Ames community members gathered to watch Son Peruchos, Andean and South American folk music group, for the Summer Sunday concert series at Roosevelt Park.

The Des Moines based band performs with a zampona, quena and charango, traditional South American folk instruments. Members of the concert series committee asked Son Peruchos to perform, as they strive to feature local musicians.

“We tried to get a diversity of different kinds of genres,” said Susan Brenner, committee member. “Most of the people we have are Iowa musicians, not always but most of the time we try to stay local. Ames has a pretty vibrant music community where there are many musicians doing things.”

Going out and watching bands live is one way they find who performs, but YouTube helped that process as well. By having access to watch a band perform at any time, they were able to find more musicians to feature. Three bands from the series this year were found this way.

While Son Peruchos sought out by Brenner, many bands reached out to the committee to perform.

“We’re in the musician’s road bible,” said Jeff Hart, committee member. “Sometimes they will call us, like if they’re traveling from Nashville or some famous place and they happen to be passing through wondering if we can put them in a gig,”

The interest of the community is also taken into consideration when choosing bands. Brenner became a committee member when she suggested they include Latin music, and they brought her into the organization to help add diversity into the series.

Each concert is predicted to bring in around 300 people, and Son Peruchos maintained that standard. With lawn chairs and blankets all over the spacious grass with each spot having a great view of the stage, Roosevelt Park is the ideal spot to host these concerts.

“We are able to have a community meeting place by having the park here,” Brenner said. “The city was wonderful about supporting us in maintaining the concert series here, and Jeff worked with them to help design the shelter there which has fantastic acoustics for our concert.”

Since 2003, this series has been putting on concerts every week over the summer, only missing shows during the pandemic in 2020. The committee members have big plans for next year’s series to celebrate the 20th anniversary. This series is completely free and non-profit, with donations accepted during the last show of the season for performance wages and concert setups.

Bob Dorr and Friends featuring Jeff Petersen, will perform at the next concert, the last of this year’s series, 7 p.m. on Aug. 28.