While many festivals and events are getting canceled or downsized, Historic Athens Porchfest is luckily flourishing and back even bigger for year three due to the nature of this outdoor event. After going virtual last year—and being voted the 2021 Flagpole Athens Favorites Virtual Event—the festival has expanded from the first year’s 67 performers in four neighborhoods to 108 performers in six, adding Cobbham and Normaltown to the original neighborhoods of Boulevard, Buena Vista, Newtown and Pulaski Heights.
“I think that this is the event every year that always shatters, again and again, the myth that musicians aren’t reliable, because if musicians weren’t reliable, you couldn’t do this,” says Tommy Valentine, executive director of Historic Athens. “What makes it work is really just the generosity of the artists and the hosts.”
The catalyst for this event was the Historic Athens members examining their mission statement—”to be a proactive force in developing community-wide understanding of the value of historic buildings, neighborhoods and heritage,” according to the website—and realizing they did not have an anchor event celebrating the historic neighborhoods. One member introduced the idea of porch festivals, which seemed to perfectly suit the culture of Athens with the added benefit of also celebrating the musical community’s heritage.
Already deciding to uplift the under-appreciated Newtown area, Valentine uncovered a very fitting history of porch performances that tied everything together. Longtime Newtown residents Irene Gilree and Lucy Blair shared that during the Chitlin’ Circuit era, Little Richard had a cousin who lived in the neighborhood whom he would visit when nearby. They would pull a piano onto the porch, and the whole neighborhood would gather to listen. For Valentine, this anecdote illuminates how much older and more diverse Athens music history is than many know.
Community interest and artists/hosts willing to contribute will be responsible for how large this festival grows in the future. “It really became a priority to us to not base our booking decisions on prestige. If somebody was generous enough to want to contribute a performance to this event, we wanted to find a place for them to play,” says Valentine. One of the biggest challenges in geographic growth is maintaining a pedestrian-friendly, interconnected event. However, the fact that the performances are on private property spread out over such a large outdoor area is exactly what saved this year’s festival from the fate of its peers.
Historic Athens has paid close attention to the ACC and CDC guidelines, collected feedback from both hosts and performers, consulted local elected officials and spoke with local health professionals to ensure that the event will not be detrimental to the larger community. The average single event drew a crowd of 20–30 people previously, and unsafe levels of clustering are not expected. All hosts have been encouraged to take any safety precautions on their property that they feel necessary, including requiring masks or limiting the number of attendees. Furthermore, it is strongly recommended for spectators to be vaccinated, or to socially distance if unable to be vaccinated.
For those planning ahead with the help of Porchfest’s printed schedule and mobile-friendly Google map, you have to embrace that you will miss out on bands. With an average of 18–20 artists playing every hour, Valentine recommends choosing one or two bands of interest, and then wandering from there. Unlike other festivals, it is not safe to assume the more popular acts will be headlining at the end of the night—time slots were assigned by a random number generator. This year’s lineup is the most diverse yet, and a great way to explore everything the music community has to offer.
“I think that this is a day to kind of just luxuriate in the music, culture, architecture and history of Athens. So, just give yourself time to do that,” says Valentine.
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