Tag Archives: firefly music festival

Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Firefly Music Festival Pt. 4 (Dover, DE–6/22/14)

Rivers Cuomo of Weezer proves his band still has it (Photo courtesy of Firefly Music Festival)

Rivers Cuomo of Weezer proves his band still has it (Photo courtesy of Firefly Music Festival)

Four days is a long time to commit to a festival, but it actually buzzes right by when you follow your festival roadmap of bands to see.

The final day of the Firefly Music Festival, Sunday, June 22, was a short day for me as my compatriots and I determined to return to DC from Dover at a reasonable time (say, around 9pm instead of midnight or later).

I’ll wrap my festival diary then with a short nod to the three bands I caught on my last day, starting with Misterwives, who performed on the festival’s small forest stage.

The New-York based quintet is a young band that’s been around for not quite a year and a half. But they got a record deal pretty quickly, even if they don’t yet have a Wikipedia page. Vocalist Mandy Lee is total sweetheart, chatting with the audience from stage and then breaking into equally sweet, fast-paced song, such as with the band’s single “Reflections,” also the title track of their only EP so far. “Reflections” lyrically reflects Ms. Lee’s sunny attitude — maybe there’s some possibilities still ahead? And it’s neo-psychedelic rythms speak to a band that likes to whip up a good dance number — a band that includes guitarist Marc Campbell, drummer Etienne Bowler, bassist William Hehi and keyboardist Jesse Blum.

Misterwives performed a bright, upbeat cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” which the forest stage audience embraced quite quickly. There was much dancing. Misterwives have an upcoming show where they support Bleachers at the 9:30 Club on Wednesday, Sept. 3, if you’re interested in checking them out.

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We Love Music: Firefly Music Festival Pt. 3 (Dover, DE–6/21/14)

Sean Scanlon, vocalist of Smallpools (photo courtesy Firefly Music Festival)

Sean Scanlon, vocalist of Smallpools (photo courtesy Firefly Music Festival)

Day three of the Firefly Music Festival on Saturday, June 21, focused mostly on new bands for me — finding such new bands always is the strength of well-organized festivals.

My day began with Smallpools, a quartet from Los Angeles, and their catchy pop songs on the Firefly backyard stage. Smallpools have not yet released a full-length album, but their most popular single, Dreaming (from a self-titled EP) is a very neo-psychedelic dance number that smacks of Foster the People and Passion Pit, as many others have observed. Vocalist Sean Scanlon demonstrated a good sense of humor when recounting a protest email the band once received about its name. Apparently, someone was unhappy that Smallpools would celebrate “small pools,” which are not healthy for killer whales. In response, the band named a new song “Killer Whale.”

Smallpools open for Neon Trees in a show at the 9:30 Club on July 13, but it’s already sold out sadly!

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We Love Music: Firefly Music Festival Pt. 2 (Dover, DE-–6/20/14)

Dave Grohl at Firefly (Photo courtesy Firefly Music Festival)

Dave Grohl at Firefly (Photo courtesy Firefly Music Festival)

Yesterday’s list of summertime cover songs by bands playing at the ever-growing Firefly Music Festival was by no means exhaustive, as you’ll see below.

The second day of Firefly, Friday, June 20, started around 12:30pm and stretched until 2am. (And for morning people, unlike myself, Red Bull sponsored a breakfast series where you could awake even earlier and catch some up and coming bands.)

My day, however, began with neo-psychedelic band Basic Vacation, hailing from New York City. Vocalist and guitarist Chris Greatti, bassist Jon Paul and drummer Mike Montalbano formed a snappy trio, playing their established songs like “I Believe” as well as new songs like “Sirens.” They also played a damn catchy cover of Tears for Fear’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Greatti said at the time that the band would not play it again after Firefly, but c’mon, guys! That was a really good cover, and you really put your own spin on it.

It was during the performance of Basic Vacation on the lawn stage that I began to notice an odd phenomenon. Lots of kids were carrying large cut-out heads of random celebrities, like Nicolas Cage and David Bowie and Bryan Cranston. I have no idea why they carried them, but these large cut-out heads showed up on the viewscreen monitors surprisingly well when the cameras cut to the audience during any particular show. If anyone can explain to me how this got started, I would be very interested in knowing.

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We Love Music: Firefly Music Festival Pt. 1 (Dover, DE–6/19/14)

2014 Firefly crowd (Photo courtesy Firefly Music Festival)

2014 Firefly crowd (Photo courtesy Firefly Music Festival)

The third-annual Firefly Music Festival drew an estimated 80,000 people to an expanded four-day concert experience in nearby Dover, Del., June 19-22, boasting more than 125 artists over seven stages.

Although I arrived at the first day of the festival for a bit, let me stop and recount some of the figures from the festival distributed on the second day, when Del. Gov Jack Markell and Firefly Music Festival Director Greg Bostrom spoke about the scope of the festival.

The festival brought an estimated $12 million into Delaware with visitors from all 50 states (and the District of Columbia) as well as 17 countries. Two percent of overall ticket sales came from DC (not too shabby) while neighboring Maryland and Virginia accounted for 15 and 8 percent of sales respectively. (By contrast, Delawareans also accounted for 15 percent.) Firefly grew significantly from last year, when the three-day festival drew about 65,000 attendees.

With that dry economic report out of the way, was the festival any good? Is it worth traveling a little more than 100 miles each way from DC to attend?

Definitely, yes.

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We Love Music: Kaiser Chiefs @ 9:30 Club — 6/18/14; Firefly Music Festival — 6/20/14

Kaiser Chiefs (courtesy Press Here)

Kaiser Chiefs (courtesy Press Here)

At one point in the latter half of the sold-out performance of the Kaiser Chiefs at the 9:30 Club, singer Ricky Wilson swung from the stage to the stage left bar, where he promptly reviewed his drink options and ordered a shot of Jameson.

Before consuming said shot (while still standing on the bar), Wilson reminisced on how he did a similar thing in his last visit to the 9:30 Club two years ago, when he swung to the bar to pull himself a beer from the taps.

The audience, of course, ate it up. Wilson and the Kaiser Chiefs delivered exactly what they sought in both antics and music — a lot of energy, a big dash of rowdiness and the occasional cheeky flourish.

The band opened its set with “The Factory Gates” from its cool new album, Education, Education, Education and War, revisiting a familiar theme in their songs — perhaps there is more to life than being a drone or “part of the crowd.” Indeed, many of the new songs were really strong songs, sitting atop the best of the Kaisers’ catalog, in my opinion. New songs “Coming Home” and “Meanwhile Up in Heaven” offer some slower moments of reflection while “Ruffians on Parade” and “Misery Company” provide fuel for frenetic sing-alongs and dancefloor stomping, laughing (literally in the case of “Misery Company”) in the face of danger with a devil-may-care flair.

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We Love Music: Firefly Music Festival @ The Woodlands of Dover International Speedway, Dover, DE — 6/21-6/23/13

Audience at Firefly (Photo by Theo Wargo, Getty Images)

Audience at Firefly (Photo by Theo Wargo, Getty Images)

The second annual Firefly Music Festival grew impressively this year, spreading its wings in The Woodlands, located behind the Dover International Speedway in Dover, Del. Located roughly 100 miles from Washington, DC, Firefly is poised to become the biggest east coast festival of all next year.

I attended the Coachella Valley Music Festival for the first time this year as well in April, and I can attest the grounds for the three-day Firefly are even larger and more diverse than the grounds for Coachella. Via The Woodlands, Firefly offers four large stages; several wooded entertainment areas for hammocks, films and dancing; and huge tracts of land where businesses like the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery literally can build a barn and run half a dozen beer bars inside.

The festival itself was orderly and well run but at the same time the atmosphere seemed a lot more rock and roll than the manicured polo lawns of Coachella. About 30,000 people attended Firefly in its first year and festival organizers were calling for twice as many this year.

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Hot Ticket: Firefly Music Festival @ The Woodlands of Dover International Speedway, Dover, DE, 6/21-6/23/13


Concert-goers at Firefly Music Festival in 2012
The second annual Firefly Music Festival kicks off in Dover, Del., today. As of press time, the festival still has some single day tickets left for each day — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — of the festival.

As someone who moved to Delaware as a teenager and attended the University of Delaware as an undergrad, I’m fairly impressed that my former state has become host to a contender for the largest outdoor indie music festival in these parts. Potential traffic aside, it’s usually an easy hop from DC to Dover, so it may be something to consider for the weekend if there are bands or DJs playing that you might want to see. We have the perfect weather for it this weekend, after all.

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