If you live in Colusa, you already know the sound of a Thursday in July. Guitar check drifting up 9th Street around six. Kids on scooters cutting across the grass at Veterans Memorial Park. A line for tri-tip sandwiches at the Rotary booth. That routine ends for the season on August 6.
The 2026 Levitt AMP Colusa Music Series closes with the Marty O'Reilly Trio, and it is worth understanding what you are actually attending. This is not a one-off summer concert. It is the final Thursday of the fourth season Colusa has run under a national grant that most towns our size never get.
The Show Itself
Marty O'Reilly Trio takes the stage at Veterans Memorial Park on Thursday, August 6, closing out the 2026 season that opened June 18. The park sits at the northwest corner of downtown, where Highway 20 meets Highway 45, at 9th and Jay Street. Bring a chair. Bring cash for the food vendors, because most of the booths are local nonprofits raising money and card readers are inconsistent.
The Aug. 6 date matters for a small reason worth flagging. The Colusa County Board of Supervisors meets in the Historic Courthouse at 547 Market Street at 9 a.m. that same Tuesday cycle, and Colusa County LAFCO meets at 3 p.m. on Aug. 6 in the same building. If your Thursday has a supervisor's meeting in it and a concert at the end of it, you are looking at a full civic day inside a five-block radius. That is the kind of geography Colusa still has and most California towns lost.
How Thursday Became The Night
Free summer concerts at Veterans Memorial Park are not new. Patty Hickle started bringing them to the park in the early 2000s, and for years it was a small, hand-built series that ran on volunteer labor. In 2022, Fernanda Vanetta and Sadie Ash began working with the Colusa County Arts Council and the City of Colusa to turn that legacy series into something the Levitt Foundation would fund.
They got the grant. Colusa was one of 34 communities nationwide selected for the AMP program, which is a three-year matching grant designed to activate underused public spaces through free live music. The 2026 run is the follow-on to that original three-year cycle, presented by the Colusa County Arts Council in partnership with the City of Colusa. What you are hearing on Thursday nights is a national program routed through a local nonprofit into a town of roughly 6,500 people.
The practical effect is that the lineup is not what a town this size would normally book. The week before O'Reilly, on July 30, the series brought in Alea, a Colombian singer-songwriter whose set moved through cumbia, vallenato, rancheras, R&B, and pop. That is a booking calibrated for a much bigger market. It landed in Colusa because a foundation grant paid the difference between what the door could cover and what the artist actually costs.
The Stack Before The Music
Here is the part most posts miss. On a Thursday in season, downtown Colusa runs two events at once, three blocks apart, and if you time it right you get both.
The Colusa Certified Farmers' Market runs Thursdays from 4 to 7 p.m. at Market Street Park, on the corner of 10th and Market. Produce, nursery stock, handmade soaps, a rotating cast of nonprofit tables. Market Street Park itself is a 2.35-acre lot with mature trees, a play structure, restrooms, and a 20-by-20 concrete stage the city keeps electrified for public events, so acoustic sets sometimes overlap with the last hour of the market.
From Market Street Park to Veterans Memorial Park is a four-block walk. If you leave the market at 6:15 with a bag of tomatoes and whatever is in season from Sartain Farms or one of the other regulars, you are on the grass at Veterans in time for the openers. This is the sequence longtime residents already run. It is also the sequence out-of-towners driving in for the concert usually miss, which is why the market stays a locals' event even during the height of the series.
Where To Land Before Or After
Downtown Colusa has more sit-down options than the population would suggest, and Thursday is a good night to use them because kitchens stay open later during the series. In no particular order:
- Rocco's Bar & Grill on Market Street. Full liquor license, banquet room behind the main building that seats up to 150, and a lunch-and-dinner menu that shows up on almost every local's shortlist. Reliable, unfussy, close to both parks.
- Slough House Social at 3249 Butte Slough Road, one mile downstream from downtown. Two riverside patios and a menu that leans burgers, bowls, and handhelds. Wednesday through Monday hours, closed Tuesdays. Worth the short drive if you want the river in the frame.
- Crave Colusa for a lighter dinner. Consistently strong in the local rotation on Yelp and Restaurantji.
- New Leaf Café and Daily Habit for the earlier crowd. Both are the kind of small operators the market itself is trying to keep viable by concentrating foot traffic downtown on Thursdays.
- Las Reinas and Don Habanero if you want Mexican, both cited in the current Yelp rankings for Colusa 95932.
Skip the drive to Yuba City on a Thursday. The entire point of the series, in the words of the Arts Council, was to give a reason to stay downtown after 5 p.m. The restaurants only stay open late if you use them.
If You Want To Stretch The Evening
Two options within a five-minute walk of Veterans Memorial Park.
Colusa Levee Scenic Park sits at 425 Webster Street, 2.19 acres built on top of the Sacramento River levee itself, with a paved walking loop, picnic tables, and BBQ pits. It is the shortest walk from the concert stage to a river view in town. If you are early, park at Veterans, walk the levee, come back.
The Colusa-Sacramento River State Recreation Area is adjacent, currently operated by the City of Colusa, and the park's five-acre picnic ground is shaded by mature cottonwoods and willows. The Levee Foot Path there is flat and short. For anglers, this week matters for a second reason. According to California State Parks, the steelhead run on this stretch runs from late August to the end of October, which means the first serious steelhead days of the year overlap with the concert finale. If you are a fishing household, this Thursday is the pivot point. The striper season winds down. The steelhead window opens.
What Comes After August 6
The Levitt AMP concerts are done until next summer, but the Thursday rhythm does not fully break. The farmers' market continues its posted schedule at Market Street Park into the fall. The Colusa County Arts Council keeps its gallery at 151 Fifth Street open with rotating exhibits, and the Downtown Colusa Art Walk continues along Market Street on its scheduled evenings, running 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and starting at the CCAC gallery where you can pick up a map.
If you are new to town and this is your first summer here, note what has actually happened. A three-year federal-adjacent grant cycle turned into a fourth self-sustaining season. The town of 6,500 hosted a Colombian singer-songwriter last week and closes with a Marty O'Reilly set this week, both free, in a park you can walk to from anywhere downtown. Fernanda Vanetta and the steering committee, including LK James, JB Brayfindley, Jack Cunningham, Cliff Burrios, and Councilmember Denise Conrado, built the infrastructure that makes that possible. It is worth showing up for the last one.
Chairs are welcome. Coolers depend on the vendor situation that night. The park is grass, not turf, and the ground gets uneven near the tree line, so if you have a low-slung camp chair aim for the flatter section closer to the stage. Sunset on August 6 in Colusa is at 8:04 p.m., which means the second half of the set will be under the string lights. That is the best window to walk back through downtown and see the storefronts lit up on a Thursday night, which is precisely the effect the grant was designed to produce.
If you are the kind of homeowner who thinks about the neighborhood as a running set of decisions rather than a snapshot, that is the same lens I bring to listings, valuations, and every conversation about what a Colusa County property is actually worth in the current market. Reach out to Amber W. Torres any time to Request Your Free Home Valuation or just to compare notes on what you are seeing around town.
