When the summer long Vans Warped Tour officially stopped crisscrossing the country in 2018 with its lineup of dozens of punk, emo, screamo, pop punk and hip-hop artists, fans were left feeling a bit melancholy.
And it wasn’t just the fans.
The bands were also feeling like something was missing as Warped Tour had served as a staple in the lives of so many since it started in 1995 and wrapped in 2019 with just a trio of events taking place to commemorate its 25th anniversary. The event also fostered a tight-knit community of artists that would go on to collaborate in the studio or on tour with one another after having met on Warped Tour.
Members of emo acts like The Maine and Mayday Parade were so bummed out that they decided to do something about it and in 2019 helped launch the Sad Summer Festival. Even the name of the festival tour, which has grown to take over lager outdoor spaces and amphitheaters across the country, came from The Maine’s John O’Callaghan quipping that without Warped Tour it was going to be a “sad summer.”
“That just clicked into place and sounded like a kind of a mix of catchy, funny, tongue-in-cheek, and it just felt like, ‘Alright, that’s our name,’” festival co-founder Mike Marquis said during a recent Zoom interview. The fourth edition of the festival kicked off with headliners Taking Back Sunday in early July and wraps on Saturday, July 29 at FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine. Other performers on this final stop include The Maine, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, PVRIS and Hot Mulligan.
“It’s cool that over the last couple of years, so many people have flooded back in with a new interest in this scene,” Marquis said of the once again rising popularity of emo rock music with highlights being the return of My Chemical Romance, who sold out five nights at Kia Forum last October, and the booming success of the L.A.-born Emo Nite events.
“When we first had the idea, it was the first time there was really no…
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