With the heat wave in the area showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon, Jacksonville Main Street is working to help everyone cool off at tonight’s Summer Concert Series show.
Executive Director for Jacksonville Main Street, Judy Tighe says, Main Street has secured a set of cooling misters that will be on hand for tonight’s performance by Chicago Farmer and the Fieldnotes.
She says these are not the kind of sprayers that children run through in the summer so that you can leave your bathing suits at home. “They are not sprinklers, but they mist water over a fan, and then that circulates the air that is cooler. “It sort of like air conditioning for outside, but not really. But it is supposed to cool the air in the region of the mister by about twenty degrees, which can make a difference on a hot day.”
Tighe says going forward, Main Street will continue to provide the misters for any of its downtown events when the heat can become excessive. She says between the cooling misters and the large number of shade trees on the plaza, she hopes it will make the concert more enjoyable for everyone who wants to attend.
Tighe says tonight’s performers, Chicago Farmer, and the Fieldnotes, are rumored to have a bit of a local tie with a past visit to Jacksonville. “They bill themselves as folk music but it’s really more eclectic in my opinion. They play a little bit of everything.
I heard a rumor that they were here at Soap Co. many many years ago. I don’t know what changes the band has made since then, but that would have been quite a number of years ago. But we’re very happy to have them here tonight.”
Tighe says everyone is always invited to the downtown concert series each week, however there will be a special group at tonight’s event for anyone who is a new face to the area.
“If there are any out-of-town visitors, we do hope they come to the concert, and they don’t have to be visitors, if they recently moved to the Jacksonville area we’d love to see them. Come downtown and stop by the welcome tent tonight. There will be representatives from Main Street, the Jacksonville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Jacksonville Regional Economic Development Corporation, there to greet people from other locations originally, so we’d be very happy to see everybody.”
The Jacksonville Main Street Summer Concert Series starts at 6:00 tonight with Chicago Farmer and the Fieldnotes taking the stage from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, immediately followed by the weekly after party which will be this week at Don’s Place.