Alderman: Community Supports Riverwest Music Festival 'One Hundred Percent'
By Katie Karpowicz in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 17, 2014 4:00PM
Just as we were ruling out our Fourth of July weekend festival plans, up popped Riverwest Music Festival taking place along the riverfront at Division and Elston on July 4-6. Standout acts include Deep Dish, Excision and Morgan Page. The announcement of the inaugural festival comes just in time too as the embattled Wavefront Music Festival, which typically takes place over the same weekend, finally announced last week that its 2014 edition would not be happening.
Despite the Riverwest lineup’s striking similarities to last year’s Wavefront bill—Damian Lazarus, Benoit & Sergio, Guy Gerber, Rusko and others all made appearances at Wavefront in 2013—the festival’s publicist Nick Brennan of Janice McCafferty PR insists the festivals are “completely unrelated.”
“Riverwest Music Festival, LLC, which is owned by Garrett Belschner, is behind the production of the festival” Brennan wrote to Chicagoist in an email. “He has brought some of the people involved with Wavefront in as consultants to help get the festival off of the ground.”
Interestingly, DNAinfo Chicago reported last week that Belschner is a co-owner of Spybar and business partner of Dino Gardiakos, one of Wavefront’s key organizers.
While it’s clear there is some crossover between the festivals, Alderman Walter Burnett Jr. of the 27th Ward confirmed there are some new faces behind Riverwest, namely Lodge Management Group (owners of Mahoney’s, Original Mother’s and several other River North bars and restaurants) and the owners of Estate, adjacent to the future festival grounds.
“It think it’s a brand new group,” Ald. Burnett told Chicagoist. “They’re fresh. I think they have a lot of experienced professionals that work on other festivals that they’re hiring.”
Whatever the case, Riverwest Music Festival’s lineup is impressive if you’re a fan of house and electronic dance music and Ald. Burnett, a self-proclaimed “house head,” is thrilled about it.
“They do the Chosen Few Picnic on the South Side so we need something on the North Side. House music was kind of in the middle all the time back in the day when Frankie Knuckles and them were doing their thing in the downtown area and they’ve still been doing it out south so I think we need to bring it back to the North Side. House music is for everyone.”
He’s confident residents within his ward are behind the new festival as well.
“The community that’s closest to the neighborhood which is the River West supports the festival one hundred percent. They’re tired of going to festivals outside of their community so they’d love to have one right in their neighborhood.”
The alderman went on to tell this writer he’s not concerned about the noise and traffic concerns that have mired other similar festivals in the past including Wavefront
“It’s just an ideal area because it’s off the beaten path. On the weekends, all of the businesses are closed. There’s not a lot of traffic. It’s just a wonderful, ideal place to have an event like that."
Riverwest Music Festival will make its first impression on Chicago in less than a month. General admission three-day passes are on sale now for $149.