Peacetown returns to The Barlow on Wednesday, June 14

Live music and summer fun will rock Sebastopol every week beginning this Wednesday

Peacetown Summer Concert Series returns to The Barlow for the third consecutive year on Wednesday, June 1, to kick off another summer of community fun. This season includes free live music, afterparties and more.

“In addition to the stages of music, we have what’s called a Family Village,” said Peacetown Executive Director Elizabeth Smith. “There is an area sectioned off every week, for children and families, that is right next to the School of Rock stage, which is young people performing. We have lots of different things like bubbles and activities, and we’ll have some instruments some weeks for the kids to play with. In addition, this year we’re going to be shutting down the street and having arts and crafts vendors, all local, and a farmers’ market as well.”

Bands — including Fleetwood Macrame, The Real Sarahs, The doRiaN Mode, Joyride, Back Porchestra and dozens more throughout the summer — will perform on five stages.

Here’s the lineup for this week, Wedenesday, June 14:

• Spike Sikes & His Awesome Hotcakes at Blue Ridge Kitch event space

• The Dream Farmers at Crooked Goat Brewing

• Hooper & Sloss Band at the Foundry

• Sakoyana at Community Market Stage

• Stadler-Gibbons Band at Hopmonk Tavern Sebastopol

Gravenstein Grill and Hopmonk Sebastopol and The Third Pig will host afterparties each week, meaning that every Wednesday there will be eight different free venues and a variety of different music genres to choose from. (The afterparties at Gravenstein Grill and Hopmonk are family-friendly, while the Third Pig is 21 and up.)

This is Peacetown’s 11th year; it began in Ives Park with just four shows during the summer. The Covid shutdown required it to stream music virtually in 2020, and it switched locations to The Barlow in 2021 due to pandemic restrictions at the park. 

During the past two years, 2,500 to 4,000 people attended Peacetown each Wednesday, a number derived from counting how many cell phones came into The Barlow space. This year the Peacetown Summer Concert series will run for 10 weeks, from June 14 to August 16. Barlow businesses will be open during the festivities.

Smith, a founding Peacetown board member who helped to incorporate it into a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation in 2020, is also its first executive director, as of January.

 “We are a nonprofit with a mission to promote peace, and we do that through community gatherings and education,” she said, adding that the corporation has finally secured its first office — in the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce building.

“I’m just really excited to get the community together and bring people from out of the area into Sebastopol and to promote peace,” Smith said, regarding the upcoming summer events. “It’s such a wonderful opportunity for our community to come together to support one another, to love one another, to dance and wear flowers in your hair and have smiles on your faces. I’m really, really looking forward to that and I hope that the community enjoys our concert series.”

Check out the Peacetown website for the full lineup of summer concerts, Peacetown merch, the origin story and the Principles of Peace or to make a donation.

Peacetown Summer Concert Series. The Barlow, 6770 McKinley St, Sebastopol. Wednesdays, June 14 to Aug. 16, 4:30–7:30 p.m. www.peacetown.org