Porchfest season swings coast to coast

Children are among the spectators of a jazz band at Ithaca Porchfest. Photo by Steffan Holl.

Scott Doyon of Placemakers told me last week that his neighborhood in Decatur, Georgia, is launching this October.  

Porchfest is a free music event where people sign up to play on their front porches, lawns, or stoops on a given afternoon. A map is created with addresses, times, and descriptions of performers—and, viola, a community driven, volunteer music festival is born. Folks from around the area walk and ride bicycles to listen to the bands and the entire neighborhood comes alive with local culture and talent. 

The idea began in Ithaca, New York, eight years ago. Here's what I wrote about it then in an email:

My walkable, urban neighborhood of about 40 blocks just north of downtown in Ithaca, NY, just had one of the best community events I have ever seen yesterday. Excuse me for gushing, but this ought to be copied. It's called Porchfest. We have a lot of musicians in our neighborhood, and somebody had the brilliant idea that they would all perform on their porches at the same time on one day. They printed up maps and distributed them in a few key locations. There were 17 porches where performers played for three hours. The event needed no venue, no security, no vendors, no permits, no money, beyond a few dollars in printing costs. A few enterprising kids had lemonade stands. I'm guessing 700 to 800 people walked or rode bicycles around from street to street on a beautiful day from 3 to 6 p.m. In many cases, the streets were entirely taken over from curb to curb with the audience. The performers had a ball. Afterwards, there was a big picnic on the only detached green in the neighborhood surrounded by houses. I met so many neighbors, and had a chance to catch up with many that I already knew. This is going to be seriously popular, and I'm guessing that people will come from all around next year. This couldn't take place in the suburbs.

This email got published in a few places on the web, and I think that was the first official coverage of this concept. A "guerilla" event, our local papers did not cover Porchfest in 2007. Even the cops were surprised in the first year—they drove around, watching, with raised eyebrows. It's not everyday that a festival just appears.

I was right about this idea catching on. Last year, Ithaca Porchfest attracted 160 musical acts and spectators come from all over the region. Even better, at least are organized in the US and Canada in communities from coast to coast. I was wrong about the suburbs. A number of them have porchfests—most have taken root in older, walkable neighborhoods within suburbs, and one is in a new urbanist neighborhood in Franklin, Tennessee, that is rich in front porches.

I perhaps underestimated the resources that are required for this event. While Ithaca's porchfest was launched on a shoestring with minimal bureaucracy, porchfests do require management, volunteers, and some money. They probably need permits and many arrange for things like vendors and restrooms (Ithaca gets churches to open their doors for this purpose).

Many porchfests happen in August through October. Ithaca's ninth annual is coming up September 27.

The idea is taking off--nearly half of them have been launched in the last two years. The communities are surprisingly diverse—from inner-city Jamaica Plain, Boston, to small towns in Florida, Massachusetts, and Ontario, and everything in between. Mostly, the events are organized along the lines of Ithaca's. A handful of porchfests pay performers, which makes it more like a professional festival. But the vast majority rely on free entertainment. In my view, that's the spirit of porchfest.

With so many acts, Ithaca Porchfest has become more difficult to coordinate. Amplification is an issue, especially with all these bands in close proximity. I have performed in seven porchfests—including several years as a duet with my daughter. One year much of our set was drowned out by a very loud band with heavy percussion playing nearly across the street. I let the organizers know, and they stepped up their regulation on volume and their care in placement of performers. 

Not everyone is happy about Porchfest in Ithaca. A few people leave their house for the afternoon or stay inside—sort of like Halloween, which also draws big crowds in this neighborhood. But Porchfest is the most fun, hands down, that our neighborhood has all year. I think of it as our version of Mardi Gras—in the best, noncommercial, sense of that event. I hope that Porchfest continues far into the future. Like many good things, that depends on the work of a few dedicated volunteers and musicians who are willing to perform for the sake of the music.