Texas Music Festival Starfest Just Might Be 2017's Worst Music Festival

After the massive dumpster fire that was Fyre Festival, the Bahamas retreat that drew comparisons to a “refugee camp” and The Hunger Games, a certain skepticism is necessary when examining Starfest: a rookie festival set to take place in North Texas that offers a $15,000 (seriously) “VIP Universe” package.

Announced earlier in August, Starfest has engaged in suspicious activities and faced a variety of setbacks that have onlookers doubting the two-day celebration will ever come to fruition. Let’s quickly run through the bizarre series of events that have defined Starfest’s short life thus far:

Co-founder David Taylor announces Starfest, scheduled for Sept. 8 and 9 in Plano, TX. The festival promises 60 acts will perform across two days on two stages. Described as a “pop-up concert,” Starfest plans to keep its full lineup secret until the event weekend, which is just crazy. While a few acts like Lil Wayne, Flo Rida, Machine Gun Kelly, Hunter Hayes, and DJ Carnage were revealed, some have since disappeared from the event’s website without comment. In fact, their whole website seems to be in a state of disarray, including two different homepages (version 1 and version 2).

Adding further confusion to the festival’s lineup was this Craigslist ad seeking volunteers for the event, promising performances from “Imagine Dragons, 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne, Steve Aoki, Sam Hunt, Thomas Rhett and many more.” As noted by GuideLive, 2 Chainz is on tour in Ohio and Maryland during the scheduled dates of the festival.

On Aug. 17, the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC station reported that the city of Plano had severed its ties with Starfest, citing a violation of terms of agreement as the reason behind the contract termination. However, by the next day, Starfest had announced Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie as its new location.

But the victory was shortlived, because, as reported by Dallas Observer, Starfest was once again homeless just a few days later.

“While we were pleased to announce that Lone Star Park in Grand Prarie (sic) would be able to accommodate us for the festival, the management informed us on Monday morning that the facility was previously booked for an outside event on their parking lots that would take up 80% of usable parking for our guests,” a statement on the website reads. “The team at Lone Star Park has been diligently working with us directly to help facilitate us with other dates in one capacity or another. This unfortunately may cause us to push back our event or move locations. More details to follow, but this Cinderella Story is not over yet! Stay tuned…”

Amazingly, on top of all of this, Starfest is also currently being sued by Simon Perez, who was hired by the festival to book its big name acts with a 15 percent commission. As TMZ reports, Perez states that he had secured Deadmau5 for $500,000 and Flo Rida for $125,000, meaning that he was supposed to net $90,000 between the two. Perez is claiming that the festival went behind his back to sign artists in order to avoid dishing out his due commission, and that the festival is denying that he had any part in booking either Deadmau5 or Flo Rida.

The article also interestingly mentions that Starfest told Perez they had already booked Drake.

Starfest seems determined to give Fyre Festival a run for its money in the race for 2017’s worst music festival. And if you’re into that kind of competition, some folks are throwing down at this Denton, TX bar for your viewing pleasure (jail sandwiches not included, unfortunately).