When We Were Hungry Fest tried to happen right before WWWY… now cancelled

If you're reading this, it's likely you're familiar with When We Were Young, the Las Vegas festival happening over three days in October with My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Avril Lavigne, Bright Eyes, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Car Seat Headrest, Glassjaw, The Linda Lindas, and many more. What you may not know is that another festival with a similar name, When We Were Hungry, was being planned for the same city, at Rockstar Bar, on October 20 and 21, the days before When We Were Young's first weekend. Modern Day Escape bassist William Wenz, whose desire to host a fest in a Denny's parking lot after seeing the WWWY lineup became a meme, helmed the fest, which had the mantra "making memes into dreams," and the hashtag "#pancakesinthepit." The inaugural lineup was a little different than WWWY's, featuring Black Flag, Madball, Unwritten Law, The Dickies, Palisades, Voodoo Glow Skulls and more on Thursday, and Secondhand Serenade, Every Avenue, hellogoodbye, Alesana, The Higher, Anarbor, and more on Friday. As Stereogum points out, When We Were Hungry has now been cancelled. The festival's founders have released a statement:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, WHEN WE WERE HUNGRY FEST 2022 is no longer able to take place. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and we understand your frustrations, as we too are heartbroken that it has come to this. Our team has consistently been working around the clock trying our hardest to make things work, but sadly, it was beyond our control.

We would like to thank those who have supported us, as well as all artists who were set to play. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. Please continue to support the bands who were scheduled to play WWWH and please support smaller festivals and tours. The music industry is struggling right now. Your support is beyond appreciated.

Responding to criticism in their Facebook replies, organizers write, "festivals that are much larger than ours and have been around for years have also been cancelled this year, as well as several tours. We are one of many."

"Punk in Drublic baltimore, among many other notable known festivals and tours have been cancelled for similar reasons to ours," they continued in a second reply. "This is a known issue within the music industry. There are several issues that the general public is unaware of and it is quite literally out of our control. Had this event taken place a year ago, we likely would be in better standing."

"Sir, we have worked around the clock for 9 months to make this happen," organizers wrote in another reply. "We have done everything in our power to make this a successful event. We did not anticipate how difficult this year would be put this on. There were several contributing factors here, all beyond our control."

See what would've been the full lineup below.

When We Were Hungry
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