This weekend is the Bend Summer Festival, and it kicks off Friday night in downtown Bend with a couple of free(!) concerts that everyone’s been abuzz about: Toad the Wet Sprocket and Night Ranger. (There is of course a ton of other great music going on at the Summerfest, which deserves its own post later.)

The Night Ranger concert is taking place at Troy Field downtown, the grassy field (I think of as a dog park for some reason) next to McMenamins Old St. Francis School, on Bond Street. They take the stage at 8:30, and even though it’s a free concert, you still (apparently?) have to have tickets to get in—which you can get by listening to the giveaways on (radio) 98.3 The Twins. Which seems weird to me, since even though the field is surrounded by a chain-link fence, it’s a pretty public forum; you could basically sit at McMenamins and enjoy a free concert.

Toad the Wet Sprocket is playing on the Summerfest main stage (at the Bond and Oregon Avenue intersection), starting at 9:30pm. The one is completely free as well and you won’t need tickets, though any seating will be first-come, first-served. I’m not sure how at 9:30 show squares with Bend’s 10pm noise curfew/ordinance—or is that even in effect anymore (for special events or whatever)?