I WANT TO PERFORM!
That’s great! Here’s how:
Find a neighbor within the festival footprint that’s willing to host you.
Clear your schedule the afternoon of August 31.
Your host fills out a registration form (including your contact info) no later than July 30. You do not register yourself.
We’ll follow up with you and your host via email to confirm your performance, ask for a brief bio and/or social links for our website, and, most importantly, inquire if any of the members of your band are also planning to perform with any other groups during Porchfest.
Put your trust in us to schedule you to perform at a time that not only takes into account you and your host, but also any other performers playing on the same porch, any other performers playing within earshot, any band member of any of those bands that’s also playing in another band, that other band’s hosts and neighbors, pedestrian flow, street closures, and crowd dispersal. In other words, this is utter chaos to organize and special requests cannot be accommodated. Please don’t ask.
In early August, we’ll give hosts and performers a sneak peek at the schedule before releasing it to the public roughly two weeks before the festival.
Party on, Wayne.
We do not pair performers and hosts. It’s up to you to find each other. If you want to perform but can’t find anybody to host you, or if you want to host but don’t know any performers, there’s a facebook group and a digital bulletin board to help you facilitate amongst yourselves. Interested bands can post availability here and interested hosts can see a list of available bands here.
All performances will be limited to 30 minute or 1 hour time slots. Bands will not be assigned multiple sets.
There is a three band maximum per address.
Performers that plan on performing in multiple bands through the day should plan to play no more than three sets, lest the house of cards that is the schedule come tumbling down. And drink some Gatorade while you’re at it. Hydration is no joke.
Porchfest is a low volume event. Another band will likely be performing a few doors down at the same time as you and this only works if we all share the neighborhood. We don’t care if you’re a Tuvan throat singing trio or a thrash metal band, music is music. We do care that you’re not audible more than two houses away from where you’re performing, so put some pillows in your drums, play with brushes, turn the amps down, play acoustic, do whatever you’ve got to do to be respectful to your fellow musicians.
Performers are not paid for their time. Tip jars and merch sales are encouraged.
Porchfest is family-friendly. Your music needs to be, too.
This isn’t the day to DJ for the neighborhood. Unless it is. This is a sticky one. There’s a difference between playing music and playing music, you know? This isn’t the day to dust off the decks and share your record collection with the neighborhood. DJing can mean alot of things, though. If you’re making live original music with your setup, we welcome it as much as any other live music, just keep the volume down!
Performers are expected to take care of their own sound/equipment needs. Many find it beneficial to collaborate on backline setups.
Perform only at your scheduled time.