It’s going to be a musical weekend here as Eastern heads into Celebration weekend and Doudna’s touring acts season comes to a close.

The outdoor celebration festival will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday outside of the Doudna Fine Arts Center area where people will be able to enjoy music, food and personalized art.

Dan Crews, director of patron services, is the chair of the festival and said the overall aim of the artsy weekend is to expose people to the visual arts and show them how unique the arts are.

“The goal of celebration weekend is to expose people to a wide variety of arts and activities, not only music but also the visual arts,” Crews said.

Typically if the weather is decent, Crews said the guesstimate of how many people come to the festival is anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 people over the weekend.

Crews said it is naturally the arts that attract so many people to come out and enjoy this annual festival.

“The big draw for a lot of people is the arts,” Crews said. “You can’t go into a mall and a store and find the type of things that you’re going to find out here.”

The artists present willing be selling a variety of art such as pottery, jewelry, ceramics, glass, painting and photography.

However, when it comes to music, Crews said people can expect to see performers who play a variety of different music, not simply rock and jazz.

“We’re going to have reggae; we’re going to have blues, jazz, Native American, easy listening folk,” Crews said.

Also coinciding with Celebration weekend, the bands Switchback, Robinella and Twangtown Paramours will perform Saturday night in the Dvorak Concert Hall at Doudna.

These bands are performing as part of Doudna’s last touring season for the academic year and have been scheduled for about 14 months.

Ticket prices vary from $15 for general public, $12 for EIU employees, $12 for seniors and $7 for students.

Each band will play for about half an hour until finally coming together for a group performance and the end of the show.

One of the bands, Twangtown Paramours, will be coming from Nashville, Tenn.

Their sound has been described as “Sophisticated Americana,” incorporating elements of Americana, country and folk music into their sound.

The band, which consists of married couple Mike T. Lewis and MaryBeth Zamer, typically performs in art centers where Lewis said their normal audience is really interested in listening to the quality of their music.

The Twangtown Paramours released their debut album in 2010, which made it to No. 11 on the Folk DJ chart, while their latest album, released in 2012, reached No. 2 on the same chart.

As far as what they expect for their audience to get out of their music, Lewis said he simply wants them to feel.

“We hope that our audience is moved in some way and will feel something,” Lewis said. “Some of our songs will make them feel sad, some will make them feel very happy, some will make them laugh and hopefully others will make them think about things that they never thought of before.”

Although the band’s sound incorporates folk, country, Americana and Texas elements, it wasn’t always this way.

Lewis said he started out as a classical and jazz musician while his wife, MaryBeth, started out as a pop and R&B singer so their current sound has been more of an acquired taste.

Nevertheless, Lewis said whatever song or genre they play, they always try to keep value and meaning to their songs.

“Whatever we do we try to have the lyrics really high quality and we try not to create throwaway songs,” Lewis said. “If the audience hears something in our music that affects them, we’ve already done our jobs.”

Darronte Matthews can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].