This weekend, front porches all over Tacoma are turning into DIY musical stages for the city’s fifth annual — and highly beloved — Porchfest.
About 400 bands and artists will be performing on 130 participating porches over the span of two days. The event is free to attend and will take over 10 square blocks of central Tacoma, allowing for attendees to float from one stage to another depending on their tastes.
Whether it’s Dixieland jazz, hip-hop, doom metal, stand-up comedy, spoken recitation of “Finnegans Wake” or even professional wrestling, the festival is bound to offer something for everyone.
“I essentially just don’t say no to anyone,” said founder and organizer Irina Rasputnis. “If someone has a great idea, I’m going to work really hard to make it happen.”
Rasputnis launched Porchfest in 2022 after the COVID-19 pandemic had more or less extinguished the live music scene in Washington.
The concept isn’t completely new; the first Porchfest took place in 2007 in Ithaca, N.Y., founded by Lesley Greene and featuring 20 bands. Since then, the grassroots phenomenon has caught on, and Greene’s organization estimates that there are more than 260 active fests throughout the country.
Rasputnis moved to Tacoma from Massachusetts — a state that boasts over 40 cities and towns that host Porchfests, including one of the largest ones — right before the pandemic, and was struggling to forge connections with her neighbors. She said that she ended up getting considerably involved with the local Black Lives Matter movement, among other community-oriented organizing groups, where early ideas for the fest started to percolate.
“I (thought) Porchfest could work really well here,” Rasputnis said. “Coming out of the pandemic, we were eager to meet our neighbors and to get people out of their houses. And people were eager to get out of their houses, at that point.”
Rasputnis said she went door-to-door distributing flyers with a friend, trying to gauge how many of their neighbors would be willing to offer up their porches or front yards to be mini festival stages. They also put out an open call for musicians, for which they received 50 sign-ups overnight.
“That first year, it was really hard to get people to host bands,” said Rasputnis of the first Tacoma Porchfest. “We didn’t expect how much it was going to blow up with musicians that first year … We were like, ‘Oh, no. We have 50 musicians and three porches. What are we going to do?’”
Now, the fest is almost 10 times its original size, making it one of the larger Porchfests in the country.
Kevin Heiderich, a Tacoma resident and longtime musician, has been peripherally involved with the city’s Porchfest since its genesis, and is participating as both a performer and porch host this year. His four-piece rock band Swedey — which just released its debut single last week — will perform Saturday afternoon in front of his house.
Last year’s Porchfest was his first live performance in over 30 years.
“It was exhilarating,” said Heiderich. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it because so much has happened in my life between point A and point … we’ll call it point U.”
Porch hosts, Rasputnis said, are not required to provide any equipment for the bands that perform on them. Heiderich, however, likes to go all-out.
“My porch is very modest. It’s like 15, 17 square feet. So, we build 170 square feet of professional staging off the front, bring in a unified sound system and a sound guy, all the instruments,” said Heiderich.
For bands who might not have all the appropriate equipment to bring, Rasputnis said that the organization partners with Ted Brown Music in Tacoma, who — in a pinch — can offer free or discounted equipment rentals.
“When you have 400 bands involved, someone’s going to forget something or some cable’s going to be missing or something will break,” said Rasputnis. “Usually, we can figure it out on the spot. But I do tell everyone that there’s a lot of people that make Porchfest happen. … That chaos is part of the magic of the festival.”
The festival itself is made possible primarily through grants and community event funds via the city of Tacoma, as well as by donations made throughout the duration of the festival. Rasputnis said that all bands and performers featured during Porchfest are paid; moreover, bands that feature or are fronted by people of color are paid a premium in order to drive the diversity of the performances.
Ultimately, the future of Porchfest in Washington is bright. Last year, Rasputnis estimated a turnout of anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000 attendees for the Tacoma edition, though an official head count is hard to gauge given the migratory nature of the festival. Additionally, Heiderich said he knows of two other towns in Washington, Milltown and Tonasket, that are planning to start their own Porchfests. Edmonds also has its own Porchfest that, like Tacoma’s, launched in 2022.
“It’s the people who want to engage with this type of festival and who come out and enjoy it with their children, the community nature of it, the ability to walk around a neighborhood,” Heiderich said of the Tacoma Porchfest. “That’s what makes it really special.
“Just prepare to have a blast, and prepare to experience the kindness of the community,” he added.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com ’
