Chico music lovers hope to rally support for new free concert series, need public to vote between now and Sept. 15

By Odin Rasco

A recently-formed local nonprofit is working to bring free, live music concerts to Children’s Park in downtown Chico and is now a finalist for a grant that would provide up to $120,000 to help on that front. 

If the organization lands the money, it would have over three years to make its plans a reality.

Inspired to bring a family-friendly live music series to downtown that would serve as a complement to the Downtown Chico Business Association’s Friday night concerts, Ryan Sanders founded Sound Source. Sanders, a Chico local, has worked in live sound concert production for 25 years — notably, he’s worked on sound for the DCBA concerts since 2001 —  and he plans to put his skills to use for the Sound Source concerts as a one-man production crew.

“I’m trying to keep it super lean because I’m trying to get it off the ground,” Sanders said, adding that the estimated total number of people needed to work the concerts would be around five to ten people.

Sanders saw the opportunity for a new concert series as a chance to avoid common pitfalls of summer shows in cities. Rather than stumbling through the haze of 100-plus degree temperatures in a paved area, Sanders envisioned shows in the cooler months of May and September. The choice of location also added the advantage of a grassy area to sit down on, paired with nearby tree cover, making for a more comfortable family outing.

As a stroke of luck, Sanders also discovered that Children’s Park has ample access to the kinds of amperage needed to run a concert sound and light system without issue.

“I started looking around for what could be a series that doesn’t compete with this summer series, but maybe would be a little bit kinder to me as the production staff and potentially a little bit more appealing to the concert goers too,” Sanders noted. “I’m avoiding the heat. I’m avoiding the concrete. And, it’s just my opinion, but I view Children’s Park as more of a family-friendly environment. You can play on the grass, you can play on the play structure, you can even go play in the creek.”

The nonprofit is about as freshly-minted as it gets — they received their determination letter from the IRS just a month ago — but their plan to bring live music to Children’s Park on Saturday evenings in May and September starting in 2026 has already gained support for other local nonprofits, including the North Valley Community Foundation and Maker Radio, 94.5 FM KWQA.

“Our mission is closely aligned with this project, because basically the core of our mission is to support a local music scene and to help be a part of the local music industry ecosystem,” explained Maker Radio Founder Erin Banwell. “There’s always room for more music in Chico.”  

Sanders’ vision for the concert series would also prove as a boon to the content available for the station, as he will be recording all of the shows, with the hope of archiving them and airing them on his own radio show he has on KWQA. 

“It’s kind of an interesting partnership and it increases access to this type of content too,” Sanders said. “If you can’t make it, you can still kind of experience the show somehow.”

Banwell agrees.

“The key point here is, we’re creating an opportunity for local live music to be archived and captured, you know, and this is content that will live on forever,” he added. “Not only on the radio but it’ll also be played on our YouTube channel. And all the artists who are involved will have access to all that content.”

The Children’s Park concert series is one of 100 finalists competing for a donation-matching grant from the Levitt Foundation that would provide up to $40,000 a year for three years. Sound Source and NVCF’s joint application will have to be voted to the top 50 to receive a grant, meaning public support and effort will be vital to their success. Voting for projects is open to the public, with the voting period running from Friday, Sept. 5 through Sept. 15. Votes can be made at levitt.org/vote or by texting CHICO to 877-409-5525. The Levitt grants are part of a plan to “spend down” announced by the foundation in 2023; instead of minimizing its expenditures in order to operate in perpetuity, the foundation has committed to significantly increase the amount of grant money made available by pre-planning to close in 2041. The Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation is a private family foundation founded in 1966 by Mortimer and Mimi Levitt to promote public arts, and has helped fund free concerts across the country for decades.

Because the Levitt grant is a donation-matching model, Sanders and the LVCF will still have to rally community support to get the concerts up and running.

“I’ve been so focused on Levitt that I’ve not done a great job of kind of going out there and really knocking down doors for that matching [money], but it’s going to become even more important in about two weeks’ time when we have like this big potential funding source, but need a match for it,” Sanders acknowledged.

Much of the planning for the concerts has already been underway, with Sound Source locking in the dates with the city while they await final approval from the Planning Commission, which is expected to come by the end of this month. Sanders applauded the city’s Parks Department, whose established procedures made planning details such as portable toilets, ADA compliance, trash management and security simple and free of guesswork.

A lineup for the shows has not been locked in yet, as Sanders wants to ensure there will be money available to put on the shows before he pulls bands into the schedule, though he’s confident that his decades of experience in the local music scene has provided ample contacts for him to get in touch with well before the first concert date.