Porchfest Monday: Updates and Introductions
Decatur Metro | August 24, 2015 | 9:00 amWelcome to a new Decatur Metro feature, in which we’ll be keeping the community up to date on our progress towards the Oakhurst Porchfest, Decatur’s first fully crowdsourced, grassroots community music festival. In it, we’ll cover the latest registration counts and introduce you to some of the artists lined up to play.
First up, the numbers. As of this writing, we’ve got 80 porches booked. And that number will probably be a few higher by the time you read this. Trailing closely are 77 musicians and bands who’ve signed up to perform.
Among those musicians are a couple we’ll introduce you to now, starting with The Soogs, Atlanta veterans who describe themselves as “the Pixies meets the Partridge Family.” Here they are, performing Cotton Mather’s “My Before and After.”
Now lest you think the festival is becoming a bastion of crafty power pop, think again. We’ll also be featuring Melissa the Loud, self-described as “medieval, renaissance, traditional, and original music on the loudest hurdy gurdy in Decatur.” What’s a hurdy gurdy? Here’s a description for ya. And here’s Melissa on an NYC subway platform:
Finally, here’s how the map is shaping up. Lots of growing hot-spots emerging, but also still a couple of not-spots as well (Adams Street, Madison Ave., and Second Ave., could use a few porch participants).
Of course, there’s still time to get in on all this. If you live in Oakhurst, sign up your porch. If you’re a musician from anywhere at all, sign up to play. Then spread the word to keep our momentum going. Everything you need can be found HERE.
if it’s going to be about 1 musician/group per porch, it could be a good idea to have performances on the south end start earlier, and those on the north side start later, for example, so there can be a general flow of the masses trying to catch as much music as possible.
Thanks, ant1. One of the things we’re trying to stay committed to is having music all afternoon on every participating street or general area so that a sort of street party vibe emerges. If two participating porches are next door or across the street from each other, we’ll offset the performances — one in the 2-3pm slot, one in the 3-4pm slot, etc.– so no one’s stepping on another.
Still a work in progress, of course, so we may adapt as we see the map fill up. Thanks for the ideas. Y’all keep ’em coming.
Can’t wait for this. One question- have the organizers considered making this a full weekend (2-day) event, given the community response? With so many bands, folks will probably only be able to see a fraction of them. Just a thought. Thanks for making this happen!
We’re making an effort not to aim too high this first go-round, cps. Call it a proof-of-concept initiative. But if it ends up being a smash and gets embraced by the neighborhood, who knows what subsequent years might hold.
One idea is scheduling it in conjunction with next year’s return of the Oakhurst Arts and Music Festival, which typically happens on a Saturday in October. The two together and overlapping could end up as a full two days of arts and music, a la Inman Park. But that’s just wild speculating. Gotta get through this inaugural year first!
FYI – Just tried to sign up as a host and keep getting an error.
Thanks. We’re looking into it.
Hey, Ed. Thanks for the heads-up. Looks like we were having a plug-in error with our forms server. Have run through all the sign-up forms now on a couple different browsers and they seem to be working again.
Let us know if you continue to experience a problem.