it is in the db. even tried sorting by a custom meta with no luck. also in the db.
your query dumps a lot of info
found this
[request] => SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_mh_posts.ID FROM wp_mh_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_mh_posts.post_type = ‘festival’ AND (wp_mh_posts.post_status = ‘publish’ OR wp_mh_posts.post_status = ‘private’) ORDER BY wp_mh_posts.post_date ASC LIMIT 0, 100
do you wan the whole dump?