Trail Mix Acoustic Concert Series, a year-round music festival, will feature a performance from the Tray Wellington Band, a bluegrass group from Raleigh, North Carolina, and local one-man band M.G. Bailey, at Thornton Distilling Co. in Thornton on Saturday, Feb. 10.
This will be the first Trail Mix that isn’t staged at Izaak Walton Preserve in Homewood.
“We will continue to work with Izaak Walton, but it seems like what’s really better for us moving forward, given the bigger names that we’re starting to attract, is to move our indoor shows to the Thornton Distilling Company,” said Steve Ploum, Trail Mix event director.
National acts like the Tray Wellington Band need a larger space that can accommodate a larger audience than Izaak Walton’s Senior Hall, Ploum said. It’s the difference between a venue that can fit more than 130 people and one that has space for fewer than 80.
In the warmer months, Trail Mix has been outside among the trees at Izaak Walton. Ploum said Illinois’ returning cicadas will likely be too loud for an outdoor concert in the upcoming months. The Trail Mix concerts in April and June are also set to take place at Thornton Distilling, Ploum said.
There will still be outdoor shows, and possibly even indoor shows, at Izaak Walton in the future, Ploum clarified. He said selling more tickets at a larger venue can bring in more revenue and “allow for bigger names during the outdoor shows” at Izaak Walton.
Trail Mix, which began in 2016, has evolved from being a day-long music festival to a year-long “concert series.” It went from featuring only local bands to bringing in national acts. Since early 2023, the concerts have been organized by Trail Mix Productions, a designated nonprofit organization with Ploum, Steve Buchtel, Jeff Maharry, Andrew Palmer and Kristen Ryan as its board of directors.
The mission statement of Trail Mix Productions is “to produce high-quality music events for Chicago’s South Suburbs that expand the area’s cultural offerings.”
Ploum said that while the upcoming two Trail Mix concerts won’t be in Homewood, having them in neighboring Thorton is still in line with this mission statement.
“Most artists that will come to the Chicago region don’t often think of the South Suburbs. They go up to the city or they go north of the city,” Ploum said. “Our goal truly is to make the South Suburbs not be flyover country for artists.”
Thornton Distilling co-founder Andrew Howell said: “We’re very excited to be partnering with Steve and the Trail Mix group. We’re really looking forward to hosting those events.”
Howell said Thornton Distilling has a lot of experience with hosting local bands, and they’re looking forward to Trail Mix bringing traveling musicians to their venue.
“He is virtuoso quality – as are the few other members of his band,” Ploum said of Tray Wellington. “He’s really looked at as being one of the premier banjo players. And, he does a musical style that fuses bluegrass with blues and jazz and even a little bit of hip-hop.”
M.G. Bailey, the opening act, is “a local legend,” Howell said, adding that he’s played at Thornton Distilling “a few times before.”
Tickets for the Feb. 10 show are available on trailmixmusic.org.