and “talking to myself”, whose visual was released a day after.
on november 19, awsten revealed photos of himself with mint green hair.
on march 21, waterparks released a collab with sorry my love, the pop punk project of dj dillon francis and songwriter albert hype, for the song, “forget”, along with its music video.
on may 22, they collabed with 5sos’s michael clifford for “give me a break”, its music video released the same day.
on june 30, waterparks began teasing a yellow era/new music with a post of awsten writing out the current waterparks logo and changing all the waterparks account pfps to the same yellow color. on july 2, they began posting presave links for the next release.
on july 3, waterparks announced they had signed with bmg.
(note: there are no band photoshoots with awsten’s mint hair so pretend michael is a parx member for my sake)
as you can tell this post is not completed (and won’t be until the band ends). please tell me any significant events to the band’s career that i’ve missed and i’ll add it to the timeline. i will update this post as much as i can and the read more of this post will make any changes always available even from older reblogs.
waterparks never had a bassist stay around much so for earlier years, they would rotate a group of friends to play bass for their live shows.
jawn rocha - first bassist for early live shows, waterparks’ former photographer
michael swank - lead vocalist of foxera and former clean vocalist of myka relocate
vaughn issac - audio engineer for airplane conversations and black light
tommy denley - waterparks’ first guitarist
mikey way - from my chemical romance. duh.
awsten used to lie to show promoters. a lot.
geoff lived with awsten and his family for a while
besides the blue poptarts/over 9000, two of awsten’s old bands in middle school were death breakfast and the black bleeding bloody death deaths
everyone in waterparks has at least one sister
dwhb, versecity, and driver friendly have played with both over 9000 and waterparks
otto is supposedly colorblind
geoff almost failed high school because of the legend of zelda
since 2018, awsten has made it a tradition to shave his beard every december to only time by enya on instagram live (he started the tradition of shaving streams themselves in 2017, but he was talking and shaving to a tutorial)
otto was inspired to start drumming because of the pasqually p. pieplate animatronic at chuck e. cheese
sometimes awsten used to mismatch his shoes: one would be white, the other would be black. he still does this sometimes with his shoelaces and occasionally with blue and yellow crocs
some of otto’s old bands include we go way back and a shot for favor
on every waterparks release, there is at least one song where awsten does a bass slide with his thumb because it’s a move he stole from their bassist in over 9000
outside of lil kidz bop and felony steve, awsten has many other alter egos including kyle fletchers of december’s tragedy
geoff was put on sale for $10 million on their merch site once
awsten is banned from ebay because he tried selling his leg hair once
if you made it this far and want to know more about the band and its many, many pieces of drama over the years check out the iceberg video made with some of the admins :)
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