RiverEdge Park Presents Downtown Alive! Series Feat. Sixteen Candles & American English, 6/13 and 8/1

Aurora's popular Downtown Alive! outdoor music series is one of the best summer traditions in Aurora and the western suburbs.

Friday night, go home, put on something comfortable, come out to RiverEdge Park, grab a libation, hang out with friends, enjoy festival food and listen to fun music - all at a really good price, in a super cool setting.

On Friday, June 13, Aurora's 2014 Downtown Alive! concert kicks off with Sixteen Candles, launching RiverEdge Park's summer season packed with national acts, community festivals, outdoor moving screenings and fun special events. The park opens at 7 p.m. Show time is 8 p.m. Tickets are only $3.

Sixteen Candles, Chicago's most exciting and popular cover band for nearly a decade, is made up of five fun-loving guys with a simple love for the music of years gone. They play the best collection of 80's music you've ever heard, hit-after-hit, all night long. Their music and creative stage show are sure to have RiverEdge audiences on their feet, dancing and singing along to the best hits of the 80's, right on the banks of the beautiful Fox River.

The second of two Downtown Alive! summer concerts on Friday, August 1 are Beatles doppelgangers American English. It's the 50th Anniversary of when four guys from Liverpool changed America. What better way to celebrate than with one of the most popular Beatles tribute bands on the planet. The park opens at 7 p.m. Show time is 8 p.m. Tickets are just $3.

They look like the Beatles, they sound like the Beatles, even the Beatles' former promoter Sam Leach calls American English "The Beatles Incarnate!"

From that very first song on the Ed Sullivan show, through taking a trip to the psychedelic era of the Beatles with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band, through Abbey Road, American English is a fun night of hit-after-bloody-Beatles-hit, with precise attention to every musical aspect, including costume changes, vintage instruments and special effects.

RiverEdge Park is located at 360 N. Broadway, directly across from the Metra station in downtown Aurora. To purchase tickets, log on to RiverEdgeAurora.com, call the RiverEdge box office, (630) 896-6666, or visit RiverEdge's satellite box office, the Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd. in downtown Aurora, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday-Saturday.

The RiverEdge box office is also open at the park on show days starting from Noon to show time.

Rush-Copley Medical Center is the premier sponsor for Aurora's 2014 Downtown Alive! series. Downtown Alive! is also sponsored by BMO Harris Bank, Comfort-Suites Aurora, Country Financial, Fox Valley Park District, Paramount Fence, Pepsi, Sikich, Subway and Waubonsee College.

REMINDER: Advance tickets to all RiverEdge concerts are on sale now, and some are deeply discounted if purchased before June 2.

Example: Tickets to the Downtown Alive! concerts noted here are $1 if purchased before June 2; $3 starting June 2. Likewise, tickets to the 18th Annual Blues on the Fox Festival on June 27 and 28 are $10 per day before June 2; $20 per day starting June 2. (Exception: Tickets to Lady Antebellum are $45 starting August 1; $55 after starting August 1.)

Chicago and Chicago's western suburbs have a beautiful, new outdoor concert venue to enjoy after last summer's grand opening of the new RiverEdge Park in downtown Aurora - Illinois' second largest city.

In addition to the Downtown Alive! series, national acts playing RiverEdge this summer include 18th Annual Blues on the Fox headliners Jimmie Vaughan, Los Lonely Boys and Taj Mahal (June 27 & 28), Lee DeWyze and 10,000 Maniacs (July 5), Under the Sun Tour with Sugar Ray, Blues Traveler and Uncle Kracker (July 6), Lady Antebellum (August 7), Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland (August 29) and one more major concert TBA (August 10; announcement and ticket-on sale date is June 22).

Summer events at RiverEdge include outdoor screenings of movie cult classics Sing-A-Long-A Grease (June 20) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (June 21) for only $5.

Community festivals also will attract all ages to Aurora's downtown business district including the Wisconsin Beer and Cheese Tour (May 31), Sacred Heart Annual Festival & Concert (June 8), the ColorVibe 5K Race (June 15), Aurora's Fourth of July Celebration, the Aurora Puerto Rican Heritage Festival (July 26 & 27) and the Fox Valley Irish Festival (August 2).

For more information, visit RiverEdgeAurora.com or call the RiverEdge box office, (630) 896-6666.