This past week I was in Chicago to celebrate my sister-in-law’s graduation from DePaul University (Congrats again Maddy!), when I got a message from Aimee asking what I was doing the weekend of June 20th (besides Westword Music Showcase, of course). I quickly looked at my calendar and realized that was the only event on my calendar for the weekend. I told her I was free otherwise, and she quickly replied back that Nokia had contacted her about going to Delaware for the Firefly Music Festival (which I had honestly never heard of before) and she also gave them my name to go as her guest.

Since I was in Chicago at the time (was there for about a week, both working from Heller’s Chicago office and celebrating Maddy) I wasn’t sure I was up for another trip, two days after I get home, but I went to look at the lineup anyways. I scrolled down and this was all I needed to see:

FOO FIGHTERS!!!

That was basically my text to Aimee: ALL YOU HAD TO SAY WAS FOO FIGHTERS! OF COURSE I’M IN!

I love Foo Fighters and didn’t even know they were playing any shows right now beyond filming for the HBO series (I’m a horrible fan – I know). Then I looked at the rest of the lineup for Firefly Festival and holy crap there are a ton of amazing bands! Just to name a few:

Third Eye Blind
New Politics
Unlikely Candidates
American Authors
Kongos
G-Eazy
Royal Teeth
Cage the Elephant
And too many more to name

I made an Rdio playlist of the bands so you can listen along and hopefully discover some new bands:

I’ve already discovered some new favorites like:

Kodaline
X Ambassadors
Stop Light Observations
The Weeks
and Johnnyswim – just to name a few

After I said yes, Aimee text to say that we would be glamping (a more glamorous version of camping with air-conditioned tents etc.).

I haven’t slept in a tent in about 10 years, but my response to her? “I don’t care – FOO FIGHTERS!”

Then she said I’d have to take 3 days off of work, again my reply “FOO FIGHTERS!”.

I don’t think she realizes that I will do just about anything to see Foo Fighters.

Then Nokia sent out our itinerary. Not only do we get to attend the festival with VIP tickets, but we are also getting a tour of Dogfish Head Brewery and have backstage/meet and greet passes for Unlikely Candidates and The Colourist! There were many more details in our 7 page itinerary, but I’ll save some of it for social media as they are also giving me a brand new Nokia Lumia Icon to use during our trip for photos and videos, so follow along with the hashtag #ListenwithLumia.

Since saying yes to the event, I came home from Chicago a day early and have been feverishly working to make sure I have everything covered for work, but also been busy working with Aimee and Bryan creating a FanPlan page for Firefly and we discovered that every single one of the 115 bands performing this year are on Twitter! I am amazed, but we made a list and checked it thrice (thanks Aimee) and if you don’t believe me, you can follow all of the bands here:

Tweets from https://twitter.com/monikarun/lists/firefly-lineup-2014

If you’re headed to the festival, be sure to bookmark FanPlan.info to track the schedule and easily tweet your favorites from the event.

As if there wasn’t enough to be excited for, one thing (besides Foo of course) that I’m really looking forward to? Lightning bugs (aka Fireflies)! I haven’t seen these bugs in years and I miss them. Not sure I can capture them in a photo, but I guarantee I will try this weekend. Even if I don’t see any, I’ll be happy – BECAUSE FOO FIGHTERS!!