SAUGUS — For the third year in a row the Iron Works and the National Parks Service will hold a summer concert series in partnership with the Saugus Public Library.
This upcoming Wednesday, July 24, Mamadou Diop a Senegalese artist who performs West African rhythms and afrobeat will perform at the Saugus Iron Works. While there is a wide variety of music during the summer concert series, Director at the Public Library Alan Thibeault, said “I’m looking forward to that. I’m trying to get different music in…I think it’s good to expose people to different things.”
The town has “really gotten into it,” Thibeault said. If someone cannot attend, Saugus TV is there filming the concerts, which are later posted to the town’s Vimeo page for all to enjoy.
Thibeault said the concerts are a great opportunity to socialize and people will often come and chat with their friends at the concerts. He said he wants to make the events more family-friendly and is looking to purchase lawn games such as cornhole with recently donated funds.
The summer concert series is being held at the Iron Works every Wednesday at 6 p.m. through Aug. 28.
He said the concert series is in part funded by grants that they had received from the Massachusetts Cultural Council last year, which “pretty much completely paid for the bands that we hired.” The library hires four of the bands, and the Park Service hires the other four.
Thibeault said he worked with National Parks Service ranger Michael Parr to create the series. He added Iron Works has been great to work with. “I really can’t say enough about them.”
He said Parr had already had bands “in his pocket” to book for the concert series at the Iron Works, as he had held similar events at the Maritime National Historic Site in Salem.
Thibeault said that since the first year, attendance numbers and interest in the community have grown “quite a bit” and said that they were averaging around 147 attendees per show and one show had over 200 people there. Thibeault said he often sees kids who may have attended a library program with a relative at the shows.
The library often holds events such as story hours on Thursdays and toddler story hour on Wednesdays in the morning in the area, when it is cooler outside, and the library tends do a lot of outdoor programming, both in one-off events such as Henry the Juggler, or in a serialized manner like the story hours from May through September, Thibeault said.
