The Trail Mix Concert Series will return to Izaak Walton nature preserve on Saturday, Aug. 12. It will feature Texas folk singer and fiddle player Phoebe Hunt. Adjacent Cruise, a husband-and-wife duet from Chicago, will open for her.
This upcoming concert is the third Trail Mix concert this year but the first to be outside among the trees instead of inside at Senior Hall. Flossmoor Station will serve their craft beer.
Hunt is the lead member of the folk band Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers. Before they broke up in 2011, Hunt was a member of The Belleville Outfit. She’s been featured in Rolling Stone magazine and by Bloomington-Normal’s NPR affiliate WGLT.
Hunt’s performance at Trail Mix is a part of the promotional tour for her upcoming solo album “Nothing Else Matters” which comes out on July 28 – just a few weeks beforehand.
Trail Mix organizer Steve Ploum said he met Hunt backstage at the Frankfort Bluegrass Fest in 2022.
“She’s top-notch. People will be pretty amazed to see her fingers fly and then also her amazing voice,” Ploum said.
Part of the goal of Tail Mix is to bring in musicians like Hunt who might not otherwise ever come to the Homewood-Flossmoor area, Ploum said. He said they do this by working with musicians’ existing tour schedules and being willing to be flexible with dates.
“We are not an anchor location. We’re a routing location. The anchor locations are going to be the much bigger events that pay a lot of money. We’re just not in that position yet,” Ploum said. “We spend some time looking at people’s tours and where they’re going. And we try to be an event on their way from one anchor place to another anchor place.”
“From what I’ve heard, they’re fun stuff. They’re local-ish,” Ploum said of Adjacent Cruise. “I think they’re going to be a nice addition to this event.”
There are about four Trail Mix acoustic concerts a year. All of them are at Izaak Walton Preserve. During the warmer months, unless the headlining act requests otherwise, the concerts are outside.
“We call it this little clearing in the woods … our listening room. There are the breezes off the lake. And a cicada or two. And the rustling leaves. It’s really been tremendous in how people have gone into the space and really listened,” Ploum said.
The Trail Mix on Sept. 22 is set to feature The Wildwoods, a three-piece, folk-Americana band from Nebraska, Ploum said. Like the August concert, it will be an outside performance, he said.
Tickets for August’s Trail Mix are available for purchase on Trail Mix’s website with prices ranging from $17.50 to $30, depending on the seating.