Photo by Suchat Pederson
Wilmington punk band Eyebawl took to the main stage at the Firefly Music Festival after heavy rain postponed its original concert time.
Wilmington punk quartet Eyebawl was slated to take the Wonder Stage on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 23, as one of the first acts to christen Firefly Music Festival 2021 after a long COVID-19 hiatus. Then the skies opened up.
The band—led by frontwoman Erin Silva, guitarist Andrew Benenati, bassist Jill Willis and drummer Brian Bruce—got bumped from the lineup thanks to the thunderstorms and rain that delayed the festival’s start by several hours.
Despite the bad news, the band remained in good spirits on Friday, Sept. 24, when Delaware Today caught up with them for a chat.
At the time, it was unclear whether Eyebawl’s set would be rescheduled or simply canceled. But by the next morning, the band had a new timeslot and a major venue upgrade: 12:50 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26, at the Firefly Stage.
In the lead up to this, what does an opportunity like Firefly represent?
ES: It’s certainly the biggest opportunity we’ve been given as a band. I was really looking forward to a lot of networking, things like that. And just the exposure, in general, has been really cool. And it’s also just really cool for us to be able to, for clout, to say, “Hey, we played Firefly.” And being on the Firefly playlist has certainly helped our Spotify plays. For sure. We hit 10,000 today on one of our songs, “No More Bad Nights.” Which is funny, because last night was kind of not the best night.
What’s your game plan for the rest of the weekend?
Brian Bruce: We’re going to try and have some fun.
What else is going on with Eyebawl?
ES: We were planning on putting a full-length album together right before COVID and that definitely put a halt to our thing, but we have a three-song remix EP that we plan on putting out in the next couple of months.
Billie Eilish talked during her performance about how crazy it is that live music is back. Is the comeback real? What is your sense?
Jill Willis: Yeah, it’s definitely shuffled up a little bit and the landscape’s a little different out there. Everybody’s kind of still trying to figure out what it’s going to be like. Like, “Is this okay?”
Silva: We have two shows booked for October. We are playing at the Makers Alley Fest co-hosted by Rainbow Records on Oct. 2. And then we are playing at Ortlieb Brewing in Philadelphia on Halloween, Oct. 31.
