The Sunset Concert Series returns Thursday for its 27th year, but with a new location on campus.

The series will start at SIU Lot 89A Hillside, just of north of the SIU Arena and alternate weekly with Turley Park.

Thursday at 7pm Eddie Shaw & the Wolfgang, a blues band from Chicago, will be the first to perform. Shaw was recently inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Donald Castle, an associate director at the Student Center, said the concerts are fun and brings students together.

“It helps create a social center for students,” Castle said

Joseph Letke, a junior from Chicago studying geography, will be attending the concerts for the first time.

“I’m pretty excited about going,” Letke said. “I’ve never really been to them before and I heard it’s a lot of fun.”

While summer enrollment has declined, Castle said he thinks there will a good amount of students to come out.

“On average, we usually get around 2,000 students to come out and at the end have a pretty good turnout rating,” Castle said.

Emily Dunn, a senior from Springfield majoring in special education, said she came to many concerts last summer and enjoyed going to them.

“I think the Sunset Concerts are a fun community event that brings Carbondale together,” Dunn said. “It’s not just for students that attend, but for family and visitors.”

Other bands that will be performing this summer will be Classical Blast, HotSauce and Scarletta. The series will highlight many different genres of music during its seven concerts.

While the Sunset Concerts have been originally held in front of Shyrock Auditorium, the concerts were moved due to recent construction, which will take place during the summer.

“It’s quite a change for me, but we’ll see what happens,” Castle said. “I always say that…we help create the environment, but the people that show up are the ones that make it what it is,”

The four sponsors of the concert series are the Student Center, students of the Student Programing Council, the Carbondale Park District and the City of Carbondale.

“It’s hard to get sponsorship programing in the summer because there are so many people that are doing other things and people are out,” Castle said.

He said it is good SPC has sponsors like the Student Center and the Public Park District so they are successfully able to give the audience a program to enjoy.

“It’s an amazing tradition here and as long as the audience comes to the events, we’ll keep doing it,” Castle said. “They’re the ones that make it special.”

Marcus Gruwell can be reached at [email protected] or at 217- 622-3601