Scattered across the porches of Fall Creek and Northside Ithaca, over 160 bands took part in Ithaca’s Porchfest this Sunday. The musical tradition that started 18 years ago by two Ithacan neighbors has spread rapidly, with hundreds of Porchfests springing up across the country and world in places like Canada and Australia.
Gretchen Hildreth and Lesley Greene were Ithaca neighbors almost two decades ago. In an interview with The Sun, Greene explained that it all began with a conversation with Hildreth about their shared love for outdoor music.
“We like music outdoors, and the neighborhoods have so many musicians you could have a festival,” Greene said. “So we did it.”
Though Gretchen is no longer involved in Porchfest, Greene remains a co-organizer of the event, now working alongside Andy Adelewitz, who joined the team in 2013.
“I love the variety of music,” Greene said. “I love walking around, seeing your neighbors and finding out that your neighbor is this incredible fiddle player.”
A band performs on a porch with string instruments.
For six straight hours, the event showcases live music, with the bands switching at the beginning of every hour. Andy Adelewitz attributed Porchfest’s growth to their open band policy, which allows anyone who signs up to play.
“We don't really recruit at all, and we don't iterate who gets to play in any way,” Adelewitz said. “It's really grown organically so much over the years.”
Throughout the festival, attendees are encouraged to explore and venture from porch to porch. Bands are responsible for finding a porch to play on, usually using their own or a friend’s.
The first Porchfest had a total of 20 bands. This year, there were eight times as many. The event is volunteer-run, with over 120 volunteers collaborating on the day of the event.
Porchfest also features a variety of food vendors, which can be found in Auburn Park and Thompson Park.
Though Porchfest is a product of the Ithaca community, it has expanded far beyond Tompkins County — and even New York. Now, there are over 230 other known Porchfests, with two in Australia and four in Canada.
“You do have a significant amount of the population that's just sort of passing through because of the colleges,” Adelewitz said. “So you get a lot of people who sort of take the idea from here and introduce it into wherever they end up next.”
A crowd walking to see the Band Six Mile Craic at Porchfest.
Now, porchfests are expanding faster than Ithaca’s organizers can track.
“For a while, I knew every time somebody started one,” Greene said. “But now that it's so spread out, people usually don't learn from us. They learn from somebody else.”
The organizers of Ithaca’s Porchfest do more than encourage people to start their own — they have even created a document with instructions on their website and a Facebook page.
Porchfest features a wide range of instruments, genres, languages and ages. Some bands may have been together for years, performing at every Porchfest, while others are middle schoolers taking the stage for the first time.
"It's an opportunity where you don't have to prove yourself. You don't have to already have an audience, so you get a lot of new faces and new projects debuting at Porchfest,” Adelewitz said. “All you have to do is want to play.”
Greene and Adelewitz previously performed at Porchfest in their band Scratched Vinyl, but Greene shared that her current favorite band is her husband’s — JazzHappensBand.
Kerry Anne Buckman, volunteer coordinator and Ithaca College graduate, was first introduced to Porchfest as a college undergraduate.
“We do it for the love of it,” Buckman said. “It’s the feeling of when I’m biking through the festival and can hear all different types of music fading in and out of my ears. It’s just really cool to hear people from all over the community play all sorts of music and enjoy the feeling of the whole community coming together for an event.”
The main pianist of a band at Porchfest plays music.
The event attracts more than just Ithaca natives, as many students from Cornell and Ithaca College were also in attendance.
“It represents the Ithaca community as a whole,” said Miles Atchison ’28, who attended Porchfest for the first time this year. “I think it's a new budding music scene and I’m glad to see what it becomes.”
Though there are new additions such as the food vendors and the Maker’s Market — selling items from local artists and artisans, Porchfest’s organizers are determined not to overcomplicate the event.
“We're not trying to grow it into a giant music festival or anything like that,” Adelewitz said. “We like keeping it simple.”
At the same time, it is the event's simplicity that has allowed it to grow and spread so rapidly.
“I think it's such a simple, obvious idea — that porches are sort of the built-in native stage of the neighborhood. And all you have to do is tell some musicians, ‘Hey, we're going to do this on this date,’ and create a schedule of some kind,” Adelewitz said. “Anyone can do it if you have a neighborhood with porches in it.”
Giselle Redmond is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a staff writer for the News department and can be reached at gredmond@cornellsun.com.
