Caleb France, founder of Cerulean Restaurant, Winona Lake, has announced a new summer concert series in Cerulean Garden.

“We have tried live music for the first time last summer (in the past), but I didn’t see the full potential until we were invited to the concert series at Ignition Garage in Goshen,” said France. “Courtney and I caught the Vespers at Ignition and were so impressed that we stayed in touch and invited them to play in the Garden last summer. The response to their show was tremendous.”

In July, Cerulean hosted a dinner with Juno award-winning artists, The Good Lovelies, after a performance in Goshen. “Great food, great music, and great people … it came together pretty quickly. We realized that we both could benefit from collaboration and cross promotion. It’s always refreshing to do business with others that believe in what you believe.”

Ignition is in the second year of operation in an intimate listening room in Goshen, and is generating a lot of interest from Nashville acts who have played the venue.

“At this point, we have more interest from the industry than we have spots in our calendar,” said Ignition founder Steve Martin. “We are looking for other ways to connect the music industry to our area, we are beginning to offer them opportunities for on-air broadcasts on 91.1 The Globe, performances at First Fridays and now at Cerulean.”

“Initially, we just hoped to connect with the audience attending shows at Ignition, which is why we chose to become a sponsor of their concert series,” France added. “When Steve offered to share Ignition’s booking connections and to help us with shows we jumped at the chance. We are following Ignition’s lead and are going to focus on booking professional singer-songwriters emerging in the Americana scene. We will try for one show for a month from May through October, and may initially focus on Ignition acts who want to come back to the area to play for the fans they made last year,” France said.