With members of Wild Adriatic and J-Council roaming the crowds, and Jamie Kent and Ryan Hommel lighting up the Outer Edge Stage, last night’s Home Community Concert turned out to be the perfect on ramp to Mile 5.
We’ve been Mile of Music fans since it first launched five years ago and we could not wait for Appleton’s homegrown, all-original music festival to start again this year. Fortunately, our wait is over.
To celebrate its five-year milestone, Mile of Music Festival Director Dave Willems added a community concert to wet our appetites for the festival and to raise funds for the community. Last night’s proceeds went to the Housing Partnership of the Fox Cities.
We’ve really enjoyed the way Mile of Music has embraced the community aspect of its festival by sharing their platform with local charities throughout the year, especially at the Wednesday night concerts at Riverview Gardens.
I’d seen Ryan Hommel with Heather Maloney earlier this summer at one of those concerts , so I knew we were in for a treat. We were also very familiar with the energetic Jamie Kent, whose recent album debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard’s Top Country Albums Chart.
Hommel opened the concert with a short set of his own music, and then joined the full Jamie Kent band on stage. These types of collaborations between artists are one of the reasons we love this festival. Another is the spontaneity, and there was plenty of that last night as well.
Following a standing ovation at the end of his planned set, Kent and his band unplugged their instruments, and then made their way into the crowd for an acoustic finale.
It was the perfect way to merge for all of us to merge into Mile 5.
See you there!
Here’s “Home Again”, which was an appropriate song in so many ways for last night’s concert:
And here’s the acoustic song he played last night:
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