Tickets are now on sale for the first-ever A-Town House Music Fest to be held at RiverEdge Park in Aurora on Saturday, Sept. 28.
Gates will open at 2 p.m. at RiverEdge Park, 360 N. Broadway in downtown Aurora, with the show starting at 3 p.m., officials said.
Tickets went on sale Tuesday and 1,000 were sold in the first day, event organizers said Wednesday. Tickets, which cost $40, can be purchased at www.RiverEdgeAurora.com.
The event is being held to honor the 40th anniversary of house music, a genre founded in Chicago.
The event at RiverEdge, being held in partnership with the city of Aurora, will include a broad list of DJs known for their house music playlists as well as several musical artists.
According to a press release from RiverEdge, the lineup will include well-known DJs of house music like Julian “Jumpin” Perez, Mike “Hitman” Wilson, “Kickin’” Kenny Cahill, DJ Maurice “ICE” Culpepper, Sundance, Tim “Spinnin’” Schommer, Mickey “Mixin’” Oliver, DJ Darrell Foxx, Richard Graves, DJ Khaaliq and DJ Tito Latino, plus musical artists including CeCe Peniston, Fast Eddie and OutHere Brothers.
Jim Jarvis, general manager for RiverEdge Park, said RiverEdge and city officials began kicking around the idea for the festival “no more than six to eight weeks ago.”
He said Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin “called a meeting and said, ‘I’ve got an idea, given all of these amazing artists that have come out of Aurora with house music and it’s the 40th anniversary’ and that he had been at an event Wilson was at and wanted to take this to the next level.
“We decided to finish this summer musical season off with this big celebration of A-Town and he (Irvin) actually came up with the name of the A-Town House Music Fest,” Jarvis said.
Jarvis said that normally, concerts at the facility wrap up by the first week of September. The date for the A-Town House Music Fest was determined “based on when most of these artists were available” as well as the availability of staff to hold the event.
“The nice thing is we can still staff the park as most people that work here come from the area of Oswego, Yorkville and Aurora and there are a lot of teachers who have the weekend open. We’ve got a full staff ready to go,” he said. “Everybody is excited about it as this is a cool way to end the season. We opened with Blues on the Fox, and now we close by celebrating this really cool music genre from the Chicago area and players that were involved with it.”
In connection with the musical event, DJ Mike “Hitman” Wilson, 60, of Aurora, will be honored. Wilson, who said he has worked in the music business for 40 years, said he is thrilled about the A-Town House Music Fest.
“I think having this is fantastic and there are so many DJs that have come out of the Aurora area and gone on and done some big things. It’s really awesome that they’ve put this together,” Wilson said. “We’re big on music – the whole city is. We’ve developed so many DJs because we had local places like the Alamo and clubs where the DJs would all come and play and fill in those events and attract crowds from all the surrounding suburban cities and that was kind of our magnet, the club part of Aurora.”
Wilson said his own career was spurred on “back in the early ’80s by becoming a guest DJ on the number one radio station in Chicago WBMX.”
“I went on to become a regular member of the BMX Hot Mix 5,” he said.
Wilson spoke about being honored and said he was “overwhelmed and humbled and it’s a really awesome thing to have.”
He said the lineup for the upcoming festival is “phenomenal” and noted it included some of his own mentors and personal heroes.
“Julian Perez, he was the DJ I’d come to see when I was a young guy back in the day and he was the one throwing the parties in Aurora and he’d throw these events with some of the radio jocks from Chicago,” Wilson said. “CeCe Peniston is a multi-platinum recording artist who has done the house music that we were famous for in Chicago. The lineup is phenomenal. Mickey “Mixin’” Oliver, also from the Hot Mix 5, is a guy I patterned my DJ-ing after.”
Part of Wilson’s recognition will include a street dedication at noon before the event on a part of Lily Street in Aurora, which was home to a recording studio Wilson said he “started and brought hundreds of artists through and made thousands of records through that studio over a period of 40 years.”
“It might be ‘Mike Wilson Street’ or ‘Mike Hitman Wilson,’ I don’t know what they are going to call it,” he said.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.