Two festivals a mile apart in Bridgeview, and one name on both bills

Two festivals happen in Bridgeview, Illinois this month. Their venues are one mile apart, computed from the coordinates we store for both. They run fifteen days apart. Between them they book 174 named DJs, and exactly one name is on both bills.

North Coast Music Festival was the first, at SeatGeek Stadium on 4 to 6 September, with 144 named artists. Summer's Last Dance is the second, one Saturday on 19 September, with 30. The only DJ playing both is LIZ!.

That is not a scheduling story. It is two completely different ideas of what a lineup is, happening in the same town, two weeks apart.

The bill almost nobody else booked

25 of the 30 DJs at Summer's Last Dance play no other festival anywhere in our catalog. Not in Chicago, not in the Midwest, not this season. That is 83 per cent of the running order, and it ties for fifth of the 73 festival bills we hold with 20 or more named DJs.

North Coast, a mile away, is at 75 of 144. Fifty-two per cent, and 27th of the same 73.

Take every DJ on the Summer's Last Dance bill and count the festivals each one plays this season. The average is 1.27. On the North Coast bill it is 2.80.

Four hundred DJs are working that Saturday

19 September is one of the busiest dates we hold. Seven festivals are running, and 426 DJs are on a stage somewhere: Lost Lands in Ohio, Nocturnal Wonderland in California, Ultra Japan in Tokyo, Experts Only in New York, Yahn Dawn in Colorado, and a small one on a San Francisco pier.

None of those 426 names is on the Bridgeview bill.

The five who travel

Five names on the bill turn up somewhere else. The Sponges play four festivals this season, the most of anyone here. Big Gigantic play three. Henry Fong, Rich Dietz and LIZ! play two each.

The busiest DJ on this bill plays four festivals. On the North Coast bill, Levity plays twelve.

What the number does not say

Three honest caveats, because this is the kind of figure that gets quoted back at us.

We count festivals. We do not count club nights. JTC has one upcoming show in our catalog and it is this one, but he has been making Chicago house records for twenty years and works a club calendar we do not index. "Plays no other festival we hold" is not "does not work". For a bill drawn this heavily from one city's resident DJs, that gap matters more than it does for a touring lineup.

It is a small bill. Thirty names puts it in the lower half of what we count, and a short lineup is easier to keep exclusive than a long one. Among the 33 bills we hold with 20 to 40 names, this one is third.

And it is not alone. We Belong Here: New Orleans sits at the same 83 per cent, and four bills are higher, Off The Grid Campout SoCal among them at 90 per cent. Nobody from the Most Booked top ten is playing Bridgeview on the 19th.

What that means if you are going

At a festival with a shared bill, the poster is a preview. Miss a headliner and you will get another shot in three weeks, somewhere closer to home. Here, there is no second date in our records for 25 of the 30 sets. If you skip one, the catalog has nowhere else to point you.

So work this one from the bottom of the poster up. Follow a few of the unfamiliar names in the app now, let the set times land, and plan the day around the ones you have no second chance at. That is the opposite of how you would play North Coast, and both festivals are a mile from the same exit.

Every count here is ours, computed on 1 September 2026 from the 143 festivals in our upcoming catalog, and it moves as lineups fill in. Neither Bridgeview festival is one we can sell tickets for — both sell through their own sites rather than a vendor we work with, so there is no ticket link in this post.

Electric State is free on the App Store, on Google Play, and at electricstate.app — set times, lineups and the boards this post is computed from.

Make music as well as go to hear it? Bounce is our pocket studio for iPhone and iPad. A session, not a song.