Video/Podcast: A sneak peek into what’s in store for the Starlight Music Series starting April 26

By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director

In this week’s episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Grace Hallowell and Parks and Recreation Marketing Coordinator Trey Reeves talk about the popular Starlight Music Series, which returns to the Wolf Pen Creek Amphitheater on April 26 with a concert by emerging country artist Jason Bowen and the Stragglers.

Free concerts are also scheduled for May 31 (R&B) and June 14 (Tejano). For more information, go to cstx.gov/starlight. Grace and Trey also discuss other upcoming programs and events.

The “What’s Up, College Station?” podcast is available weekly via Podbean, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon/Audible. Please subscribe, rate, and recommend!

If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov.

TRANSCRIPT

Grace Hallowell:

What’s Up College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell. And today I’m joined by Trey Reeves, our marketing coordinator over at our Parks and Recreation department.

It is always fun when we have Parks on the show, especially in the spring and summer. There is always so much going on. You guys are always very busy, and these exciting things that we’re talking about start this month with Starlight.

Trey Reeves:

Yeah, it’s a great time to be outside. It’s a great time before it gets to be a thousand degrees this summer.

Starlight’s coming up very quickly. We have our first concert on April 26th. It’s our country show, Jason Bowen and the Stragglers are our confirmed headliner. And we are really excited to bring an act that’s literally touring at one of the biggest country concerts in the country here to College Station for free for everybody to attend.

Grace Hallowell:

That is the one thing about the Starlight Music Series that I feel like a lot of people don’t realize is that it is completely free. And that is a rare thing nowadays where that sort of entertainment is available for no cost.

Trey Reeves:

It’s an awesome family-friendly environment. You can bring your coolers, you can bring snacks, food, no glass containers or pets, but everything else pretty much within reason is allowed. If country music’s not your thing, we have an R&B concert coming up on May 31st and then June 14th we’ll close things out with Tejano.

Grace Hallowell:

I know that Tejano night is always a big hit. It’s such a fun time. And I know in the past there have been different vendors there selling foods. If you don’t want to bring your own, can you bring some cash or a credit card to buy from the food trucks?

Trey Reeves:

We’ll have local food trucks there for every single concert, selling food, selling drinks, all that good stuff. So if you don’t want to lug anything in, you can certainly bring cash or card. And we have free parking as well at Post Oak Mall.

Grace Hallowell:

So in addition to the Starlight concerts that we have going on, our registration for summer sports, our spring and summer sports is open now and that’s for adults and youth sports.

Trey Reeves:

We have a ton of fun stuff coming up this summer. If you’ve never played in one of our adult sports leagues, they’re blast. It’s a great way to meet new people. It’s a great way to stay active. We have softball, kickball, and basketball coming up this summer. And for youth as well.

We have a summer basketball league and some clinics for kids. As soon as school gets out, we know that our parents are looking for a ton of stuff to do with their kids, and our athletics clinics are a great way for them to stay active or if they’re training for a sport in middle school one day, that they can start to build some of those skills.

Grace Hallowell:

Were you a sports person growing up?

Trey Reeves:

I grew up in a small town, so we had to play everything if we were going to have teams.

Grace Hallowell:

These programs are great, the instructors are great, and it’s for any skill level.

Trey Reeves:

Any skill level, absolutely. There’s a football skills camp, a basketball skills camp, and a speed and agility camp. So whether you’re just looking to build some more technical skills or the underlying things, something for everybody.

Grace Hallowell:

What else is going on?

Trey Reeves:

We’ve got summer camp registration open as well. Lincoln Recreation Center has some of our more indoor options. And the Gary Halter Nature Center, if your kid is more of an adventurous type, we have tons of fun opportunities out there. We have a summer camp guide that’s going to be coming out really soon to have all of that in one place on our website. And there’s a ton of other classes that are just ongoing. We have our fitness pass at the Lincoln Recreation Center. We have a ton of options that come with that. Zumba, pickleball, basketball, tons of ways to stay active and healthy as we get into the summer months.

Grace Hallowell:

I know we’re talking about a lot today. So let’s take a minute to where can people find out more about all of this?

Trey Reeves:

All of our stuff is in our digital parks Guide Recreation Connection. You can pick up a physical copy at one of our parks locations or the recreation centers. Or if you’re a digital person, you can just go to cstx.gov/parksguide and everything’s there in one place.

Grace Hallowell:

The Parks guide is very, very helpful. I’m a physical media person, so I like flipping through the pages, but the digital option is great too. And it links the registration right in the copy of the digital guide.

Trey Reeves:

If you find something that you’re interested in, you can just click that listing and it goes right to where you’re supposed to register.

Grace Hallowell:

And speaking of digital things, that’s kind of our world nowadays. Is you kind of have to have a digital component with everything and we have a City Nature Challenge going on coming up that kind of is a good mix of incorporating your phone while you’re out in nature but doesn’t distract from you being out in nature?

Trey Reeves:

It’s a really cool event that’s actually a worldwide event that College Station participates in. It’s coming up the last weekend of April, and you can participate in one of our parks. Or the really cool thing about City Nature challenges, you can participate from anywhere. All you have to do, we’re partnering with all the communities around us in the Brazos Valley. And what we’re trying to do is document the most wild species and we’re competing. It’s a challenge. So we’re competing against other cities around our size. We came in second place in Texas last year. Waco just barely beat us.

We’re really trying to push to come in first place in Texas this year. So all you have to do is download the iNaturalist app. It’s really user-friendly. Anybody can do it. And when you’re just out on a nature walk or in one of our parks and you see some wildlife, you can snap a picture of it, document it, and that counts as a species sighting.

Grace Hallowell:

What constitutes as wildlife? Is it animals, plants, both?

Trey Reeves:

It can be animal life, plant life, really anything that’s not obviously domesticated. So you’re not taking a picture of your dog or your cat. But if you see a squirrel or a bird or some of our more unique wildlife like foxes and bobcats and things that you can kind of see more out in the country, those are all great as well.

Grace Hallowell:

Everything seems unique to me still. I think I’m going on year three here, but I never grew up with armadillos or lizards or things like that. So whenever I see those I’m like, “Oh, that’s so cool.” When some people might think that’s kind of more normal. What is the most unique wildlife that you’ve seen out in our parks?

Trey Reeves:

Oh, man. I’ve been lucky enough to see a bobcat. I don’t think it was in one of our parks, but outside of college Station. Lick Creek Park, I feel like I see something new every time I go there.

And I don’t always know exactly what I’m looking at. But the cool thing is we have a ton of expert people out there that do this for a living and they love wildlife and they can help guide you through exactly what you’re seeing.

Grace Hallowell:

And to tie in with the wildlife, the World Migratory Bird Day is coming up in May. And the Gary Halter Nature Center, we had Laurie on a little while ago talking about how important birds are to Lick Creek. And let’s talk a little bit about how World Migratory Bird Day helps with the conservation of our local birds.

Trey Reeves:

It’s a great time to raise awareness for our migratory bird populations. I’m repping our bird city today on the show and we’re super proud to be a bird city recognizes a city that takes that seriously and wants to conserve our bird populations. It’s really important now, especially as birds are flying through. So it’s not even necessarily species that are here all the time, but birds that are on their spring migration back to where they’re going to spend the warmer months up north and then they’ll come back through in the fall as they’re going back south. We all heard fly south for the winter, right?

That it really does happen. And they’re flying through, we are a very major pathway for those birds. So migratory bird day helps us raise awareness, helps us educate the community, and it’s also serves as a reminder that it is time for some of our lights out actions as well. We want to keep encouraging people to turn off all the non-essential lights to help those birds migrate and not run into any trouble.

Grace Hallowell:

So one more time. Where can people find out more?

Trey Reeves:

All this, because I know it’s gone in one ear out the other for a lot of it. Cstx.gov/parksguide. Or come by our parks office in Central Park or any of our rec centers and you can grab a parks guide.

Grace Hallowell:

Thank you so much for joining me today, Trey.

Trey Reeves:

Thanks for having me, Grace.

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