Music can be heard each Friday night until the end of July at The Waldron, Hill and Buskirk Park also known as the Third Street Park.
On July 12, the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department, which features the Summer Performing Arts Series, organized Fridays at Third Street Park Concerts. This week’s concert featured White Lightning Boys as well as Carrie Newcomer and Gary Walters.
This recurring Friday concert series offers the Bloomington community numerous opportunities to experience the talent of its local artists and these outdoor performances in various venues throughout the city are free.
“The Bloomington performing arts series is a wonderful community treasure,” Newcomer said. “I play all over the country and all over the world, but I love this show.”
Newcomer, a Bloomington resident, performs acoustic contemporary folk music that explores the intersection of the spiritual and the daily as well as the sacred and the ordinary, according to her website.
In an interview, Newcomer said she felt like she had always been performing throughout her life, but she really got started when she was a teenager. She began touring nationally in 1990.
Newcomer appears to have no performance boundaries and travels the world performing in concert halls, acoustic clubs, colleges, churches, synagogues and convents.
On stage Friday night, she talked about her time in India, discussing spirituality, friendship and the people.
While she was there she released of her 15th album entitled “Everything is Everywhere,” a collaboration with master of the Indian classical sarod, Amjad Ali Khan. The album was released as a benefit album for the Interfaith Hunger Initiative, which is dedicated to providing for those most vulnerable in communities.
Newcomer said this on her website about the album, “In a time when we are encouraged to fear difference or diversity Everything is Everywhere was created as an alternative to fear and an affirmation of creative and compassionate engagement.”
Though Newcomer has traveled the world and seen many things, her roots showed through Friday before performing the song “Geodes,” which references Indiana’s natural phenomenon of minerals rich in color trapped between rocks.
“Everyone has geodes or at least knows someone who has them on their porch or in their garden,” Newcomer said. “Geodes are Indiana’s bling.” The crowd laughed.
Before the end of her set, Newcomer and her keyboardist, Gary Walters, welcomed the White Lightning Boys back on stage to perform together.
“We live in very divisive times and creating these spaces where people can come together and create together with music, it shows what we really value. And it’s really an amazing thing,” said Newcomer.
As Newcomer and Walters performed, children could be seen playing on the playground at The Waldron, Hill and Buskirk Park constructed in 2011.
One audience member, Tina Graves, sat by the fountain as her husband and two kids, a son and a daughter, played nearby.
Graves said she and her family enjoy these types of events. She said they are not always focused on the music, but that it’s something for her family to do.
“It’s great to be outdoors and for the kids to play,” said Graves.
Newcomer said she enjoys playing free events for the community. She even joked about how the Bloomington Park and Recreation Department is saving the world.
“Everything that happens in life that brings us together, as people and as a community, is hard not to support,” Newcomer said.
Newcomer’s next show in Bloomington will be at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater on September 21 at 7 p.m. She will perform an hour long set with special guest Scott Russell Sanders for the Shadows to Light Concert, a benefit show for Amethyst House.
Also, he Friday at Third Street Park concert series is not over yet.
July 19, Carlyn Lindsey and SnakeDoctor will perform original blues and R&B sponsored by Bloomingfoods and The Jenn Cristy Band will perform high-energy, original rock on July 26. All shows start at 6:30 p.m. and end at 9 p.m.
"I love this series, it really embodies some of the best of Bloomington,” Newcomer said.
