After Billboard magazine shout-out, 7th annual Ladybug Music Festival flies again

It's safe to say this will be unlike any Ladybug Music Festival before.

Not only is the seven-year, all-female fest coming off its first national write-up, a 900-word Billboard magazine article exposing the unique event to a new, wider audience, but Saturday night will bring the event's outdoor stage onto the same block as The Queen for the first time.

With 63 musical acts on 17 stages starting Friday evening, the 2018 edition of Ladybug has one other new trick up its sleeve: comedy.

For the first time, Ladybug will offer the No Bro Comedy Show with 11 female comedians performing both stand-up and improv in 10-minute sets at The Queen's Olympia Room, which overlooks Market Street.

"Even though we're close to big cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore, we can have our own events in our own city," says comedian and Wilmington native Melissa "Missy" Bernard, the longtime host of Wilmo Wednesday, a weekly downtown music showcase founded by Ladybug organizers Gable Music Ventures.

While the music festival has a family-friendly block party vibe, things will be different for the comedy show.

Discretion is advised and little ones should stay downstairs to avoid hearing potty-mouths Saturday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.

With five years of telling jokes in the heart of Wilmington for Wilmo Wednesday, Bernard has been a one-woman wrecking crew, helping demolish the notion that Delaware's largest city can't be a comedy town.

Combine her shows with DIY Wilmington concerts put on by New Castle comedian Brandon Jackson and City Theater Company's Fearless Improv, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Ladybug is expanding into comedy.

If you were at the successful debut of the new two-week Wilmington-based Tax Free Comedy Festival in April, you saw it with your own eyes. There was a room filled with Wilmingtonians laughing at comedians like it was the '80s again, back when the comedy boom infiltrated nightlife scenes across the country, including Wilmington.

"At first I felt I was performing for a conservative and rigid crowd, but that's not the case. Everyone wants to be concern-free for a few minutes," says Bernard, who lives in Hockessin. "I have never met anyone who doesn't enjoy laughing — parting their lips, smiling and feeling good."

Bernard will be joined by a team of fellow joke-tellers, the bulk of which are Philadelphia-based performers, including Alyssa Truszkowski, Cecily Alexandria, Cassandra Dee and Mean Wendy.

While bands will be making a racket at street level and inside some of the businesses that dot Market Street, No Bro will be high above it all on the fourth floor of The Queen. The set-up will allow the comics to be heard while offering an air-conditioned escape complete with a bar serving cold drinks.

Ladybug — the largest all-female music festival in the country — has been on a hot streak and is riding high entering its biggest-ever edition.

Billboard's article highlighting Ladybug's ability to draw 60-plus female acts came only weeks after Ladybug founders Gable Music Ventures spoke to The News Journal about Firefly Music Festival's weakness in that area. (Only one headliner out of 26 in the Dover festival's first seven years has been a female-fronted act.)

In addition to the shout-out from the national music industry magazine, Ladybug is expanding outside of Wilmington for the first time, adding a spin-off Ladybug Music Festival in Milford on Sept. 22.  

The Milford Ladybug Festival will not be a watered-down knock-off of the original big city event. More than 40 acts are expected to rock downtown Milford with almost 20 downtown business participating in the musical block party, says Gable Music Ventures co-owner Jeremy Hebbel.

"Our long-term vision for this event is that it's going to be a lot bigger than just Wilmington and it's really cool to start to see it happen," Hebbel says.

But before southern Delaware gets its taste, the original Ladybug is ready to fly.

Los Angeles-based, Baltimore-born rocker Lauren Ruth Ward will headline Saturday night at The Queen with a 9:30 set that's scheduled just after Wilmington's own female rock hero Grace Vonderhuhn at 8:45 p.m. (Just like the rest of the festival, performances inside The Queen will be free.)

Other local musical stand-outs performing this weekend include Hoochi Coochi, Angela Sheik, Sharon Sable, Nihkee Bleu, Kategory 5 and Terretta Storm.

Ladybug has gone from drawing 300 people in its 2012 debut to an estimated 10,000 across two days last summer. And adding a comedy show could help Ladybug top that number this weekend -- quite a feat in the heart of downtown in July when many are on vacation or at the beach for a weekend getaway. 

Philadelphia comedian Alyssa Truszkowski has a good idea of what to expect when she performs Saturday, having also appeared in the Tax Free Comedy Show a couple of months back.

In fact, she helped recruit many of the Philadelphia comedians for the show, which is actually not the first time she's performed at a themed fest. She's been on stage at New York's all-female Femme Fest and is also one of the organizers of Philadelphia's Bechdel Test Fest, which features Philly-based female, transgender and non-binary comedians.

While the audiences at such festivals also have plenty of men laughing it up, it's the women who tend to find themselves especially relating to the humor, sometimes hearing jokes about topics that men just would never consider.

"People with shared characteristics and experiences are going to connect," Truszkowski says. "Even so, we have such an array of comics that everyone will find something that they will connect with, but they will also probably hear some things that are totally absurd to them."

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

IF YOU GO

What: The 7th annual Ladybug Music Festival with 63 musical acts

When: Friday and Saturday

Where: Various downtown Wilmington venues including The Queen, LOMA Coffee, Delaware History Museum, Delaware Tech Courtyard, The Studio on Market, Babe Styling Studios, Agile Indian Grill, Fitbody, Artzscape, Chicky's Pizza Pub, Old Town Hall Museum, Farmer & the Cow and Merchant Bar. On Friday, the main outdoor stage will be on North Market Street between Third and Fourth streets. It will be at Sixth and Market on Saturday.

Cost: Free

Information: theladybugfestival.com