Virtually all Delawareans know about the Firefly Music Festival in Dover. But only a fraction of them are familiar with its lesser-known sister, the Ladybug Music Festival.
Both music fests were born in July 2012 and are named after cute insects.
The Ladybug Festival will be the first to turn 10 this summer, as it kicks off on Lower Market Street in Wilmington on Friday.
The free festival, run by Gable Music Ventures, features over 40 musical acts with 100% of the lineup comprised of female-fronted artists across 10 stages.
Those stages are Main Stage (300 block of Market St.), Humble Park (Fourth and Shipley streets), Artzcape I (205 N. Market St.), Amity Bistro (209 N. Market St.,) Studio on Market (219 N. Market St.), Eat Clean (225 N. Market St.), Academy for Peace (203 N. Market St.), Milk & Honey (239 N. Market St.), The Cooper Courtyard (210 N. Market St.) and Artzcape II (223 N. Market St.).
Acts run the gamut of genres from pop-rock and folk to jazz, and even more in-between.
Cuban headliner is ‘really unique’
This year’s festival is Sweet Lizzy Project, a Tennessee-based outfit originally from Cuba. Gayle Dillman, co-founder of Gable Music Ventures, said Sweet Lizzy is destined for greatness.
“They defected to the United States. So they landed in Nashville and they’ve created this really unique kind of pop-rock sound, but they’re coming from a place of restrictions to a place where they can freely create music so they have an awesome sound,” Dillman said.
Ladybug looks for new state
Before the pandemic, the Ladybug Music Festival attracted between 4,000 and 6,000 guests in 2018, Dillman said.
Although Ladybug isn’t ticketed because it’s free, Dillman attributed that data of her festival turnout to Downtown Visions, a Wilmington-based nonprofit organization.
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Dillman said attendance dipped a bit in 2019 because the temperature might have been “deathly hot” if her memory serves.
The growth of Ladybug has far surpassed its first event on July 19, 2012, which hosted a couple hundred people.
The event was intentionally held the day before the inaugural Firefly, Dillman said, because Delaware musicians were bummed the first Firefly didn’t have a stage dedicated to local acts.
In 2018, Ladybug added its Milford festival.
Due to the popularity of Ladybug over the last decade, organizers have been considering expanding the event again, this time adding a new festival outside the state.
While Dillman isn’t ready to reveal where she’s interested in hosting the new festival, she did say she’s looking outside of the Mid-Atlantic region. It could launch as early as 2023.
“I want to still create new opportunities for women,” the Ladybug Festival co-creator said about her plans to expand.
“I’m trying to level the playing field a little bit more for women and create these platforms where they can be heard and they can perform, and we can see how incredibly wonderful [they are], and what they bring to the music industry.”
Music’s ‘future is female’?
Females made up 50.8% of America’s population, according to the United States Census Bureau’s population estimates from July 1, 2021.
If you Google “gender balance at music festivals,” you’ll find a bunch of articles on the topic.
One of the most popular resources for gauging the percentage of women acts playing major music festivals in this country is the website BookMoreWomen.com.
The site, highlighted by Teen Vogue in 2018, collects this data by looking at any band, group, or solo artist who is or features at least one woman or nonbinary musician as a permanent member on a festival’s lineup.
In 2021, male acts made up 64% of the artists booked for eight major festivals in America, according to Book More Women.
Those eight fests were Firefly, BottleRock Napa Valley, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Life Is Beautiful Music and Austin City Limits, per Book More Women.
That’s why Lauren Kuhne, frontwoman for the Wilmington-based folk-rock band Lauren & the Homewreckers, is thankful to return to Ladybug this Friday. Her set starts at 5:55 p.m. at the Humble Park stage.
“The needle continues to need [to be] moved in a direction toward more balanced representation of womxn, POC, and LGBTQ+ artists,” Kuhne told Delaware Online / The News Journal said in a statement on Facebook.
Kuhne said she helped organize the 2019 Wilmington and Milford Ladybug Festivals.
“Ladybug’s mission is vital to me and is what makes it unique and powerful, and keeps me coming back every year, whether I’m on the lineup or not,” she added.
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Philadelphia singer-songwriter Laura Cheadle, playing the Main Stage at 6:46 p.m., said it’s an “empowering feeling” to play the festival and share the stage with fellow female musicians.
But she doesn’t think women bands get slighted at major festivals because her dad, who plays in her band, instilled lots of confidence in her when she was a kid.
From a young age, her dad encouraged her to perform, even if she was the only girl on the bill, Cheadle said.
“I never felt that female-fronted bands got overlooked because I have always had this ‘the future is female’ mantra circulating in my mind,” she added. “Being able to be involved in this festival that screams ‘girl power’ is incredible to me.’ ”
Kanika Feaster-Gordon, lead singer of the genre-bending Baltimore band The Upstarters, will hit the Main Stage after Cheadle at 7:45 p.m.
Feaster-Gordon said the Ladybug Festival offers her an opportunity she wished were more in abundance.
“Too often the shows that we do play in have very little diversity as it relates to females who are either performing as an all-female band, or either as a front woman in the band,” The Upstarters front woman said.
The lead singer added, “Especially now, given there’s so much visibility into the accomplishments of women as well as social issues, this presents a great opportunity for us to celebrate our collective collaboration and the creative voice that we have as women in entertainment.”
Organizer to big fests: ‘Do a better job’
Ladybug Festival co-founder Dillman said there are various factors why men dominate music festival lineups. One is because of traditionalism.
“There’s an assumption that men can draw more heavily than women. And in some cases that might be true. But I don’t think that’s always the case,” she said.
“When it comes to the music industry, there’s a certain inertia. There’s a certain [idea that], ‘We’ve been doing it this way for a long time. And we’re going to continue that way because it kind of works.’ And it does work,” Dillman added.
Her argument is just because people are coming to male-dominated festivals, it doesn’t mean that the lineups shouldn’t be more equitable.
“Just because they worked doesn’t mean that they’re good, and that they’re reflective of the world that we should be living in and the world that we should have.”
With 10 years of skin in the game with the Ladybug Festival, Dillman said it’s key for her to continue pushing to provide a space where lots of female artists are celebrated. She hopes major festivals will aggressively tackle this more in the future.
“I would argue that if I can get several thousand people to come out to an all-female festival, I think that a lot of the other concerts across the country could do a better job at having a better distribution of women and then on their lineup.”
Ladybug Music Festival 2022 (around 206 Lower Market St., Wilmington) from 5 to 10 p.m. Friday. Admission is free. For more info, visit theladybugfestival.com.
Andre Lamar is the features/lifestyle reporter. If you have an interesting story idea, email Andre Lamar at alamar@gannett.com.
