A Free Weekend: Three Parks, One Deck, and Five Bucks at the Winery

If you spend money on live music this weekend in Ames, that's on you — because you don't have to. Between now and Sunday night there are at least three shows that cost nothing and one that costs less than a pint, and together they're a pretty good argument that the healthiest part of this scene is the part happening outdoors, for free, in front of your neighbors.

Kick it off tonight on the Wheatsfield Co-op deck. The Tiny Deck Concerts run at 6 p.m. on Fridays through the summer, and tonight it's Bleujack. It's exactly what it sounds like — a band, a grocery-store deck, some folding chairs, the smell of somebody's charcoal grill drifting over. Bring your own chair. The whole series is built for the casual drop-in, and the lineup rolls on for weeks: Casey Joe Collins next Friday, then Ben Schrag, then Day Ashworth into August.

Sunday is the big free day. At 7 p.m., Roosevelt Park hosts Jeni Grouws as part of Roosevelt Summer Sundays, the neighborhood series that has quietly become one of the most reliable weekly gigs in town. Grouws is a blues singer with the kind of voice that carries across a park lawn without needing much help. If you want your Sunday to have a little more wine in it, Prairie Moon Winery north of town runs its Sunday Music series at 3 p.m. five dollars, 21 and up — and this week it's singer-songwriter Ryne Doughty. You could, in theory, do the winery at three and the park at seven and call it a full day.

Here's the context worth noting. For years the anchor of the Ames summer was "Ames on the Half Shell" at Bandshell Park — the free downtown Friday series that drew hundreds. That series wrapped for good on June 26, before our window even opened; the final show reportedly pulled a big crowd out to say goodbye. So this summer is the first test of what fills that space. And the answer, so far, is: not one thing, but a whole distributed web of smaller free shows spread across parks, decks, and winery patios.

That's not a downgrade. It's arguably more durable. When your scene depends on one marquee series, one bad grant cycle or one rained-out season can gut it. When it depends on a co-op deck, three parks, and a winery all deciding independently that live music is worth doing, it takes a lot more to kill. The Ames Municipal Band still plays the Bandshell at 8 p.m. Thursdays under Michael Golemo, too — a reminder that some of this town's music infrastructure is a century old and isn't going anywhere.

So the plan: Bleujack tonight on the deck, Doughty at the winery Sunday afternoon, Grouws at Roosevelt Sunday night. Total cost, five dollars. Bring a chair, bring a neighbor, and pay attention to who's playing — half these names will be back on a bigger stage before the summer's out.

Sources: Your guide to Ames' live outdoor summer music series; Final Ames on the Half Shell concert; [Prairie Moon Winery Sunday Music]( https://amesvoice.com/2026/05/27/your-guide-to-ames-live-outdoor-summer-music-series/)