Chicago is no stranger to Beach music festivals, having experienced 2 editions of Wavefront Music Festival in 2012 and 2013, before the alderman and surrounding community shut it down at Montrose beach.  Wavefront was a hit as it did not cater only to the mainstream EDM sounds and brought a lot of House and Techno to Chicago’s enthusiastic crowd. The poor reception that Riverwest Music Festival received last year, only added fuel to the fire that Chicago wanted a new beach festival. 

In comes React Presents with their Mamby on the Beach, a two-day 3 stage festival directly on one of Chicago’s more recently created beach fronts, Oakwood Beach. With clean sand and Chicago’s downtown Skyline as the backdrop the location was perfect.  With a lineup of mainly indie rock and electronic rock fusion groups, with some DJs, Mamby stood out from the rest of the already established festivals in React’s Resume.

The Likes of Empire of the Sun, Phantogram and Cherub rocked the Main Stage crowds over the weekend. With its open layout the Main Stage created a great atmosphere for fans to get close to these live acts. The tent is where you went in you needed your House, Tech House and Bass needs. After James Murphy heated things up, Zhu closed out the Tent on Saturday to a huge crown that spilled over outside the tent area. On Sunday J. Phlip, Cut Copy and Art Department set the tone for the day. The Beach House (a miniature version of the main stage) resting in the main vendor/food location allowed for festival attendees to experience some new music such as Indie-Pendent Party DJs which was a nice surprise over the weekend.

As always a range of locals were peppered in the lineup to make you feel at home. Most notably Louis The Child, Steve Gerard and of course Autograf. Each of which who left their autograph (see what I did there) on the festival.

Though the location of the festival seemed sketchy at first, React did a good job of providing room for taxis and Ubers to drop people off, lots of bike racks were on site, and the convenient FREE shuttles from the festival to a Red and Green line stop were a great addition. The one blemish on the transportation to and from the festival was the long wait in lines Saturday after the event. This however was not repeated to my knowledge on Sunday night.

I didn’t think I’d have such a good time partying on the beach, but Mamby made me change my mind without a doubt. Laying out on the sand with a cold beer while listening to some great summer tunes is definitely something I’d like to do again.  I hope to see Mamby back in Chicago next year.

Check out our whole Gallery From Mamby HERE