Porchfest Santa Cruz brings free music to the front steps of downtown homes and businesses
“Hey! Nice Porch! Want to host some musicians on it?”
Last February, a small flyer with this greeting appeared on the doorsteps of downtown Santa Cruz residences and businesses. The odd invite was the work of 36-year-old local musician and community organizer Darrow Feldstein.
“The interest was immediate,” Feldstein says. “I knew I was on to something.”
That something was porches.
On Saturday, Oct. 3, the inaugural Santa Cruz Porchfest will host 53 bands on 14 downtown porches. The free, all-ages community music event, which runs from noon to 6 p.m., invites the public to “wander the neighborhood, follow the sound, and discover your new favorite band on a neighbor’s front steps.”
The concept is not new. Porchfest was created in 2007 by Lesly Green and Gretchen Hildreth, two neighbors in Ithaca, New York, after Hildreth overheard Green’s husband playing his ukulele on the front steps of their home.
Today, an estimated 180 Porchfests occur in both the U.S. and Canada. Thanks to Darrow and his team of volunteers, Santa Cruz is now one of them. The idea came to Feldstein after visiting an aunt in Boston.
“She told me about this community event she went to every year where everyone played music out in front of their houses. I guess the idea just lodged itself in the back of my mind,” he says.
In 2014, Feldstein cofounded the Bird School Project, which, to date, has inspired more than 7,000 kids to learn about nature by experiencing it firsthand. The project’s grassroots success led Feldstein to consider how accessible public commons are created in places where none existed before.
“Since moving here in 2008, I’ve watched Santa Cruz’s live music venues dwindle. It got me thinking about community-building alternatives to music venues,” he says.
After reading extensively on the subject, he found himself sitting in Abbott Square and marveling how the downtown event space had seemingly materialized out of nowhere.
“I reached out to Nina Simon [who spearheaded the creation of Abbott Square while serving as executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History] and she was really inspiring,” he says. “We talked about how Abbott Square was designed to connect the museum to downtown and make the space more inclusive to everyone who lives around here.”
When Feldstein noticed all of the big porches and entryways around downtown Santa Cruz, he recalled his aunt’s description of Porchfest.
“I’ve spent some time in Nashville and New Orleans and I was thinking, ‘Man, we have a lot of musicians in Santa Cruz, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider us a music town.’ Those places have a strong live music culture and spots where you can hear it for free,” he says. “Porchfest seemed like an interesting way to potentially jumpstart that here.”
When the Santa Cruz Porchfest flyer began to attract interest from potential venues and bands, Feldstein recruited Ariel Lancaster, a friend from the local swingdancing community to help with the details.
“I’m an idea guy,” says Feldstein who teaches environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz and guides backpacking trips for a living. “Ariel used to be an executive assistant for a biotech CEO, so she has the organizational skills.”
Other than an outlier on Beach Hill and one by Neary Lagoon, all of Saturday’s porch venues can be found at businesses or private residences in the downtown area.
The extensive lineup of bands runs the gamut of genres—bluegrass, jazz, brass, surf rock, soul, cumbia, salsa, Italian mandolin, indie-folk, and more. It includes local standouts like Trianna Feruza and the Heavy Hitters, Alternative Zen Blues Trial, Blü Egyptian, The Rumba Madre, Los Darks Aztlán, Andy Pancakes, and Diggin Trails as well as newer, lesser known, and more traditional acts.
Fittingly, an afterparty wraps up Porchfest in Abbott Square from 6 to 10 p.m. with country band Henry Warde Band and the funk of JAM and the Buttered Biscuits.
Feldstein has some advice for Porchfesters: bring a chair, snacks, drinks, sun hat, or whatever else you might need to be comfortable; bring tips for the bands; be kind, courteous and respectful of the whole neighborhood; if possible, bike or walk to Porchfest; bring people with you; and patronize the local businesses.
“Come on down,” says Feldstein. “The world’s a better place when people have great transformative experiences with other people.”
A map of Santa Cruz Porchfest venues and a full list of performers are available at santacruzporchfest.lovable.app.
